Reading Room

Thursday March 25

Author Ross Wasielke will read from his book, “Farrell, Inc.: A New Beginning,” the sequel to “Farrell”. In his first adventure, Farrell moved to New York City where he started a new life in Chelsea. In this, his second adventure, Farrell is in charge of a small apartment building in the heart of Chelsea and he quickly discovers that being a New York landlord has its share of headaches. As in the first book, Farrell meets a great number of eccentric and flamboyant characters that add comedy, mystery and intrigue to his life. 7 p.m. at The Center, $6 for members, $10 for nonmembers.

Friday March 26

Luisita Lopez Torregrosa will discuss and sign copies of her memoir, “The Noise of Infinite Longing,” a complex portrait of her family and the privileged life in 1950s Puerto Rico. Beneath the surface, there is her father with a violent temper and her mother “trapped by tradition and her own fantasies of romance.” The story of how her brother’s marriage to a Nuyorican sets the stage for Torregrosa’s own coming-out as she leaves behind the rigid social status and her required heterosexuality. 7 p.m., Barnes and Noble Chelsea.

Sunday March 28

David Liss, author of “Conspiracy of Paper” and “The Coffee Trader” and winner of the 2000 Edgar Award for Best First Novel, will read from his latest novel, “A Spectacle of Corruption.” This is the story of an 18th Century Londoner named Benjamin Weaver who works as a private eye/bounty hunter and is accused of a murder and sentenced to hang. After he escapes, he works to find out who framed him in an exploration of the philosophies of the Whig, Tory and Jacobite parties, but also London’s coffee house scene and the dirty underbelly of the capital city. Amy Koppelman, graduate of Columbia’s MFA program, whose writing has appeared in The New York Observer and Lilith Magazine will read from her novel, “A Mouthful of Air.” This is the story of Julie Davis, a privileged 26-year-old in New York, who has attempted suicide and suffers from postpartum depression. Whether at a basketball game or a Tupperware party, she seems to keep it together, but inside, she constantly struggles with voice in her head that is a “skeptical, mocking, bitter person furious she is alive.” 7 p.m. at KGB.

Benjamin Harshav, author of “Marc Chagall and His Times: A Documentary Narrative,” will discuss the life and work of one of the most prominent artists of the twentieth century. The book exposes the complex relationships between Chagall’s three cultural identities: Jewish, Russian, and French and includes hundreds of private letters and documents written by Chagall and his contemporaries in Russian, Yiddish, French, English, and other languages, translated by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav and placed in their personal and historical context. This is part of a new series, “Critics and Brunch” and will include a buffet brunch following the discussion. 11 a.m. at 92nd St. Y, $30 includes brunch.

Tuesday March 30

Gloria Steinem, feminist icon and founder of Ms. Magazine and Elaine Lafferty, editor in Chief, will discuss the publication and sign copies. When Ms. was launched as a “one-shot” sample insert in New York magazine in December 1971, few realized it would become the landmark institution in both women’s rights and American journalism that it is today. The founders of Ms. helped to shape contemporary feminism. Today, the magazine remains an interactive enterprise in which an unusually diverse readership is simultaneously engaged with each other and the world. The modern Ms. boasts the most extensive coverage of international women’s issues of any magazine available in the United States. 7 p.m., Barnes and Noble Union Square.

Edwidge Danticat will read from and sign copies of her novel, “The Dew Breaker.” This work of fiction explores the world of a torturer, a Haitian man whose brutal crimes in the country of his birth lie hidden beneath his new reality in Brooklyn where he is a quiet man, a husband and father, a hardworking barber, a kindly landlord to the men who live in a basement apartment in his home. In the end, the narrative goes back to the Haiti of the man’s past, to his last, desperate act of violence, and to his first encounter with the woman who will offer him a form of redemption that will change him forever. 7:30 p.m., Barnes and Noble Astor Place.

Bring your poetry, prose, songs, and spoken word to “Women’s Poetry Jam and Women’s Open Mike,” featuring poets Ellia Bisker and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, whose raw spoken word addresses living brown and queer post 9/11, Sri Lankan war stories, mixed race borderlands and being a high femme survivor. Bisker struggles to distill emotional truth from everyday life, mining the mundane for the extraordinary in poems that are solemn, tricky, beautiful and reverent, playful, or slyly mocking. Hosted by Vittoria Repetto, the hardest working Guinea butch dyke poet on the Lower East Side. Sign up at 7 p.m., 8-minute limit. 7 to 9 p.m., Bluestockings Bookstore, $3 to $5 donation.

Wednesday March 31

Poet, painter and art critic, Marjorie Welish has several books of poetry including “Word Group,” “Casting Sequences: Poems” and “The Annotated ‘Here’ and Selected Poems.” She is also a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize of the Academy of American Poets. “Of the Diagram: The Work of Marjorie Welish” is a sampling of her work and a compilation of papers delivered on the topic of her poetry and visual art at a University of Pennsylvania conference devoted that topic. She will be on hand for a poetry reading and discussion. 6:30 p.m. at The City College of New York, free and open to the public.

Venues

92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave., 212 415 5500.

The LGBT Center, 208 W. 13th St., 212 620 7310.

The City College of New York, 138th St. and Convent Ave., NAC Room 6/316 (The Rifkind Room).

Barnes and Noble Astor Place, 4 Astor Place, 212 420 1322.

Barnes and Noble Chelsea, 675 6th Ave., 212 727 1227.

Barnes and Noble Union Square, 33 E. 17th St., 212 253 0810.

Bluestockings Bookstore, 172 Allen St. at Stanton, 212 777 6028.

KGB, 85 E. 4th St., 212-505-3360.

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