Join us at the Red Eye Cafe for an incredible spring line-up! We are so pleased to welcome Claudia Cortese, Marcy Dermansky, Melissa Febos, and Lauren Grodstein to Halfway There.
Each of them will be celebrating the release of a new book, which you can pick up from Watchung Booksellers, who will be on hand. Doors open at 6:30pm for coffee and mingling, the readings start at 7pm and will be followed by an audience Q&A, with time after for book-buying and signing. See you there!
Claudia Cortese is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer. Her first book, WASP QUEEN, was published by Black Lawrence Press in early 2017. She has had work featured in Blackbird, Black Warrior Review, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast Online, and The Offing, among others, and is a book reviewer for Muzzle Magazine. The daughter of Neapolitan immigrants, Cortese grew up in Ohio and lives in New Jersey. She also lives at claudia-cortese.com.
Marcy Dermansky is the author of the novels Bad Marie, Twins, and most recently The Red Car. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney's, Salon, and the Paris Review. Marcy recently moved to Montclair and she is glad that she did.
Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir, Whip Smart (St. Martin’s Press 2010), and the essay collection, Abandon Me (Bloomsbury 2017). Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Granta, Prairie Schooner,Glamour, Salon, New York Times, Guernica, Dissent, Poets & Writers, Lenny Letter, Vogue.com, Elle UK, and elsewhere. Her essays have won prizes from Prairie Schooner, Story Quarterly, and The Center for Women Writers and she has been featured on NPR’s Fresh Air, CNN, Anderson Cooper, and elsewhere. She is a three-time MacDowell Colony fellow, and has also received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Ragdale, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. The recipient of an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, she is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Monmouth University and MFA faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). She serves on the Board of Directors for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, and co-curated the Manhattan reading and music series, Mixer, for ten years. She grew up on Cape Cod and has lived in Brooklyn for seventeen years.
Lauren Grodstein is the author of four novels, including the New York Times bestseller A Friend of the Family and the Washington Post Book of the Year The Explanation for Everything. Her latest novel, Our Short History, will be published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in March, 2017. Lauren’s work has been translated into French, Turkish, German, Hebrew, and other languages, and her essays and reviews have been widely published. She directs the MFA Program at Rutgers University-Camden and lives in New Jersey with her husband, son, and dog.