ADULT EDUCATION PRESENTS: "Characters"
Tuesday, May 1, 2012 - 7 pm
Housing Works Bookstore Cafe
126 Crosby Street, between Houston and Prince
FREE
BRIAN JOSEPH DAVIS: Drawing The Composites
For several months, Davis has been feeding descriptions of literary characters into commercially available law enforcement composite sketch software. He shares his findings.
JASON GROTE: Building a Character
In 1942, creative writing guru Lajos Egri wrote that, in order to build a story, a writer must first select the necessary characters. 54 years later, at the age of 24, Jason Grote encountered his absent biological father, a self-invented San Francisco eccentric, for the first time. Grote presents a brief autobiography in the form of a screenwriting seminar.
JIM HANAS: Reality Envy
With characters like these, who needs fiction?
BENJAMIN FELDMAN: Call Me Daddy
Feldman profiles infamous character Edward West Browning, the Jazz Age laughingstock of all New York.
Hosted by CHARLES STAR
SPEAKER BIOS:
BRIAN JOSEPH DAVIS is a co-founder of the literary website Joyland, and his work has been collected in Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing. His music and art productions have been acclaimed by Wired, Pitchfork, Salon, and LA Weekly, which wrote, “Davis has an amazing head for experiments that are smart on paper and fascinating in execution.” He’s written for Utne, The Globe and Mail and The Believer and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the author Emily Schultz.
JASON GROTE is the author of the plays 1001, Maria/Stuart, and Civilization (all you can eat), and a writer for the TV show Smash. This is his third appearance at Adult Education.
JIM HANAS is a co-producer of Adult Education, the author of the short story collection Why They Cried, and the social media editor at The New York Observer.
BENJAMIN FELDMAN has lived and worked in New York City for the past forty-two years. His essays and book reviews about New York City, American history, and Yiddish culture have appeared online and in print in CUNY’s Gotham History Blotter, The New Partisan Review, Columbia County History and Heritage, Ducts literary magazine, and on his blog, The New York Wanderer. Ben’s first book, Butchery on Bond Street: Sexual Politics and the Burdell-Cunningham Case in Ante-bellum New York, appeared in 2007, and his second, Call Me Daddy: Babes and Bathos in Edward West Browning’s Jazz-Age New York, appeared in 2009.
CHARLES STAR is sort of a comedian and sort of a lawyer. In addition to hosting Adult Education, he hosts the stand-up showcase "Pant-Hoot" at Lincoln Park Tavern on the second Thursday of the month. He lawyers at [REDACTED] and tweets @ugarles.
Got an idea for an Adult Ed lecture? Email your pitch to brooklynite282 (at) gmail.