this week in literature

RECITAL SERIES: THE NIGHT DANCES

Who: Charlotte Rampling and Sonia Wieder-Atherton
What: Recital Series: The Night Dances
Where: Park Avenue Armory, Board of Officers Room, 643 Park Ave. at 67th St., 212-933-5812
When: April 22-26, $75
Why: New York City’s most diverse and captivating space, the Park Avenue Armory, will host the U.S. premiere of “Recital Series: The Night Dances,” what should be a mesmerizing performance that features the one and only Charlotte Rampling (The Night Porter, Swimming Pool) reading the poetry of Sylvia Plath, accompanied by cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton (Little Girl Blue, from Nina Simone; Vita Monteverdi Scelsi) playing suites by Benjamin Britten.

MoCCA FEST 2015

Who: Guests of honor Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Scott McCloud, and Raina Telgemeier, international special guests Pénélope Bagieu, DoubleBob, Annie Goetzinger, Ilan Manouach, Anne-Françoise Rouche, and Barbara Stok, and many other comic artists
What: Society of Illustrators: MoCCA Arts Festival
Where: Center 548, 548 West 22nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves., and the High Line Hotel, 180 Tenth Ave. at Twentieth St.
When: Saturday, April 11, and Sunday, April 12, $5, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Why: More than 350 publishers and artists will be exhibiting at the annual MoCCA Fest at Center 548, including Nick Bertozzi, C. M. Duffy, Fantagraphics, Dean Haspiel, Keren Katz, Peter Kuper, Liz Means, NBM, Greg Ruth, and Daniel Zender. Among the special programs (advance RSVP recommended), taking place at the nearby High Line Hotel, are Q&As with Scott McCloud, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, and Raina Telgemeier and such panel discussions as “Work in Progress” with Kim Deitch, Sarah Glidden, Dash Shaw, and Julia Wertz, moderated by Richard Gehr; “Alt-Weekly Comics” with Ben Katchor, Michael Kupperman, and Mark Newgarden, moderated by Bill Kartalopoulos; and “Saul Steinberg 101” with Austin English, Françoise Mouly, Joel Smith, and Patterson Sims.

FIRST SATURDAY: BASQUIAT

The opening of “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks” will be celebrated at free First Saturday program at the Brooklyn Museum

The opening of “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks” will be celebrated at free First Saturdays program at the Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, April 4, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The April edition of the Brooklyn Museum’s First Saturdays program celebrates the opening of its latest exhibit on Jean-Michel Basquiat, “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks,” a collection of 160 pages from his never-before-shown notebooks, focusing on his use of text and image, along with works on paper and large-scale paintings. The free evening will feature live musical performances by the James Francies Trio and Lion Babe and a DJ set by Natasha Diggs; a curator talk by Tricia Laughlin Bloom about the new exhibition; a Basquiat crown-making workshop; a Basquiat-inspired writing workshop led by Tom La Farge and Wendy Walker; Cave Canem “Poetry Meets Art” readings from LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs and Roger Reeves; a children’s book presentation with illustrator Javaka Steptoe discussing Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat; a screening of Tamra Davis’s 2010 documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child; a performance of Dark Swan by Urban Bush Women; and an interactive performance and dance workshop with W.A.F.F.L.E. (We Are Family for Life Entertainment). In addition, you can check out such exhibitions as “Revolution! Works from the Black Arts Movement,” “Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic,” “The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago,” and “Chitra Ganesh: Eyes of Time.”

NOVA REN SUMA: THE WALLS AROUND US BOOK LAUNCH WITH LIBBA BRAY

THE WALLS AROUND US (Algonquin Young Readers, March 24, $17.95)
McNally Jackson
52 Prince St. between Lafayette & Mulberry Sts.
Monday, March 23, free, 7:00
212-274-1160
mcnallyjackson.com
novaren.com

“We went wild that hot night. We howled, we raged, we screamed. We were girls — some of us fourteen and fifteen; some sixteen, seventeen — but when the locks came undone, the doors of our cells gaping open and no one to shove us back in, we made the noise of savage animals, of men.” So begins Nova Ren Suma’s third YA novel, the ghost story The Walls Around Us. Her follow-up to Imaginary Girls and 17 & Gone, Suma’s latest book is told from the point of view of a convicted killer and a ballerina (Suma herself danced from the age of six to sixteen) and includes quotes from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to help set the mood. Suma, who we once had the extreme pleasure of working with in the children’s books business, is a master of her craft, creating warm, believable characters, writing sharp, realistic dialogue, and bringing intriguing situations to life with atmospheric dexterity. A very active member of the YA community, Suma took a big leap of faith with The Walls Around Us, letting her ideas run wild and trusting her instincts instead of worrying what her editor, agent, reviewers — and she herself — expected.

The result is a novel that was named the #1 Indie Next pick for Spring ’15, is an Amazon Best Book of the Month, and has garnered numerous starred reviews. Suma, who gave her first official public YA reading at twi-ny’s tenth anniversary celebration in 2011, will be at McNally Jackson in SoHo on March 23, launching The Walls Around Us with her friend and colleague, Michael L. Printz Award winner Libba Bray (The Diviners, Going Bovine). There will be a short reading, a conversation between the two literary stalwarts, a Q&A with the audience, and a signing. In addition, Suma will be giving away lots of Walls tattoos. And don’t worry; Suma isn’t really like one of her narrators, Violet, who explains early in the book, “I slip behind the curtain — it’s almost time, get the spotlight ready, soon I’ll be on. This’ll be my last dance before I leave town. My last chance to make them remember me, and remember me they will. When I’m onstage, I’m all for them, and they’re all for me. I feed off what they give me, and they bask in what I give them. When I’m offstage, these people are nothing to me. I’ve got some level of hate for practically almost everyone I run into on any given day. But in the midst of dancing? When they’re watching me and I’m letting them watch? I’ve got so much love, I’m like a whole different person.” Suma, who teaches writing workshops around the country, will also be participating in the “Exploring Feminist YA” panel on March 21 at 1:10 at the NYPL on Forty-Second St. with keynote speaker Bray, Gayle Forman, Scott Westerfeld, and moderator David Levithan for the 2015 NYC Teen Author Festival.

