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***A Brooklyn bookstore invites visitors to break free from e-mail at a biweekly letter-writing session. They'll provide the pens, paper, and envelopes. Stamps are available for purchase on site, so no more toting around that note for weeks until you happen by a post office. Wednesday, 7-9 p.m., Freebird Books & Goods, 123 Columbia St. at Kane Street, Brooklyn, 718-643-8484, free.
***Brooklyn-based wildlife writers
Margaret Mittelbach and Michael Crewdson (authors of Wild New York) have a new book: CARNIVOROUS NIGHTS: ON THE TRAIL OF THE
TASMANIAN TIGER, the journey from the American Museum of
Natural History in Manhattan to the island of Tasmania in search of the
tiger and its traces. The result of their expedition is a beautifully
written, funny, and poignant account of a safari gone unhinged.
***D. Nurkse, former poet laureate of Brooklyn, is
the author of eight books of poetry. His latest collection, BURNT ISLAND, explores tragedy both grand and intimate, in city and country,
in our own troubled moment and across the greater scope o geological
time. Arranged in three "suites" of lucid, often heart-wrenching
verse, the book begins with a city under siege, in a group of poems
that becomes a subtle homage to New York after 9/11 -- a metaphorical
“burnt island." The collection then takes up the journey of a couple
starting again in nature at specific place called Burnt Island.
Finally, in a charming and profound series of poems centered on marine
ecology, he finds the infinite in the infinitesimally small, and
offers, in sparkling, mysterious verses, the strange comfort that comes
with observing the life of the ocean.
***Park Slope poet Joshua Mehigan was named one of five finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry. In December 2004, his first full-length book of poems "THE OPTIMIST" was also nominated for a PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award. (Winners of both competitions will be announced in spring 2005.) Chosen by poet James Cummins as the winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, it was published in December 2004 by Ohio University Press and, soon after, named one of the top ten university press books of 2004 by ForeWord Magazine. The poems in "The Optimist" address the ordinary and the exceptional: the weather, a house fire, noise pollution, the inner life of a fourth-century ascetic.
***Robert Levy's THE GHOSTS OF PARTITION STREET is a serial novel of supernatural suspense centering on the residents of a Brooklyn brownstone, both living and deceased. The story is told in a series of short chapters; a new chapter will appear on partitionstreet.com every Tuesday.
***MOTHER OF SORROWS (Pantheon 2005) by Richard McCann. A book of interconnected short stories. "Because my family lived on Carroll
Street for many years, just off Prospect Park, and as a child I went
back and forth from our suburban house in Silver Springs, MD., to the
family house on Carroll Street, which seemed more real and more
wonderful than anything in our suburb could possibly have been. As I
write this to you now -- from D.C. where I live -- I'm wearing my
grandmother's class ring from Saint Angela Hall (now closed) in
Brooklyn. I guess it's from the class of 1911 or 1912," writes Richard
McMann.net.
***FEBRUARY HOUSE. Shelia Tippins tells
the true story of Carson McCullers, Jane aThe Old Stone House is
located in JJ Byrne Park on Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Street.nd
Paul Bowles, W.H. Auden, Salavdor Dali and Gypsy Rose Lee under one
roof on Middagh Street in Brooklyn Heights. At your local independent
bookseller.
***MISS GAZILLIONS, the new novel by ex-Park Sloper Richard Weber, is gathering raves. Much of it is set in Park Slope. "A light hearted mystery thriller filled with unforgettable characters," writes Publisher's Weekly in it's starred review on 2/28.
Vox Pop Coffee Shop has Insta Book: an incredible, fast, cool print-on-demand technology that can format your Word or PDF file into a paper-back book, 5 x 8 trim size, with a full color cover. And 150 pages is only about $6-$7 bucks. 2011 Cortylou Road in Ditmas Park. Learn more about Instabook Machine: Here.
