Raquel Salas Rivera is the 2018-19 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia. They are the inaugural recipient of the Ambroggio Prize, for their book x/ex/exis, and the Laureate Fellowship, both from the Academy of American Poets. From 2016-2018, they edited The Wanderer and Puerto Rico en mi corazón, a collection of bilingual broadsides of contemporary Puerto Rican poets. They are also the author of six chapbooks and five full-length poetry books. Their fourth book, lo terciario/the tertiary, was on the 2018 National Book Award Longlist, was selected by Remezcla, Entropy, Literary Hub, mitú, Book Riot, and Publishers Weekly as one of the best poetry books of 2018, and is a Finalist for the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry. Their fifth book, while they sleep (under the bed is another country), was published by Birds, LLC in 2019. On June 14, they will participate in an event at The Free Library of Philadelphia as part of our Poetry to the People book truck tour with Narrative 4. This 10-day, 10-city, 1800-mile journey from New York to New Orleans, will feature stops along the way to give away free books, highlight and celebrate local writers, and promote literacy and literary organizations. To support the trip, please visit our fundraising page here. 1) Please tell us about […]
Michael Bronski is an independent scholar, journalist, and writer who has been involved in social justice movements since the 1960s. He has been active in gay liberation as a political organizer, writer, editor, publisher and theorist since 1969. He is the author of numerous books including the recently published A Queer History of the United States for Young People. He is Professor of the Practice in Activism and Media in the Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University. On June 18, he will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, The Song Sings Itself, alongside Trish Hall, John Burnham Schwartz, and Darcey Steinke. We spoke to Michael ahead of the show. What are you currently working on? I am now working on The World Turned Upside Down: The Queerness of Children’s Literature which is not about gay characters in books but an investigation into the tension between children’s limitless, anarchic imagination and the social mandate to turn them into responsible adults. It is wide ranging – from nursery rhymes to Victorian children’s novels to Harry Potter – and looks at children’s relationships to sex, death, and psychic survival. Obviously I never got over my “Freud period” in college. I […]
Boris Fishman was born in Minsk, Belarus. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Travel + Leisure, the London Review of Books, New York magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian, among other publications. He is the author of the novels A Replacement Life, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and winner of the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the American Library Association’s Sophie Brody Medal, and Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo, which was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and his newest book Savage Feast: Three Generations, Two Continents, and Dinner Table (A Memoir with Recipes). On May 21, he will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, The Root of it All, alongside Damian Barr, Eve Ensler, and Kevin Young. We spoke to Boris ahead of the show. What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing? A small bedroom in Minsk, Belarus, in 1980-something. Writing desk, fold-out bed, Persian carpet on the wall, Persian carpet on the floor. On all fours over the latter, yours truly mesmerized by the sports pages of Nedelya (The […]
Damian Barr is the author of Maggie & Me, which the Sunday Times named Memoir of the Year. He is Literary Ambassador for the Savoy in London where he hosts his Literary Salon, which has been going for ten years with hundreds of prominent guests including Bret Easton Ellis, John Waters, Colm Tóibín, Jojo Moyes, David Mitchell, and Mary Beard. The Salon has partnered with the BBC Short Story Prize and the Man Booker, Hay, and the Windham-Campbell Prizes. Barr is also Literary Editor of the Soho House group and appears regularly on BBC Radio 4. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and was 2013’s Stonewall Writer of the Year. He lives in Brighton, England. His debut novel You Will Be Safe Here will be published in May. On May 21, he will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, The Root of it All, alongside Eve Ensler, Boris Fishman, and Kevin Young. We spoke to Damian ahead of the show. What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing? My Mum had an old Golden Virginia Tobacco tin filled with words written in block capitals on tiny squares of paper. I’d pick a word out and she’d teach me how to say […]
