The New York Review of Science Fiction (NYRSF) Reading Series at the South Street Seaport Museum is once again fast approaching. On 1 April, the doors will open at 6:30PM for the usual 7 o’clock start time. This month’s event is guest-curated by Amy Goldschlager, and features writers Andy Duncan and Elizabeth Glover.
Andy Duncan’s books include the fiction collection Beluthahatchie and Other Stories, the nonfiction guidebook Alabama Curiosities, and the fiction anthology Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (co-edited with F. Brett Cox). By day, he is a senior editor at a business-to-business magazine, and he teaches in the Honors College of the University of Alabama. His fiction has won two World Fantasy Awards and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.
Elizabeth Glover was a design manager for HarperCollins until just last week; and next week, she begins a new job as head of Production at the University of Pennsylvania Press. She lacks the usual writer’s eccentric list of past occupations, but she hopes having driven a transit bus and been the first female sabre fencer in the state of Virginia qualifies her for the club. She has the required-minimum one cat and eighty-bajillion books. “MetaPhysics,” her first fiction sale, appeared in the August 2007 Realms of Fantasy.
Amy Goldschlager, a former curator of the NYRSF reading series, has edited adult, children’s, and craft books for a number of major publishers. She currently works as an editor for findingDulcinea.com, a human-powered search engine, and also reviews genre fiction for Publishers Weekly and Kirkus.
The NYRSF Reading Series takes place the first Tuesday of every month at the South Street Seaport’s Melville Gallery, 213 Water Street. Admission is free, but $5 donations are encouraged to offset costs and buy dinner for the readers. The producer and executive curator is radio producer and talk show host Jim Freund. For more information, see www.hourwolf.com/nyrsf.
Following that, there’s the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series, hosted by Ellen Datlow and Gavin J. Grant. On 16 April they’ll be presenting P.D. Cacek and Jack Ketchum. As always, readings start about 7, but arrive early if you want to get a seat (the bar is kind of small).
P.D. Cacek is the multiple award winning author of six novels, three collections, and over a hundred short stories. She’s just finished a new novel called Visitation Rites (a ghost story) and has stories coming out in Traps (edited by Scott T. Goudsward) and Childhood Fears (a charity anthology for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital edited by Nina Ely). She also acts and is writing a play called The Last Daughter.
Jack Ketchum is the author of novels including Red, Joyride, Only Child, and Hide and Seek. He’s got a book of two novellas—pairing a new one, “Old Flames”, with “Right to Life”—coming out from Leisure in June. Also, a collection of four memoirs called Book of Souls will be published by Bloodletting Press this summer. Movie versions of The Girl Next Door and The Lost, are now out on DVD.
Fantastic Fiction at KGB is held in the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Avenue, upstairs) the third Thursday of every month. Mobile Libris is usually present to sell readers’ books. For more information on the location, see www.kgbbar.com; for information on the reading series, see their Yahoo group.
As always, after both events, there will be gatherings at nearby eateries for dinner and to continue the conversation (or to get to meet the authors up-close and see how they chew their food).