Behind the Book Reading Series

Join us on July 12th from 7:00 to 9:00 at KGB Bar, when the Behind the Book hosts another evening of free readings by exceptional writers – Will Allison, Arthur Phillips, and Helen Schulman.

WHAT: The Behind the Book Reading Series

WHEN: Thursday, July 12th, from 7:00 to 9:00pm -- FREE

WHERE: KGB Bar, 85 East Fourth Street
(between Second & Third Aves.; take the F/V to Second Ave. or the No. 6 to Astor Place).

CONTACT: readingseries@behindthebook.org or www.kgbbar.com

WHO:
WILL ALLISON'S debut novel, What You Have Left, has been selected for Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers (fall 2007), Borders Original Voices (June), and is a Book Sense Pick for June 2007.  His stories have appeared in Zoetrope, Glimmer Train, One Story, Kenyon Review, and other magazines and have been shortlisted in The Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses.

"Loss and redemption take center stage in story writer Allison's beautifully written debut novel....Characters' tension-fraught relationships are well played, and Allison is adept at navigating a labyrinthine web of psychological underpinnings....[T]he nonlinear narrative gives Allison a trove of angles, and he nails all of them."
 – Publishers Weekly Starred Review

ARTHUR PHILLIPS is the author of three novels, including the recently published Angelica.  His first novel, Prague, a national bestseller, was named a New York Times Notable Book, and received The Los Angeles Times/Art Seidenbaum Award for best first novel.  His second book, The Egyptologist, was a national and international bestseller, and was on more than a dozen “Best of 2004” lists.  His work has been translated into 25 languages.

“Phillips's spellbinding third book cements this young novelist's reputation as one of the best writers in America, a storyteller who combines Nabokovian wit and subtlety with a narrative urgency that rivals Stephen King's….The novel thus unfolds like some infernally complex piece of origami....[A] profoundly unsettling achievement.”
 – Elizabeth Hand, The Washington Post

HELEN SCHULMAN is the author of the novels A Day at the Beach (published in June), P.S., The Revisionist, and Out of Time, and a short story collection, Not A Free Show.  P.S. was made into a movie featuring Laura Linney and Topher Grace.  She is a co-editor with Jill Bialosky of the anthology Wanting a Child and has also written six commissioned screenplays.  Her fiction, nonfiction, and reviews have been published in Vanity Fair, Time, GQ, Vogue, the New York Times, and the New York Times Book Review, among others.  Her awards include a Sundance Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and a New York Foundation for the Arts grant.

“On the one hand, it’s bad timing: who would want their 9/11 novel to be published so soon after Don DeLillo’s 9/11 novel?  On the other hand, if your novel happens to be as finely wrought, deeply felt and mercifully funny as Helen Schulman’s 'Day at the Beach,' then this timing turns out to be an affirming coincidence, allowing us to see how another talented writer can alchemize that same terrible day….Nearly 3,000 people died on Sept. 11. Schulman’s triumph here is that she breaks our hearts with three who lived.”
 – Sarah Towers, New York Times Book Review

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Behind the Book is a literacy nonprofit working with low-income students in NYC public schools.  Our mission is to excite children and young adults about reading.  Working in the 1st-12th grades, we bring authors and their books into individual classrooms to build literacy skills and a new generation of book readers.           

CONTACT US to suggest an author or inquire about readings ...

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