SPRING 2017 9 6 E Events E PAG PAG Exhibition Special Events Performances Lectures Seminars 21 12 E E PAG The Writing Life PAG Children’s and YA Events Registration 14 10 E E PAG PAG AWARDS EXHIBITION Broken Beauty CEREMONY Ruins of the Ancient World The New York City Book Awards 2016 This compelling exhibition focuses on the Library’s The New York Society Library’s New York City Book Awards, holdings of books devoted to historic sites in the Middle established in 1996, honor books of literary quality or East and beyond. It was the 2015 bombing of the Temple historical importance that, in the opinion of the selection of Baalshamin in the Syrian city of Palmyra that compelled committee, evoke the spirit or enhance appreciation of a look within the Library’s walls at our collection on the New York City. subject. Today, with many of these sites increasingly at risk, The jury for 2016-2017 is chaired by Warren Wechsler narratives by travelers from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and includes Bianca Calabresi, Barbara Cohen, Ellen and twentieth centuries assume ever greater importance Feldman, Ella Foshay, Karl E. Meyer, Janice P. Nimura, to historians, archaeologists, and concerned citizens Stephen Raphael, Peter Salwen, and Richard Snow. everywhere. These legendary places’ broken beauty—so Watch our website for a list of the award winners, plus OPEN TO THE PUBLIC described by the English writer Rose Macaulay—reminds FOR MEMBERS THROUGH us of the fragility of monumental ruins and of the value of AND GUESTS more information about the ceremony and presenters. AUGUST 31, 2017 written records preserved here at the Library. Wednesday, May 3 At left: Presenter James Atlas and honoree Roger Angell at The Assunta, Ignazio, refreshments 6:00 PM the 2016 awards ceremony. Photo by Karen Smul. Ada and Romano Peluso presentation 6:30 PM Exhibition Gallery THIS EXHIBITION IS SUPPORTED BY THE THOMAS E. DEWEY FUND, THE HAZEN POLSKY FOUNDatION, AND BY A GIFT IN MEMORY OF SUSAN GOODSTEIN LERNER. Members’ Room Free of charge THE 2016-2017 NEW YORK CIty BOOK awaRDS ARE GENEROUSly UNDERWRItteN Free of charge; advance BY ELLEN M. ISEMAN. registration required 2 3 LITERARY Digging Through The Fat and The Hudson Review PANEL MAGAZINE Literary Awakenings: Guernica: A Magazine of Global AND RECEPTION SALON Personal Essays from the Hudson Review Arts and Politics Syracuse University Press, February 2017 Join us for a special evening of refreshments, conversations, This panel celebrates the publication of Literary Awakenings: readings, video, and more in our annual evening showcasing Personal Essays from the Hudson Review, edited by Ronald great literary magazines. Koury, the magazine’s Managing Editor since 1985. During Digging Through The Fat | ripping out the heart began the past thirty years, the editors of the Hudson Review as a call for literary action. We showcase prose, poetry, observed a trend among the best literary essayists and and visual arts from emerging and established creative folks reviewers to couch their criticism in a highly personal throughout the year. We hold two reading periods: poetry in manner as opposed to the theoretical, technocratic work the Spring/Summer and fiction in the Fall/Winter. We also being produced in other venues. The Hudson Review became periodically publish personal essays, interviews, reviews, a home for this kind of accessible, memoirist writing. This and links to published works. Our mission is to nurture a anthology, introduced by William H. Pritchard, collects 18 diverse community of artists, writers, poets, photographers, such essay/memoirs. These diverse contributions unite in the and publishers. OPEN TO THE PUBLIC joy of appreciation, the pleasures of engaging with literature. OPEN TO THE PUBLIC Founded online in 2004, Guernica is an award-winning Thursday, May 11 Following opening remarks by Hudson Review Editor Paula magazine focused on the intersection of arts and politics. refreshments 6:00 PM Deitz, Mr. Koury will introduce the panel: the moderator, Thursday, April 13 presentation 6:30 PM refreshments 6:00 PM We publish memoir, reporting, interviews, commentary, Prof. Pritchard, along with three of the essayists. presentation 6:30 PM poetry, fiction, and multimedia journalism exploring Members’ Room Members’ Room identity, conflict, culture, justice, science, and beyond. With $15 per person; advance William H. Pritchard, moderator, first appeared in the registration required Hudson Review in Summer 1967 and became an Advisory $15 per person; advance contributors from every continent and at every stage of their registration required careers, we are a home for singular voices, incisive ideas, and Editor of the magazine in 1973. His published criticism critical questions. includes critical and biographical studies of Robert Frost, Randall Jarrell, Wyndham Lewis, and John Updike. He is the Henry Clay Folger