STRANGER THAN FICTION: THE MUSES OF ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER

Documentary delves into Isaac Bashevis Singer’s love of women and their work as his translators

THE MUSES OF BASHEVIS SINGER (Asaf Galay & Shaul Betser, 2014)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Tuesday, March 24, 8:00
212-924-7771
www.stfdocs.com
www.the-muses-of-bashevis-singer.com

Who ever thought that little old Yiddish mensch Isaac Bashevis Singer was such a horndog? Asaf Galay and Shaul Betser begin The Muses of Bashevis Singer, their light and playful documentary, with the following quote from the Nobel Prize-winning author: “In my younger days I used to dream about a harem full of women. Lately I’m dreaming of a harem full of translators. If those translators could be women in addition, this would be paradise on earth.” Well, it seems that Singer, who was born in Poland in 1902, emigrated to the United States in 1935, and died in Florida in 1991 at the age of eighty-eight, found that paradise, as Galay and Betser meet with a series of women who were among many hand-picked by Singer, the man who nearly singlehandedly preserved Yiddish literature in the twentieth century, to serve as his translators, and not necessarily because of their language skills. “There were certain women who were more than just translators to him. It happened quite often,” says his Swedish publisher, Dorothea Bromberg, who also talks about Alma, Singer’s wife of more than fifty years. “He loved her, I’m sure, in his own way,” she adds. “She was very jealous of him, and she was completely right.” Galay and Betser meet with translators Eve Fridman, Evelyn Torton Beck, Dvorah Telushkin, Marie-Pierre Bay, Duba Leibell, and Dr. Bilha Rubenstein as well as Singer biographers Florence Noiville and Janet Hadda, his granddaughters Hazel Karr and Merav Chen-Zamir, Yentl the Yeshiva Boy playwright Leah Napolin, and his longtime secretary and proofreader, Doba Gerber, who share intimate, surprising tales about the author of such books as The Family Moskat, The Magician of Lublin, Shosha, and Enemies, a Love Story and such short stories as “Gimpel the Fool,” “A Friend of Kafka,” and “Zlateh the Goat.”

The seventy-two-minute film, lifted by a bouncy, airy soundtrack by Jonathan Bar-Giora, also includes footage of Singer making speeches, appearing on interview programs, going to a Jewish deli, walking on the Coney Island boardwalk, and writing with pen on paper and on a typewriter with Yiddish characters. But as the title implies, The Muses of Bashevis Singer doesn’t depict him as a callow cad but as a determined writer — and father and husband — who just loved women, loved being surrounded by women, using them as inspiration for his marvelous stories that mixed fiction with reality. “Isaac was a very frisky old man,” says Leibell, who worked with Singer in his later years after he moved to Florida with Alma. “That’s to put it very mildly.” The Muses of Bashevis Singer concludes the IFC Center’s winter Stranger than Fiction series on March 24 and will be followed by a Q&A with the director.

WONDER OF WONDERS: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF FIDDLER ON THE ROOF

Who: Drama critic and author Alisa Solomon
What: Theatre for a New Audience’s Open Books Series 2015
Where: Polonsky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Pl. between Fulton St. & Lafayette Ave., 212-229-2819
When: Monday, March 23, free with advance RSVP, 7:00
Why: Theatre for a New Audience’s Open Books series continues with Alisa Solomon presenting her book Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof (Picador, September 2014), an engaging analysis of one of Broadway’s most popular musicals ever, which was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film. “As the first work of American popular culture to recall life in a shtetl — the Eastern European market towns with large Jewish populations — Fiddler felt tender, elegiac, even holy,” Solomon writes in the introduction. “It arrived just ahead of (and helped to instigate) the American roots movement. It was added to multicultural curricula and studied by students across the country in Jewish history units, as if Fiddler were an artifact unearthed from a destroyed world rather than a big-story musical assembled by showbiz professionals.” The free evening will include a conversation between Solomon and moderator Jonathan Kalb, an audience Q&A, a book signing, complimentary food and drink, and a meet-and-greet with Solomon.

MEET VERONICA ROTH: INSURGENT MOVIE TIE-IN EDITION AUTHOR EVENT

Veronica Roth, seen here on the set of DIVERGENT, will be in town to celebrate the release of INSURGENT (AP Photo/Summit Entertainment, Jaap Buitendijk)

Veronica Roth, seen here on the set of DIVERGENT, will be at the Union Square B&N to celebrate the release of INSURGENT (AP Photo/Summit Entertainment, Jaap Buitendijk)

Who: Veronica Roth
What: Discussion, Q&A, and signing
Where: Barnes & Noble Union Square, 33 East 17th St., 212-253-0810
When: Sunday, March 15, free, 12 noon
Why: In another part of our life, we are involved in the publication of Veronica Roth’s bestselling trilogy, Divergent, which was turned into a film last year; Insurgent, which is opening in theaters March 20; and Allegiant. So it is with somewhat of a bias that we recommend this special afternoon at the Union Square B&N, where Ms. Roth will discuss her writing, answer questions, and sign copies of the movie tie-in edition of Insurgent. You’ll have to purchase a copy of the book in order to receive one of the limited wristbands that will get you into the event; the line will start forming at 10:00 am. (There will not be separate queues for Abnegation, Candor, Amity, Erudite, and Dauntless factions.)