September News

A PUBLIC SPACE AT THE BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL
Our Brooklyn Book Festival week kicks off at Unnameable Books on Tuesday, September 22, with Back and Forth: The Relationship Between Authors and Editors. Michael Pietsch, on editing David Foster Wallace, wrote: "Editing with a writer is a joyous collaboration–not even a collaboration, but a conversation, a colloquy, a back-and-forth."

Join APS editor-writer pairs Taylor Michael and Carolina Murriel, and Louis Harnett O’Meara and Joanna Yamakami, as they discuss the collaborative processes behind their forthcoming pieces in our magazine. The panel will be facilitated by current Editorial Fellows Berta Coll Bosch and Sam Karagulin.

We're thrilled to be part of a week-long celebration of authors and books across the borough. We'll be at several events. Join us, and make sure to stop by our booth on Festival Day.

RSVP for Back and Forth

ALSO

RESILIENT: First/Second Generation Immigrant Poets Define and Negotiate Identity
Wednesday, September 23, 6:30pm
Poetry Society of America (119 Smith Street, Brooklyn, NY)
with APS assistant editor Miguel Coronado, Maja Lukic, Jiwon Choi, and Tiffany Troy

16th Annual Brooklyn Indie Party
Friday, September 25, 7:30pm
Greenlight Bookstore (686 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY)

Festival Day
Sunday, September 27
Brooklyn Borough Hall – Booth 411

A PUBLIC SPACE BOOKS
FALL TITLES

Marzia Grillo
THE SUN'S POINT OF VIEW
translated from the Italian by Lourdes Contreras and Julia Pelosi-Thorpe
Through masterful, effervescent storytelling, moments like moving house, watching a sleeping child, and feeling the heat of the sun coalesce in The Sun’s Point of View to generate kaleidoscopic snapshots of intimate quotidian interactions.

Edward McWhinney
On Board the Dog Star
Alone in a room overlooking a harbor on the coast of Ireland, a man—introspective, almost anonymous, keenly observant—recounts his life in On Board the Dog Star. He wanders the streets of his youth, encounters characters from the books scattered across his floor, returns again and again to an apartment in Spain, a pensione in Rome, a train station in Marseille, and the mirage of the novel he's never written.

Available for Preorder

CLASSES
Charles D'Ambrosio
Aspects of the Novella
Saturday, October 17, 3:00-5:00pm ET
Online
Henry James praised the shapeliness of novellas, their “scope and neatness,” describing the nouvelle as “a complicated thing with a strong brevity.” In this class, we'll do our own describing, not to define the form but to discover it. Ultimately, we'll consider how the novella helps us understand time, point of view, characterization, shape, and structure in our writing. Register here.

Anne Elliott
Art and Text
Sundays, October 18–November 22, 3:00-5:00pm ET (6 sessions)
Online
Ekphrasis—the literary response to visual art—often takes the form of poetry, but this workshop will be geared toward generating narrative. Join Anne Elliott to experiment with translating the visual into fiction, memoir, and other forms—looking at how narrative can come from associations and memories, the work's historical context, the life of the artist, and more. Register here.

THE ART OF THE SHORT STORY: LYDIA MATHIS AND ROXANE GAY

The Art of the Short Story: Lydia Mathis on Desperate Bodies with Roxane Gay
Tuesday, September 15, 7:00pm
The Center for Fiction (15 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY)
Join us in celebrating the debut story collection of 2023 Editorial Fellow Lydia Mathis. She'll be in conversation with APS contributor Roxane Gay. Set in the American South, Desperate Bodies (Roxane Gay) explores the desire, humor, and horror in the everyday lives of Black women and girls. Tickets here.

SARAH BLAKLEY-CARTWRIGHT AND ALISON ROMAN ON HEAVY CREAM

Sarah Blakley-Cartwright + Alison Roman: Heavy Cream
Tuesday, September 29, 7:00pm
The Strand (828 Broadway, New York, NY)
Join us for the launch of APS associate editor Sarah Blakley-Cartwright's new novel, Heavy Cream (Simon & Schuster), a charming comedy of manners and a deeply probing look at the complexities of love, mental illness, and inheritance, and one young woman's eccentric path to selfhood. Tickets here.

NEW FROM APS FRIENDS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Joanna Klink
DAYS & CHANCES (Penguin)
APS contributor Joanna Klink presents dreamline meditations on the extreme terrain of Texas, her father going blind, and falling in love mid-life in this full-length book of poetry. Joanna Klink's poems "Something Roughspun" and "Viridarium" appeared in A Public Space No. 30.