Andri Snær Magnason is an Icelandic writer of novels, poetry, plays, short stories, essays and films. His novel LoveStar got a Philip K. Dick Special Citation, the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire in France, and “Novel of the year” in Iceland. The Story of the Blue Planet was the first children’s book to receive the Icelandic Literary Award and has been published or performed in 35 countries. He co-directed “Dreamland,” a feature-length documentary film based on his book, Dreamland: A Self Help Manual for a Frightened Nation. His most recent book, The Casket of Time, has now been published in about 10 languages. On April 16, he will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, The Strength of Ignorance, alongside Max Boot, Ross Gay, and Vicky Ward. We spoke to Andri ahead of the show. What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing? My very first reading memory is reading dinosaur books, as a child in New Hampshire. What is your favorite line from your current work? I can pick a slogan from the TimeBox firm in The Casket of Time. “No More Februaries!” What is your favorite first line of a novel? The only I can remember is Kafka: “As […]
Elizabeth Keenan and Greg Wands write together as E.G. Scott. Their first novel The Woman Inside came out earlier this year. Keenan is a writer and publishing consultant based in New York City. She has worked in book publishing for eighteen years for imprints of Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, and Macmillan. Wands writes for the page and screen and is excited to have a television series and feature film project in the works in addition to the novel. On March 26, they will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, Seeing Blindly, alongside Patrick Radden Keefe, Safiya Sinclair, and Aatish Taseer. We spoke to Elizabeth and Greg ahead of the show. What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing? Greg: Saving up chore money to buy books at the book fair in my elementary school gymnasium. Liz: The excitement of being allowed to order as many books as I wanted on the Scholastic order form in first grade, and feeling pure joy when they arrived. What is your favorite line from your current work? Greg: “The best thing about being dead is that no one suspects you when bodies start turning up.” Liz: “My wife and I are different types of liars.” What is your favorite first […]
Aatish Taseer is the author of the memoir Stranger to History: A Son’s Journey Through Islamic Lands and three acclaimed novels: The Way Things Were, a finalist for the 2016 Jan Michalski Prize; The Temple-Goers, which was short-listed for the Costa First Novel Award; and Noon; and, a new work of nonfiction, The Twice-Born: Life and Death on the Ganges. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. He is a contributing writer for The International New York Times and lives in New Delhi and New York. On March 26, he will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, Seeing Blindly, alongside Patrick Radden Keefe, Elizabeth Keenan, Safiya Sinclair, and Greg Wands. We spoke to Aatish ahead of the show. What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing? We went, my mother and I, to a colony market in South Delhi, and bought Coleridge’s poems. I must have been five, or six. In weak fluctuating light, she read me In Xanadu. It was the purest connection I have ever known with sound as a semantic force in its own right. For years, I knew all the words, and never thought it even slightly important to know what they meant. What is […]
John Wray is the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Lost Time Accidents, Lowboy, The Right Hand of Sleep, Canaan’s Tongue, and most recently, Godsend. He was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists in 2007. The recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives in Brooklyn and Mexico City. On January 15, he will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, Secrets and Lies, alongside Lauretta Charlton, Nora Krug, and Carl Zimmer. We spoke to John ahead of the show. What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing? My earliest memory involving reading was gawking in amazement at the tower of orange-spined Penguin classics on my mom’s bedside table. She immigrated to the US from Austria, and she taught herself English by reading Penguin Classics. Which is pretty badass, in my opinion. What is your favorite line from your current work? “Dear Teacher, here I am now, where you said I’d never be.” What is your favorite first line of a novel? “They threw me off the hay truck about noon.” (from The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain) What advice would you give to aspiring writers? Don’t turn your nose up at porn! […]
Nora Krug is a German-American author and illustrator. Krug is a recipient of fellowships from Fulbright, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Maurice Sendak Foundation, and the German Academic Exchange Service. Her visual memoir Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home, about WWII and her own German family history, was chosen as a New York Times Critics’ Top Books of 2018, as one of The Guardian’s 50 Biggest Books of Autumn 2018 and Best Books of 2018, as an NPR Book of the Year 2018, as one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Memoirs of 2018, and as one of Time Magazine’s 8 Must-Read Books you May Have Missed in 2018. On January 15, she will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, Secrets and Lies, alongside Lauretta Charlton, John Wray, and Carl Zimmer. We spoke to Nora ahead of the show. What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing? I remember being read The Grimms’ Fairy Tales by my parents. The one that most stuck with me was “Godfather Death,” about a physician’s pact with the devil. The most memorable moment is when Death takes the physician to a cavern filled with candles of different heights representing the […]
