1) Sordid Lives: It’s a Drag! closes at Onstage Atlanta.
2) Green Design: The American Institute of Architects COTE Exhibit continues at the Art Institute of Atlanta-Decatur.
3) James Braziel discusses Snakeskin Road at Decatur Library.
4) The Ropes play 529.
5) A Cappella Books hosts a midnight release party of Thomas Pynchon’s latest, Inherent Vice.
(Photo by Tommy Nixon)
1) Isis plays the Earl.
2) A Cappella Books and Euclid Avenue Yacht Club team up for the Goodness of Guinness.
3) Screen on the Green kicks off in Centennial Olympic Park with Back to the Future.
4) Out on Film begins at Plaza Theatre.
5) The Hawks play 529.
(Photo Ipecac Recordings)
1) John Prendergast leads a days’ worth of Raise Hope for Congo events.
2) A Cappella hosts Reagan scholar James Mann at the Jimmy Carter Library.
3) Tent Meeting opens at Theatrical Outfit.
4) Studioplex holds its Second Wednesday Art Stroll.
5) Clem Snide plays the Earl.
(Photo by Jonathan Foreman)
GENRE: A debut novel about trying to write a debut novel. That’s a genre, right?
MEET SLATER BROWN, FICTIONAL NOVELIST: “He’d come to San Francisco expressly for the purpose of writing something that would last forever. Only he didn’t feel he could share this personal ambition with just anyone. They would think what? That he was a fruitcake! That he had lost contact with reality? It was a tricky situation, having a plan you couldn’t share. Nevertheless, for the first three days he exerted the plan flawlessly and with maximum concentration from the his perch in the back of TK’s. In the evenings he would reread what he’d written by the bar’s dim light. Nobody paid him a scintilla of attention.”
1) Nancy Floyd leads DIY Tuesday’s Build a Popsicle Stick House at Welch Gallery.
2) Dead Man plays the Earl.
3) Georgia WAND hosts Jay Bookman and the Rev. Joseph Lowery for the Real State of the Union.
4) Splatter Cinema brings Zombie to the Plaza Theatre.
5) A Cappella Books sponsors a Ballroom Book Bash for Futureproof author N. Frank Daniels.
(Image by Nancy Floyd)
If you’ve ever found yourself driving a Prius home from Whole Foods while calling a friend in Brooklyn on your iPhone to tell an ironic joke, blogger and author Christian Lander owes you a “Thank You.” Stuff White People Like, his cheeky website and book of the same name, has become über popular for its riffs on clichéd white people favorites like expensive sandwiches, unpaid internships and David Sedaris. Lander will be signing books and drinking micro-brewed beers at the appropriately ironic Euclid Avenue Yacht Club on Thurs., Jan. 29.
IRONIC BARS: “White people adore bars where the regulars are likely to hate them. The more likely they are to be hated, the more the bar appeals to them. Then, of course, there is the dream of being the first white person to the bar and becoming accepted as the regular who buys everyone drinks. Then you can scoff at the white people who arrive two weeks after you.”
HI-TECH JACKETS: “White people like to have the option to go camping at the drop of a hat. These jackets help ensure that, in the rare opportunity that someone calls you for a camping expedition, no one will have to wait for you to change.”
BOOK READINGS: “As far as an activity goes, there are few that can beat a book reading. Classical Music or Opera? Too snooty. Concert? Not interactive enough. Sporting Event? Are you kidding me? Book readings are intimate, personal and more obscure.” (more…)
Nami Mun’s debut novel Miles from Nowhere follows Joon, a Korean American teenager growing up on the streets of New York during the ’80s. Mun, like the protagonist, came of age as a teenage runaway on the streets of the Bronx. These days, she’s the recipient of a coveted Pushcart Prize and teaches creative writing at the Columbia College in Chicago. She comes to A Cappella Books/Opal Gallery Mon., Jan. 19, 7 p.m.
How closely is Joon based on your own experiences growing up?
Joon and I are both Korean American and we were both runaways. But the similarities pretty much stop there. I mean, what happens to her, the decisions that she makes and the events that occur in the book, are completely fictional and in many ways are much more interesting than anything that ever happened to me in my own life. Fiction is always more interesting to me. (more…)
Billed as “a childhood memoir,” the complete title of Wilson’s novel is Holy Roller: Growing up in the Church of Knock Down, Drag Out; or, How I Quit Loving a Blue-Eyed Jesus. Phew. That’s almost as tricky to say/type as it is for a 9-year-old to sit still in church while the preacher hollers fire and brimstone.
Or so I gather from Wilson’s story. She was raised a Rapture-fearin’ Pentecostal, while I grew up in the Cult of Mary (aka Catholicism). Wilson’s 9- to 10-year-old self chatterboxes through her childhood narrative, sometimes meandering into stream-of-conscious monologues, but always capturing the guilt-inducing push and pull between curiosity and indoctrination.
But being an author is more of a side project for Wilson, a fourth-generation Texas fisher(wo)man and co-founder of Code Pink who’s made headlines as an environmental activist keen on hunger strikes and nonviolent disobedience (she’s been arrested around 29 times). She also inspired the award-winning documentary Texas Gold, which screens periodically on the Sundance channel.
Wilson appears tonight, Tues., Sept. 30, at 7 p.m. at the Existentialist Congregation of Atlanta, 470 Candler Park Drive. 404-378-5570. www.acappellabooks.com. Georgia for Democracy, the Atlanta chapter of WAND and A Cappella Books are sponsoring the event.
(Photo courtesy Chelsea Green)
