Tag Archives: Author Reading

Word Up Recirculation: Hudson Pier Women in Poetry and Memoir

Sunday, June 1, 2025 – 4:00pm to 5:30pm
RECIRCULATION A project of Word Up
876 Riverside Drive (near 160th St.)
New YorkNY 10032

Book releases:
Melting in Your Mouth by Chocolate Waters 
Harlow/Smith Postcards by Stephanie Dickinson

Three women writers (two from Hell’s Kitchen, one from Washington Heights) share their work in poetry and memoir, drawing from their work together in a writing group that met for over ten years. Chocolate Waters, one of the earliest published lesbian poets, will read selections from her latest book, Melting in Your Mouth, a collection of her early work and her recently published memoir.  Stephanie Dickinson, a gifted lyric writer who writes of both rural and urban life and of violence against women will read from her autobiographical novel Half Girl and her most recent poetry collection Harlow/Smith Postcards: Icons in Black and WhiteSharon Silber will read autobiographically based early poems from her collection The Canadian Geese Consider Their Situation and some of her current work. We will also read a brief selection from the work of our late colleague Nicholas Johnson, a noted poet and a member of the group, who lived in Washington Heights.

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 50 max attendees. Please register in advance. 

In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees are encouraged to stay masked at all time.

Recirculation, a project of Word Up Community Bookshop, is located at 876 Riverside Drive (near 160th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 157th St., A/C train to 163rd St., and the M4 and M5 to Broadway and 159/160th.

Chocolate Waters has been publishing her poetry for over four decades. She was one of the first openly lesbian poets to publish her work and her contribution has been documented in Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975 (U of Il. Press, Barbara Love, Ed.). Her first three collections: To The Man Reporter From The Denver Post, Take Me Like A Photograph and Charting New Waters are considered classics of the early women’s movement and are collected in the forthcoming Melting in Your Mouth: The Early Work of Chocolate Waters. In addition to her work as a writer, Waters was also a founder of the early feminist newspaper, Big Mama Rag, which was produced in Denver, Colorado from 1972-1982.  Her poetry, which has won many individual awards in addition to being nominated for several Pushcart prizes, is widely published and anthologized. Hailed as the “Poet Laureate of Hell’s Kitchen,” Waters is also a pioneer in the art of performance poetry. Her memoir, Muddying the Waters was published last year.

Stephanie Dickinson lives in New York City. Her novels Half Girl and Lust Series are published by Spuyten Duyvil Press, as is her feminist noir Love Highway. Half Girl, searing and gorgeously written, presents an autobiographically-based account of her experience being shot in the face as a victim of intimate partner violence. Stephanie has published 14 books (thus far) and has had her poetry and short stories appear in over 150 literary journals. Her latest published book is Harlow/Smith Postcards: Icons in Black and White, published in 2024.

Sharon Silber is a retired child and adult psychologist and long-time human rights activist who had the privilege of joining the Hudson Pier Poets writing group, meeting together for about ten years. During that time, she published poems in Mind the Gap, Salonika and Skidrow Penthouse and performed her poetry around the New York metropolitan area. Her chapbook, The Canadian Geese Consider their Situation was published by Linear Arts Press. She has participated in human rights missions to Bosnia and she taught a course at the University of Tuzla, Bosnia on treating trauma in children and their families. She has taught psychology courses at Tulane University, Boston University, and the University of Michigan. She is currently writing an autofictive memoir of her grandmother, who was murdered at the age of 70 in the summer of 1941 in Keidan, Lithuania, killed by a fascist paramilitary unit composed of her neighbors. Sharon lives in Washington Heights with her husband and son.

Nick Johnson (1944-2019) was an accomplished poet who was also a member of the Hudson Pier Poets. His verse was published in journals including American Poetry Review, Shenandoah, American Letters and Commentary, The Journal, Pivot, Yearbook of American Poetry. and The Paris Review. His book Degrees of Freedom was published by Bright Hill Press. “Nicholas Johnson is a poet of incandescent wit… I love his work for its dark, sotto voce originality.”-Dennis Nurkse. For the last ten years or so of his life, Nick lived in Washington Heights.

