You can now metamorphose your book club into a literary salon with your own private authors' series! Each of these wonderful authors has generously agreed to donate an author appearance, with reading and discussion, a set of signed copies of his/her latest book, and wine to your book group!! Grab this unique opportunity! Bids opens at $150 per author.
JAMES CAÑÓN was born and raised in Colombia. His first novel,
Tales From the Town of Widows, has been translated into six languages and published in thirteen countries. His short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, and have been anthologized in Bésame Mucho, (Painted Leaf Press), and Virgins, Guerrillas & Locas, (Cleis Press). James earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. He’s the recipient of the Henfield Prize for Excellence in Fiction. Other honors and awards for his writing have come from the NYFA, the Queens Council on the Arts, and the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts. He’s currently at work on his second novel.
Read more about James.
PS 29 Parent Jennifer Epstein will read from The Painter from Shanghai, a re-imagining of the life of Pan Yuliang and her transformation from prostitute to post-Impressionist. Based in New York, Jennifer Cody Epstein has written for Self, the Wall Street Journal, and the Chicago Tribune. She has published short fiction in several journals and was a finalist in a Glimmer Train fiction contest. Read more about Jennifer.
PS 29 Parent Natalie Green Giles, a writer and management consultant, will read from
Songa's Story: How a Shtetl Jew Found the American Dream, her uncle’s extraordinary tale of survival as a Jew in Stalin’s army fighting the Nazis and post-war success in the U.S. Giles has worked for non-profits, Arthur Andersen, and New York City.
Read more about Natalie.
Joanna Hershon will read from
The German Bride, which follows Eva Frank, a Berlin Jewess, who accepts a marriage proposal from Abraham Shein and embarks on a journey to the wilds of Santa Fe, New Mexico in the 1860s.
The German Bride is a gritty glimpse into the bar rooms and brothels of a lawless frontier territory, where an unforgettable cast of characters struggle for survival and redemption in the brutal, glorious desert of the American Southwest. Joanna Hershon is the author of two previous novels,
Swimming and
The Outside of August. Her writing has appeared in
One Story, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Post Road, the literary anthology
Brooklyn Was Mine, and was shortlisted for the 2007 O. Henry Prize Stories. She teaches in the Undergraduate Creative Writing program at Columbia University.
Read more about Joanna.
Arthur Philips. His books are:
- Prague, a New York Times Notable Book, a national bestseller, and winner of the LA Times Prize for Best First Fiction;
- The Egyptologist, an international bestseller, and on more than a dozen "Best of 2004" lists
- Angelica, a national bestseller and a Washington Post pick for one of the Best of 2007, described by Stephen King as ""engrossing, deeply moving...and very frightening."
Read more about Arthur.
Sarah Saffian is an author, a journalist, and a teacher.
Ithaka, her critically-acclaimed memoir of being an adoptee who was found by her birth family—both parents and three full siblings—has become an adoption classic. It has been translated into Italian (Itaca, Corbaccio) and was published in a new edition with a current Afterword in 2006. A journalism professor at the New School, Sarah has written and edited for publications including
Entertainment Weekly, The New York Daily News, The New York Times,
The Village Voice, The San Francisco Chronicle, and slate.com. She received a BA from Brown and an MFA from Columbia. Read more about
Sarah.
Lizzie Simon. By all appearances, Lizzie Simon was perfect. She had an Ivy League education, lots of friends, a loving family, and a dazzling career as a theater producer by the age of twenty-three. But that wasn't enough: Lizzie still felt alone in the world, and largely misunderstood. Having been diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a teenager, she longed to meet others like herself; she wanted to hear the experiences of those who managed to move past their manic-depression and lead normal lives. So Lizzie hits the road, hoping to find "a herd of her own." Along the way she finds romance and madness, survivors and sufferers, and, somewhere between the lanes, herself. Part road trip, part love story,
Detour is a fast-paced, enduring memoir that demystifies mental illness while it embraces the universally human struggle to become whole.
Read more about Lizzie.
PS 29 Parent Helene Stapinski. With deadpan humor and obvious affection,
Five-Finger Discount recounts the story of an unforgettable family of swindlers, bookies, embezzlers, and mobster-wannabes. In the memoir Mary Karr calls "a page-turner," Helene Stapinski ingeniously weaves the checkered history of her hometown of Jersey City -- a place known for its political corruption and industrial blight -- with the tales that have swirled around her relatives for decades. Navigating a childhood of toxic waste and tough love, Stapinski tells an extraordinary tale at once heartbreaking and hysterically funny.
Read an excerpt.
PS 29 Parent Natalie Green Giles, a writer and management consultant, will read from Songa's Story: How a Shtetl Jew Found the American Dream, her uncle’s extraordinary tale of survival as a Jew in Stalin’s army fighting the Nazis and post-war success in the U.S. Giles has worked for non-profits, Arthur Andersen, and New York City. Read more about Natalie. 
Joanna Hershon will read from The German Bride, which follows Eva Frank, a Berlin Jewess, who accepts a marriage proposal from Abraham Shein and embarks on a journey to the wilds of Santa Fe, New Mexico in the 1860s. The German Bride is a gritty glimpse into the bar rooms and brothels of a lawless frontier territory, where an unforgettable cast of characters struggle for survival and redemption in the brutal, glorious desert of the American Southwest. Joanna Hershon is the author of two previous novels, Swimming and The Outside of August. Her writing has appeared in One Story, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Post Road, the literary anthology Brooklyn Was Mine, and was shortlisted for the 2007 O. Henry Prize Stories. She teaches in the Undergraduate Creative Writing program at Columbia University. Read more about Joanna.
Arthur Philips. His books are:
Sarah Saffian is an author, a journalist, and a teacher. Ithaka, her critically-acclaimed memoir of being an adoptee who was found by her birth family—both parents and three full siblings—has become an adoption classic. It has been translated into Italian (Itaca, Corbaccio) and was published in a new edition with a current Afterword in 2006. A journalism professor at the New School, Sarah has written and edited for publications including Entertainment Weekly, The New York Daily News, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The San Francisco Chronicle, and slate.com. She received a BA from Brown and an MFA from Columbia. Read more about Sarah.
Lizzie Simon. By all appearances, Lizzie Simon was perfect. She had an Ivy League education, lots of friends, a loving family, and a dazzling career as a theater producer by the age of twenty-three. But that wasn't enough: Lizzie still felt alone in the world, and largely misunderstood. Having been diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a teenager, she longed to meet others like herself; she wanted to hear the experiences of those who managed to move past their manic-depression and lead normal lives. So Lizzie hits the road, hoping to find "a herd of her own." Along the way she finds romance and madness, survivors and sufferers, and, somewhere between the lanes, herself. Part road trip, part love story, Detour is a fast-paced, enduring memoir that demystifies mental illness while it embraces the universally human struggle to become whole. Read more about Lizzie. 
PS 29 Parent Helene Stapinski. With deadpan humor and obvious affection, Five-Finger Discount recounts the story of an unforgettable family of swindlers, bookies, embezzlers, and mobster-wannabes. In the memoir Mary Karr calls "a page-turner," Helene Stapinski ingeniously weaves the checkered history of her hometown of Jersey City -- a place known for its political corruption and industrial blight -- with the tales that have swirled around her relatives for decades. Navigating a childhood of toxic waste and tough love, Stapinski tells an extraordinary tale at once heartbreaking and hysterically funny. Read an excerpt.
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