Fady Joudah
EXHIBIT G: POEMS, ESSAYS, AND PHOTOGRAPHS OF GAZA (Milkweed)
APS contributor Fady Joudah gathers poems, essays, and photographs from the perspective of a Palestinian American physician, watching the destruction of Gaza from the United States. Fady Joudah translated "Strangeness" and "A Song," by Ghassan Zaqtan, from the Arabic, in A Public Space No. 17.

PUBLIC ACCESS
This month's Public Access features stories from the magazine's archive, made free and open to all, by instructors and speakers at this year's Weekend Writers' Retreat. We look forward to coming together in October in the idyllic Hudson Valley, with our partners at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, for a long weekend of writing, reading, and conversation. There are still spots open. Apply today, and join us.

"Almanac" by Robert Sullivan (A Public Space No. 16)
History is in the panorama, buried like old stones or sediment fro m an older era. But how does history reveal itself? Does it make itself known in winds and tides? Continue reading.
Robert Sullivan will lead the morning workshop "Reading and Writing Landscapes," focused on developing a sense of place in your writing, by re-surveying the places we see everyday.

"Double Happiness" by Mary-Beth Hughes (A Public Space No. 7)
The outer office was much the same as she remembered it. The thick neat oak desk of Mrs. Lanahan, a manageable stack of buff folders in the far right corner. A small boy in a blazer likely to be his older brother’s knocked unhappy heels against the chair leg. He’d been waiting for a while, a tear path nearly dry on his freckled cheek. Continue reading.
Mary-Beth Hughes will lead the morning workshop "Narrative Duets," exploring interactions, embraces, clashes, and opposition between characters.

"Here is the Evidence" by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts (APS No. 12)
This is Harlem, barely inhabited—at the very beginning of its settlement in the 1880s. The buildings are only a few years old, the vast blank spaces between them are evidence of how this land—a farming suburb—was haphazardly annexed by the metropolis. Continue reading.
Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts will deliver the Thursday evening talk, "Wayfinding," on the journeys of two Black women from through the Hudson Valley.

"Little Ears, Little Eyes" by Samantha Hunt (A Public Space No. 8)
I love to hear that another memoir has been exposed as a big phony. I think, Fiction wins again! Not that I intend to lie to you. I only mention it to assure you that this is the truth even if, at times, the characters presented within read as TV characters. Continue reading.
Samantha Hunt will deliver the Friday afternoon talk, "Chalk Outline," a close reading of The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald.

"The Chimney Girl" by Peter Trachtenberg (A Public Space No. 32)
In Westbeth she’s known mostly as the Chimney Girl, so that's what I’ll call her. She was a child of the building, as was the tenant who first told me her story. Her parents were musicians. By the time she was twelve she was already showing signs of trouble, though those signs may not have been apparent—may not even have existed—until later. Continue reading.
Peter Trachtenberg will lead the morning workshop "Who Do You Think You Are?" dedicated to sharpening a distinct voice.

"Compromise" by Ada Zhang (A Public Space No. 29)
My name is Sui and in June I’ll be turning sixty. I have three adult children; their names are Charlotte, Pam, and David. My husband died in October, while the leaves were still green and clinging to their branches. Now it is spring and there are new leaves, and I am a widow. Such are the major facts of my life. Continue reading.
Ada Zhang will lead the morning workshop "Making Old Into New," on the literary tradition of homage.

A PUBLIC SPACE NO. 33

"Reading and writing poems about reading and writing poems. The container inside the container. Two mirrors face each other. Which is the base reflection?"
—Angelica Esquivel, "Meta Poetica" (A Public Space No. 33)

Order your copy, or subscribe, here.

ELSEWHERE
"Too close to the source and our dreams will be burned to ashes by the needs and personality of the host itself. Too far from the source and we’d be so cold and alone. The best place... to be is in the Goldilocks zone. That’s where life thrives." —APS contributor Dorthe Nors on writing emotional resonance in fiction. Dorthe Nors's story "In a Deer Stand" appeared in A Public Space No. 26.

On September 15, APS contributor aracelis girmay headlines "blessing the boats," a special evening of poetry and music with author Ross Gay and Guggenheim Poet-in-Residence Patrick Rosal at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Tickets here. aracelis girmay's poem "Praise Song for the Donkey" appeared in A Public Space No. 11.