Brookdale’s Visiting Writers Series Fall 2019 announced its lineup of award-winning and ground-breaking authors.
- Alex DiFrancesco, novelist, eco-writer, and transgender-activist, on October 8 at 7 p.m.
- Seema Reza, award-winning poet, and Blythe Baird, award-winning slam and page poet, on November 6 at 7 p.m.
- Roger Rosenblatt, award-winning journalist, memoirist, playwright, and best-selling novelist, on December 12 at 11:45 a.m.
This year’s authors tackle different topics like the environment, gender, mental health, veterans, war, economic divide, and so many other issues affecting our lives today. The events are open to the community and all feature a question and answer period after the reading. Light refreshments will be provided. Open seating.
October Program – Tuesday, October 8th @ 7PM
Novelist, Eco-Writer, and Transgender-Activist Alex DiFrancesco
Alex DiFrancesco’s All City provides a vivid, all-too-realistic glimpse into our climate-change future. Portraying the best and worst of what makes us human, the novel celebrates community-building, survival, and the possibility of hope, while criticizing the institutions that actively work to divide us. It is a rallying cry worth echoing.”
—Ilana Masad, author of All My Mother’s Lovers
Co-sponsored by the International Education Center in support of their theme, ONE WORLD: Environmental Issues
Building: Student Life Center (SLC)
Room: Navesink III
Parking: Lot 7
Student Cost: Free
Public Cost: Free with a $3 suggested donation
November Program – Wednesday, November 6th @ 7PM
Award-Winning Poet and HBO documentary-featured Seema Reza
Seema is a poet and the Chair & Executive Director of Community Building Art Works. She coordinates a unique multi-hospital arts program that encourages the use of the arts as a tool for narration, self-care and socialization among the veteran population struggling with emotional and physical injuries. The HBO Documentary We Are Not Done Yet focuses on her work with veterans. Seema Reza is the author of two books, most recently, A Constellation of Half-Lives and a subject of the HBO Documentary We Are Not Done Yet.
– and –
Award-Winning Slam and Page Poet Blythe Baird
At only 22 years old, Blythe Baird is already one of the most recognizable names in spoken word and slam poetry. The viral and award-winning writer has garnered international recognition for her poems that speak out on sexual assault, mental illness, eating disorder recovery, sexuality, and healing.
Building: Student Life Center (SLC)
Room: Navesink III
Parking: Lot 7
Student Cost: Free
Public Cost: Free with a $3 suggested donation
December Program – Thursday, December 12th @ 11:45AM
Award-Winning journalist, memoirist, playwright, and bestselling novelist
Roger Rosenblatt
Co-sponsored by Life-Long Learning
Roger Rosneblatt, is a Distinguished Professor of English and Writing at Stony Brook Southampton. Rosenblatt’s essays for Time magazine have won two George Polk awards, among others. His television essays for the NewsHour on PBS have won the Peabody and the Emmy.
He is the author of six off-Broadway plays and 15 books, published in 13 languages. They include New York Times bestsellers Kayak Morning, Unless It Moves the Human Heart, and Making Toast, a memoir of his family, which initially appeared as an essay in The New Yorker. Other books are the novels Beet and Lapham Rising, another bestseller, as were Rules for Aging and Children of War, winner of the Robert F. Kennedy book prize.
His one-man show, Free Speech in America, was cited by the Times as one of the 10 best plays of 1991. He is also the recipient of the 2015 Kenyon Review Award for literary achievement.
In his recent books, Rosenblatt has experimented with a form of narrative that connects section to section, without chapter demarcations, dismissing chronological time, and mixing fact and fiction. The effect he seeks is akin to movements in music. In his review of The Boy Detective in the New York Times Book Review, Pete Hamill compared Rosenblatt’s style to that of “a great jazz musician, moving from one emotion to another, playing some with a dose of irony, others with joy, and a few with pain and melancholy (the blues, of course). Alone with the instrument of his art, he seems to be hoping only to surprise himself.”
Building: Student Life Center (SLC)
Room: Twin Lights
Parking: Lot 7
Student Cost: Free w/ Student ID
Public Cost: $25, advance registration required, call 732-224-2315
For previous readings, check out our archive.