Word Up at Alianza Dominicana Cultural Center: Alejandro Heredia’s LOCA with Elizabeth Acevedo

Thursday, March 6, 2025 – 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Alianza Dominicana Cultural Center
530 W 166th St
New YorkNY 10032

 

register

Word Up Community Bookshop and Dominican Writers Association invite you to celebrate the debut release of Loca by Alejandro Heredia. In conversation with Heredia will be award-winning author Elizabeth Acevedo. There will be a limited signing after the event.

“In a novel that is as tender as it is brilliant, Heredia writes with ferocity and warmth.”—Elizabeth Acevedo

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket.

Alianza Dominican Cultural Center is located at 530 West 166th Street New York, NY 10032. The event will take place on the second floor, which is accessible by an elevator.

ABOUT THE BOOK

If Junot Diaz’s critically acclaimed collection Drown and Janet Mock’s Emmy-winning series Pose produced offspring, Alejandro Heredia’s Loca would be their firstborn.

It’s 1999, and best friends Sal and Charo are striving to hold on to their dreams in a New York determined to grind them down. Sal is a book-loving science nerd trying to grow beyond his dead-end job in a new city, but he’s held back by tragic memories from his past in Santo Domingo. Free-spirited Charo is surprised to find herself a mother at twenty-five, partnered with a controlling man, working at the same supermarket for years, her world shrunk to the very domesticity she thought she’d escaped in her old country. When Sal finds love at a gay club one night, both his and Charo’s worlds unexpectedly open up to a vibrant social circle that pushes them to reckon with what they owe to their own selves, pasts, futures, and, always, each other.

Loca follows one daring year in the lives of young people living at the edge of their own patience and desires. With expansive grace, it reveals both the grueling conditions that force people to migrate and the possibility of friendship as home when family, nations, and identity groups fall short.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alejandro Heredia is a writer from the Bronx. He has received fellowships from LAMBDA Literary, Dominican Studies Institute, UNLV’s Black Mountain Institute, and elsewhere. He received an MFA in fiction from Hunter College. Loca is his debut novel.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Elizabeth Acevedo is the current Young People’s Poet Laureate and the New York Times-bestselling author of The Poet X, which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, the Pura Belpré Award, the Carnegie medal, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and the Walter Award. She is also the author of With the Fire on High—which was named a best book of the year by the New York Public Library, NPR, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal—and Clap When You Land, which was a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor book and a Kirkus finalist. She holds a BA in Performing Arts from The George Washington University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. Acevedo has been a fellow of Cave Canem, Cantomundo, and a participant in the Callaloo Writer’s Workshops. She is a National Poetry Slam Champion, and resides in Washington, DC with her loves.

Fountain Bookshop – Book Talk: The Cities We Need: Essential Stories of Everyday Places

Join us at The Fountain Bookshop for an inspiring author talk, Q&A, and signing with Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani, author of The Cities We Need: Essential Stories of Everyday Places.

In this powerful exploration of Brooklyn and Oakland and the importance of community spaces everywhere, Bendiner-Viani blends photography and prose, sharing the stories of residents who give us a personal, intimate view of their neighborhoods. Through their eyes, we witness the vital, often overlooked places that shape our cities – and sometimes, are lost to gentrification and displacement.

Don’t miss this chance to hear from the author herself about the making of this evocative book! 📘💫
🗓️Saturday, February 1st, 2025
⏱️4:00 PM
📍The Fountain Bookshop, 803 w 187th st, NYC (A train to 181 or 190th!)

Word Up at Highbridge Park – It’s My Park Day: Celebrating Faith Ringgold’s TAR BEACH

Saturday, November 16, 2024 – 11:00am to 1:00pm
Raoul Wallenberg Playground (in Highbridge Park)
Amsterdam Avenue & 188th/189th St.
New YorkNY 10032

Storytelling by Esperanza Martell & Musical Performance by Guy Bisserette

Join us on It’s My Park Day to plant bulbs in the Pollinator Garden, to learn about stewardship, and to enjoy poetry, literature, and music with your neighbors! All supplies will be provided. Copies of Faith Ringgold’s picture book Tar Beach will be given away while supplies last.

Organized by Connectemonos; Partnerships for Parks; New York Restoration Project; Word Up Community Bookshop; Catholic Charities Community Services NY–Alianza; Pluma Poética del Arte; ADEUSA; We Run Uptown; OnPoint NYC.

Tar Beach By Faith Ringgold Cover Image
$8.99
ISBN: 9780517885444
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Dragonfly Books – December 3rd, 1996