The Night to Celebrate Reading
Story by Wendy Azzouni
Photographs by Aki Tuccu
The first annual Night to Celebrate Reading, the culmination of PS8's month-long Readathon, drew in over a hundred people November 19 to hear readings by prominent and newer authors, as well as two readings by actor and director Gabriel Byrne. Held at parent Nan Richardson's Umbrage Gallery in Dumbo, the event generated excitement for our school as well as money for essential supplies and continuing our wonderful enrichment programs.
The reading, hosted by dance teacher Josette D'ambrose, featured well-known authors such as Tad Friend, Warren St. John, Paul Zelinsky, and Josh Neufeld, as well as PS8 parents Melissa Milgrom and Janice Eidus, and future PS8 parent Beth Feldman and others.
After much coaxing, Gabriel Byrne joined author Arthur Phillips in an unplanned enactment of Phillips' The Song is You: A Novel, which required "someone who can act a bit and has an Irish accent," said Phillips, pointing to Byrne at the back of the room. Byrne reluctantly joined Phillips at the microphone to play a young female Irish piano teacher, much to the audience's amusement. He finished his piece with a moving reading of Evelyn from James Joyce's "The Dubliners."
Arthur Phillips and Gabriel Byrne
Josh Neufeld, a cartoonist and illustrator and author of the graphic novel AD: New Orleans After the Deluge, talked about his experience working in Biloxi, Mississippi and how that resulted in his book. His wife and her brothers went to PS8, and his mother-in-law was a PS8 teacher.
Melissa Milgrom, a PS8 parent, made the audience cringe and laugh at the same time with her reading from her upcoming nonfiction book Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy, due out in March. Janice Eidus, another PS8 parent, elicited similar reactions to her novel The War of the Rosens, with her reading about a young girl's questioning of Judaism and Catholicism.
Beth Feldman, who informed the audience that she would be sending her child to PS8 next year, read a passage about battery-operated toys with minds of their own demanding that children play with them, from her hilarious anthology entitled See Mom Run: Side-Splitting Essays from the World's Most Harried Blogging Moms.
Other authors included Rich Benjamin, who read from Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journery to the Heart of White America; Fiona Maazel read from Last Last Chance: A Novel; Sarah Langan read from her novel Audrey's Door, and Paola Corse read from her short story collection Giovanna's 86 Circles and Other Stories.
The event was made possible through donations by the following businesses, which donated space, food, wine, posters, the sound system, and books that were sold to benefit PS8:
Umbrage Editions and Umbrage Gallery, Two Trees, Foragers Market, Garden of Eden Gourmet, Peas & Pickles, Rice, Sahadi's, Michael Towne Wine & Spirits, Parents Nancy Viglione of Tazza & Michael di Canio of Michael di Canio, Tom Sternal of Generation & Caption Gallery, Graywolf Press, Harper, Pantheon, Picador, Plain White Press, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Spiegel & Grau, Umbrage Editions, Vertigo, Craig Burd of American High Definition, and Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims.
We thank you all for your kind support and look forward to another great night of reading and sharing next year.
Click here to view more photos of the event.
Posted on: December 2, 2009
