Tag Archives: Author Talk

Word Up: On Gendered Domestic Violence with Jana Leo de Blas

Word Up welcomes visual artist and author Jana Leo de Blas discuss genered domestic violence, along with her book, MOM IS DEAD, BUT YOU ARE GOING TO CURE HER, which tells the stories of 132 women murdered by their male partners, turning these events into literature and art, in honor of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on November 25th.

Leo de Blas is currently on display at the Cohen Library Archives Gallery with her exhibition“Mom Is Dead, But You Are Going to Cure Her,” comprising a two-decade archive of drawings and short narratives honoring 130+ women killed by partners in Madrid at the Cohen Library Archives Gallery for Domestic Violence Awareness Month. On view until November 20th.

Jana Leo de Blas is a West Harlem-based artist. Originally from Madrid, Spain, Jana holds a PhD in Philosophy, a master’s in art theory and Aesthetics from the UAM, and a master’s in architecture from SOA, Princeton, USA. She was a professor of advanced projects and concepts in architecture at the Cooper Union in New York. In 2008, she created the MOSIS Foundation, Models and Systems; Art and City. She is the author of Rape New York, Feminist Press 2011 and “El Viaje sin distancia,” CENDEAC, Murcia 2006. She wrote the prologue to the Spanish edition of Not That Bad: Notes on Rape Culture, by Roxane Gay, in 2018. She has contributed to “Tranquilas,” Stories for Walking Alone at Night, Lumen 2019. As an illustrator, in 1995 she co-founded Doodlezoo in San Francisco, where she has published 12 children’s books with Chronicle Books. Her artistic work has been shown in museums around the world, including the MNCARS National Art Museum Reina Sofia in Madrid in 1999, the ICP in New York in 2003, Invisible Exports Gallery from 2008 to 2016, Centro Centro in Madrid in 2017, the Spanish Academy in Rome, where she was a fellow in 2019-2020, and the La Neomudejar Museum in Madrid in 2025. Her work has been presented in the form of a workshop on documenting emotions at Espacio de Culturas, NYU and the Hispanic Society in New York and Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen. Please register in advance.

Word Up: Reading/Lectura Anthony & Vivian Donoghue’s “For You I Will Fly / Por Ti Volaré”

Word Up presents a reading in English and Spanish with author Anthony Donoghue of his contemporary love story, For You I Will Fly / Por Ti Volaré, alongside his wife, Vivian Paola Donoghue, who inspired the novel. The novel follows two people from different countries who unexpectedly find love. Set between Chile and New York, the story explores what it takes for love to endure despite the challenges of language, time, distance, and illness.

Please register in advance

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anthony Donoghue, originally from Ireland, has lived in New York for 26 years. He is a professor at Columbia University and published author. He also teaches at the City University of New York (CUNY). He has published three editions of his book on critical and statistical thinking written for the general audience.

His second book and first novel is titled “For You I Will Fly / Por Ti Volaré”, published in both English and Spanish. It is a contemporary love story based on real-life experiences he and his wife Vivian went through to build a life together. Vivian is originally from Viña del Mar, Chile. They live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Word Up Recirculation: “The Cycle Ends with Me” book launch

Word Up welcomes Yessenia Lajara to celebrate the launch of “The Cycle Ends with Me: A Guide to Healing Your Inner Child”, which explores themes of healing, motherhood, mental health, and breaking generational cycles. The event will also feature a spoken word performance centered on motherhood, a live musical performance, audience Q&A, and a book signing.

Please register in advance.

ABOUT THE BOOK
Being raised in a culture rich in love, sacrifice, resilience, and community, Yessenia Lajara explores the often-unspoken reality many children of immigrants experience: parents who worked tirelessly to provide physically, yet often lacked the emotional tools to nurture the wounds they themselves carried.

The Cycle Ends With Me blends psychology, trauma-informed research, reflective exercises, and practical healing tools to help readers understand how generational trauma, emotional neglect, and family survival patterns continue to influence self-worth, relationships, boundaries, anxiety, and the way we move through the world. While rooted in the experience of a first-generation daughter, her story speaks to anyone who has ever carried family expectations, questioned their worth, or wondered where their emotional pain truly began.

