Friday 27 March at 7:30PM, the Philadelphia Fantastic Authors and Editors Series hosts Bud Sparhawk reading from his novel Vixen. The place is Moonstone Art Center, 110 S. 13th Street (second floor), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (in Center City Philadelphia at the corner of 13th and Sansom Streets).
Bud Sparhawk has sold about seventy stories to Analog, Asimov’s, several “Best of” anthologies, and other print, audio, and on-line media both in the United States and overseas. He has published two short story collections and the novel Vixen, which was released in December 2008. He has been a three-time Nebula Award finalist (1998, 2001, and 2006), and is currently the Eastern Regional Director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), a member of SIGMA, and Senior Vice President of Macfadden.
Philadelphia Fantastic presents a series of readings and informal discussions by and with local and regional writers of speculative fiction on the fourth Friday of the month. The events are free and dinner with the guest afterwards is at a local restaurant on a pay-as-you-go basis. Upcoming readers include James Morrow (24 April), Jeffrey Ford (22 May), Lawrence Schoen (26 June), and Catherine Asaro (24 July).

The New York Review of Science Fiction Readings at South Street Seaport Museum continue on 7 April, with the doors opening at 6:30PM for a 7 o’clock start at 12 Fulton Street, on the fourth floor, New York City. This month’s event is guest-curated by Amy Goldschlager, and features two authors familiar with the darker side of erotica: Victoria Janssen and Kris Saknussemm.
Victoria Janssen attended a women’s college and there discovered she enjoyed writing erotica. After selling several dozen stories under the name Elspeth Potter, her agent suggested a novel based on “Ducal Service”, which appeared in The Milf Anthology (2006). The proposal evolved into The Duchess, Her Maid, the Groom, and Their Lover, published by Harlequin Spice in December 2008. Her second novel for Spice, The Moonlight Mistress, will be published in December 2009; it features the early days of World War One and werewolves. When not writing, Janssen lectures about writing and selling erotica at literary conferences, researches in libraries and graveyards, and guestblogs. She lives in Philadelphia and online at www.victoriajanssen.com.
Kris Saknussemm returns to us from Australia. His latest novel, Private Midnight, has been described as an erotic supernatural thriller set in a noir crime world of jazz, junkies, and shadows from out of time. A native of the Bay area in California, Saknussemm now lives primarily in the ruins of an old motel he is renovating in Daylesford, Australia, with the aim of creating an arts center. (He is also well-known as a painter and sculptor.) His first novel, Zanesville, won accolades as a cult novel which sent ripples throughout the creative world. His short stories have won prizes in the Boston Review and River Styx Short Fiction contests, in addition to appearing in a wide range of publications such as Chelsea, The Missouri Review, The Hudson Review, The Alaska Quarterly Review, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, The Hawaii Review, South Carolina Review, and ZYZZYVA.
Amy Goldschlager has edited science fiction, children’s, and craft books for several major publishers. She is currently an editor at findingDulcinea.com and SweetSearch. She also writes reviews for Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Audiofile, and ComicMix.
The NYRSF Reading Series is held the first Tuesday of every month. Admission is free, but $5 donations are encouraged to offset costs and buy dinner for the readers. Following the readings, a nearby pub serves as the site of dinner/drinks/continuing conversation. Radio producer and talk show host Jim Freund is the series producer and executive curator. He also airs most of the readings on his WBAI FM radio program, Hour of the Wolf. Upcoming events include: Members of the Tabula Rasa writers’ group (part 2) on 5 May, and Catherynne M. Valente and SJ Tucker on 2 June.

The next entry in the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series will be 15 April. Hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel will present Cassandra Clare and Marie Rutkoski at the KGB Bar (85 E 4 St, New York, New York). The event starts, as always, at 7PM.
Cassandra Clare is the New York Times bestselling author of City of Bones, City of Ashes, and City of Glass. City of Bones was an American Library Association Teens Top Ten 2008 winner. She is also the author of the upcoming YA fantasy trilogy The Infernal Devices.
Marie Rutkoski is the author of The Cabinet of Wonders, which was a finalist for a Cybils award and received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. She was also profiled by that journal as one of the promising debut authors of 2008. The next book in her series is called The Celestial Globe, and will be published in March 2010.
As with the other events, dinner usually follows (in this case, at a nearby Chinese restaurant). And curator Ellen Datlow usually posts photos of the evenings on her Flickr account (pictures of the James Morrow and Laird Barron reading on 18 February are at this link). Upcoming Fantastic Fiction at KGB events include: F. Brett Cox and Graham Joyce on 20 May; Brian Francis Slattery and Mary Robinette Kowal on 17 June.