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| 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center, 2007/2008 Season Preview |
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| Tickets/Registration: 212.415.5500 |
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| Media Contact: Emily Gewitz, 212.415.5455, email |
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| 92ND STREET Y UNTERBERG POETRY CENTER |
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| 2007/2008 SEASON PREVIEW |
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| New York, NY, August, 8, 2007—With a new culture season upon us, the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center offers a preview of events for the 2007/2008 season. Tickets are available at 212-415-5500 or online at www.92Y.org/poetry. |
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| READINGS |
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The 2007/2008 season brings an international flavor to the Poetry Center, beginning with Nobel Prize-winning West Indian poet Derek Walcott (September 17). Mario Vargas Llosa, who hails from Peru, reads from his newest novel, Falling Man (October 15); Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian novelist, will appear with literary superstar Dave Eggers. Accompanying them is Sudanese civil war refugee Valentino Achak Deng, around whom Eggers based his latest fictionalized biography, What is the What (January 7); Ireland's Roddy Doyle and Scotland's A.L. Kennedy share the stage to present their newest writing (January 23); Turkish novelist Elif Shafak reads from her latest novel (February 11); and Hungarian Imre Kertész, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature, returns to the Y in the spring. He is accompanied by his dear friend and countryman, pianist András Schiff, who also performs (April 17). The many poets who take the podium include Mary Jo Bang, Adam Zagajewski, Franz Wright and Li Young Lee. Finally, in the latest of several Poetry Center appearances, poet and translator Anne Carson reads some of her work (March 26).
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| THEATER |
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The 92nd Street Y Poets' Theatre, which is the Poetry Center's ongoing series of verse dramas, plays, and theatrical adaptations of literary texts designed to emphasize language and the aural experience of theater, stages two productions this season—WILLIAM BLAKE AT 250, a one-person show by British actress Ruth Rosen (December 3), and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa and dramaturge Chad Gracia's adaptation of Gilgamesh, directed by Robert Scanlan (April 28). January brings a dramatic reading called SEVEN, a performance of monologues by seven award-winning playwrights, based on personal interviews and oral histories of seven inspiring women from some of the world's most troubled nations (January 21). The Poetry Center and Theatre for a New Audience offer a preview of TFANA's January 2007 production of SHAKESPEARE's Antony and Cleopatra, starring Emmy-winning actress Christine Baranski. Baranski reads scenes from the play with other cast members after which TFANA artistic director Jeffrey Horowitz talks with the play's director, Darko Tresnjak (March 3).
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| TALKS/INTERVIEWS |
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The Poetry Center presents the fourth season of AFTERNOON NIGHT TABLE, its series of daytime conversations with writers, hosted this year by award-winning journalist Roger Rosenblatt. Among those who discuss their work, their interests—and their reading choices—are Joyce Carol Oates (Nov 9), Garry Trudeau (Dec 5), Christopher Durang (Feb 15) and Garrison Keillor (Apr 9). BIOGRAPHERS & BRUNCH offers Janet Malcolm on Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas (October 7), Arnold Rampersand on Ralph Ellison (January 20) and Hermione Lee on Edith Wharton (April 13). CRITICS & BRUNCH series includes such varied speakers as biographer Judith Thurman (Oct 28) and Shakespeare scholar Eric Rasmussen (Mar 2). THE CRITIC'S VOICE series features A Tribute to Parnassus, the poetry journal closing its doors after 30 years (December 10). The Psalms: A Reading and Conversation is our second event featuring translator Robert Alter, who discusses the 150 psalms with Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson (December 17). Finally, music legend Paul Simon appears as part of THE LYRICIST'S VOICE series to discuss the art of lyric writing with former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins (February 20).
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| CHILDREN'S LITERATURE |
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The Poetry Center unveils a new children's reading series this season with A Wrinkle in Time at 45, featuring author Madeleine L'Engle's granddaughter, Charlotte Jones Voiklis. Ms. Voiklis reads from the book and talk about L'Engle's life and work (December 15). Next up is acclaimed actor Jim Dale, the voice behind the audio recordings of the entire Harry Potter series (February 16). In the spring, English Poet Laureate Andrew Motion reads some of his favorite poems for children (April 5) and the Poetry Center hosts A Tribute to Maurice Sendak (May 12), to celebrate the famed children's book author and illustrator's 80th birthday. The tribute features playwright Tony Kushner (Sendak's Brundibar collaborator) and composer Oliver Knussen (who wrote the opera version of Where the Wild Things Are from Sendak's libretto), along with other friends and colleagues.
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| ABOUT THE 92nd STREET Y UNTERBERG POETRY CENTER |
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For decades, the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center has served as a public literary salon and a place for writers to learn their craft. The legendary Poetry Center opened in 1939 with a reading by William Carlos Williams. In the following decades he was followed by virtually every great 20th century writer—Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, W.H. Auden, Jorge Luis Borges and Langston Hughes, to name but a few. The tradition continues in 2006: the Unterberg Poetry Center's 67th Season. Today, the Center presents readings by poets, novelists and playwrights, and talks with critics, biographers and scholars. Through its Poets' Theatre, the Center produces masterfully written dramas performed by accomplished actors. The Center's extensive Writing Program gives working adults access to teachers who are practicing authors, a rarity outside M.F.A. programs. Community outreach programs offer high-school students access to world-famous authors and new immigrants literacy-training through literature. Young writers find support at the Center through annual readings that pair established writers with emerging writers; and The Discovery/The Nation poetry contest, for poets who have not yet published a book. The 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center is part of the 92nd Street Y Tisch Center for the Arts, which is endowed through the generosity of the Joan and Preston Robert Tisch family.
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| ABOUT THE 92nd STREET Y |
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Founded in 1874 by a group of visionary Jewish leaders, the 92nd Street Y has grown into a wide-ranging cultural, educational and community center serving people of all ages, races, faiths and backgrounds. The 92nd Street Y's mission is to enrich the lives of the over 300,000 people who visit each year — both in person and through the Y's satellite, television, radio and Internet broadcasts. The organization offers comprehensive performing arts, film and spoken word events; courses in the humanities, the arts, personal development and Jewish culture; activities and workshops for children, teenagers and parents; and health and fitness programs for people of every age. Committed to making its programs available to everyone, the 92nd Street Y awards nearly $1 million in scholarships annually and reaches out to 7,000 public school children through fully-subsidized arts education programs. For more information, please visit www.92Y.org. |
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© 2008 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association
All Rights Reserved. |
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