More than a guide to healing, it is a love letter to first-generation daughters, a conversation many families never had, and a reminder that understanding where your pain began is often the first step toward ending the cycle.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Yessenia Lajara is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Certified EMDR therapist, first-generation Dominican daughter, and author of The Cycle Ends With Me. Growing up between where her family came from and who she was becoming, Yessenia understands that healing is not about having all the answers. It is about having the courage to ask hard questions and create a new path for ourselves and the generations that come after us.

As a first-generation Latina, her work centers emotional healing, self-compassion, and culturally informed mental health support. Through therapy, education, and storytelling, she empowers others to reclaim their voice, embrace vulnerability, and begin the journey toward healing.  Her mission is to help others remember that healing can begin with one brave conversation.

Word Up: The True Cost of True Crime – Book Talk with Kristi D. Osorio and Melissa Tanis

Join local organizer Melissa Tanis and author Kristi D. Osorio for a panel discussion addressing the realities and harms of true crime media on survivors of crime and families who have been impacted by the criminal justice system. Topics will include the direct effect of true crime on Tanis and Osorio’s own families, as well as how the true crime industry perpetuates myths around crime, safety, punishment, and whose stories “deserve” to be told.

Osorio’s new book, “The Sound of Burning: A Mother, a Daughter, a Murder” ,combines memoir and cultural critique to tell a story of coming of age after her mother murdered her grandmother in the home they shared when Osorio was a teen. Tanis, who reconnected with her incarcerated father after watching a documentary he was in, will share about her own experience of filming for a follow-up documentary, the ups and downs of publicly sharing her story, and how media can both repair and harm those impacted by incarceration. Both Tanis and Osorio will bring nuance, lived experience, and abolitionist values to a conversation that often mimics the black-and-white thinking promoted by the true crime industry and the carceral state.

Please register in advance.

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS
Kristi D. Osorio is the author of the memoir The Sound of Burning: a Mother, a Daughter, a Murder (University of Georgia Press, 2026). In 2023, she won the Indiana Review Creative Nonfiction Prize and the Sonora Review “Mercy” Contest in Nonfiction. She has served communities affected by the criminal justice system through writing, teaching, and advocacy at Rikers Island, Columbia School of Social Work’s Beyond the Bars, and the Vera Institute of Justice. She teaches at Texas Tech University.

Melissa Tanis is a community organizer and abolitionist. She advocates both on a policy and personal level for people to be freed from prison. She also organizes for tenant power in her building and her neighborhood. She believes in collective liberation, skill sharing, mutual aid, and building the conditions now of the world we want to live in.

 

Fountain Bookshop: Queer Lit Saved Me “I Make Envy on Your Disco”

Join us at the Fountain Bookshop in Washington Heights for Queer Lit Saved Me! After beloved NYC bookstore Oscar Wilde closed, former employee and former FBS manager Cecelia wanted to create a book club dedicated to queer literature in its honor, and to emphasize the importance of LGBTQ+ stories for all.

Join us for a discussion with the author during the meeting!

Book Description: Winner of the Barbara DiBernard Prize in Fiction

It’s the new millennium and the anxiety of midlife is creeping up on Sam Singer, a thirty-seven-year-old art advisor. Fed up with his partner and his life in New York, Sam flies to Berlin to attend a gallery opening. There he finds a once-divided city facing an identity crisis of its own. In Berlin the past is everywhere: the graffiti-stained streets, the candlelit cafés and techno clubs, the astonishing mash-up of architecture, monuments, and memorials.

A trip that begins in isolation evolves into one of deep connection and possibility. In an intensely concentrated series of days, Sam finds himself awash in the city, stretched in limbo between his own past and future—in nightclubs with Jeremy, a lonely wannabe DJ; navigating a flirtation with Kaspar, an East Berlin artist he meets at a café; and engaged in a budding relationship with Magda, the enigmatic and icy manager of Sam’s hotel, whom Sam finds himself drawn to and determined to thaw. I Make Envy on Your Disco is at once a tribute to Berlin, a novel of longing and connection, and a coming-of-middle-age story about confronting the person you were and becoming the person you want to be.

About the Author
Eric Schnall has worked on and off Broadway as a producer and marketing director for more than twenty-five years. He won a Tony Award for the Broadway revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch and a Lucille Lortel Award for Fleabag. He has also written about techno and electronic music for Billboard and Revolution, profiling DJs and musicians from around the world.