Professor of English, Emeritus, at THE WRITING LIFE EVENTS IN 2017 ARE GENEROUSLY UNDERWRITTEN BY JENNY LAWRENCE. Amherst College. Susan Balée’s Flannery O’Connor, Literary Prophet of the South (1994) was the first biography of the Southern writer. Andrew Motion, the United Kingdom Poet Laureate 1999–2009, is the Homewood Professor of the Arts in the Writing Seminars program at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author most recently of Coming in to Land: Selected Poems 1975–2015. Igor Webb is the author of Rereading the Nineteenth Century: Studies in the Old Criticism from Austen to Lawrence (2010). He is a Professor and the Director of Creative Writing at Adelphi University. THIS EVENT IS CO-SPONSORED BY THE HUDSON REVIEW. THE WRITING LIFE EVENTS IN 2017 ARE GENEROUSLY UNDERWRITTEN BY JENNY LAWRENCE. 4 5 PERFORMANCE The Eleventh Hour PERFORMANCE A new play by Cathy Tempelsman, Sehnsucht directed by Marc Vietor by Sarah Blush The Eleventh Hour tells the true story of a deeply contentious The implicit message of “Make America Great Again” and investigation into the treatment of American soldiers in the paleo dieting is the same: we used to know how to live First World War. right, and things would be better if we lived that way again. Helen Adams, a young woman from Boston, seeks the Sehnsucht is a play about our preoccupation with the past truth about her brother’s demotion and unlikely death on and the impact of propping it up. the final day of combat in 1918. She asks help of her canny The play begins with a group of siblings wistfully reminiscing Congressman, Alvan T. Fuller, who at first seems more about when they were cavemen. We learn that this is just one interested in his lucrative new automobile dealership. He of the attractions inside an audacious resort, a literal relic of a OPEN TO THE PUBLIC pulls the 66th Congress into highly partisan hearings into bygone era profiting from its recipients’ desire to escape the Monday, May 8 U.S. war policy—just as a victorious President Woodrow present and take refuge in some elusive past. The play then 6:00 PM Wilson prepares his reelection bid. But as the mystery OPEN TO THE PUBLIC visits an imagined empire with no recorded history (inspired Location to be announced of Helen’s brother deepens, it demands the most difficult by the 19th-century Chinese Dowager Empress Cixi) and Tuesday, June 20 $35 per person; advance question: Are we ever allowed to say that a soldier 6:30 PM Sigmund Freud’s huge collection of historical artifacts. registration required died in vain? Members’ Room The title is an untranslatable German word expressing This performance will last approximately two hours. This spring marks the centennial of America’s entry into $25 per person; advance the nostalgia we can feel for a time or place we never World War I, the country’s first major overseas engagement. registration required actually experienced. Knowing how we’re “supposed” to The Great War set the stage for the world as we know it, from live supposedly offers clues for how to feel better, happier, the intense debate about internationalism to the problems more satisfied—contemporary society’s constant refrain. of modern warfare: entrenched, interminable, inconclusive. As modern life increases in rapidity and technology, there’s The Eleventh Hour combines fictional characters with real a longing to understand what behavior, if any, is essentially figures of the period and text from the hearings to revisit human. We peer into history, trying to figure out when we the history from a new and poignant angle. were most ourselves. Sehnsucht questions to what extent this The Eleventh Hour will be presented as a full-cast staged longing can be comforting, paralyzing, and even sinister. reading under the direction of Marc Vietor (Red Bull Sehnsucht is conceived and directed by Sarah Blush and Theater’s The School for Scandal). produced by Rachel Christiansen in collaboration with Brian Cathy Tempelsman’s first full-length work, A Most Bock, Georgia King, and Michael Norton. It will be presented Dangerous Woman, based on the remarkable life of George as a full-cast reading, with an audience talkback following. Eliot, was a finalist for the Terrence McNally New Play Sarah Blush is a New York-based director and writer. Her Award (given to an American work that “celebrates the original work includes Power Couple (Ars Nova ANT Fest), transformative power of art”) and the Francesca Primus My Favorite Character Was the Talking Vase (HERE), and Playwriting Prize, and had its world premiere at Shakespeare Still Life With Apples (Dixon Place). Ms. Blush is a Julie Theatre of New Jersey, directed by Richard Maltby, Jr. A Taymor World Theater Fellowship Semifinalist, a New work in progress, The Eleventh Hour had an initial reading Georges Affiliated Artist, and a member of The Habitat’s at Luna Stage in New Jersey in January 2017.