The Tannery Series

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What's Love Got to Do with It?

Bigamy, spinsterhood, and family deception! 

Join us as three startling authors skewer today's romantic landscape. Modern love will never look the same.

March 3, 2012 @ 7p.m.

Is marriage unnecessary? Is Romeo dead? Authors Kate Bolick, Tayari Jones, and January Gill O’Neil uncover affairs of the heart like you’ve never heard before. Join The Tannery Series in celebrating the coming of spring with a heartfelt evening of love’s malicious power.

Readings by:

Kate Bolick ("All the Single Ladies") reads from her forthcoming book--a wry, personal and frank discussion about being single in a world where marriage seems less necessary and less probable.

Tayari Jones (Silver Sparrow, Leaving Atlanta) reads from her stunning third novel, Silver Sparrow. Set in Atlanta during the 80s, her richly imagined characters struggle to do right and to love even as these ambitions require extraordinary deceit and complicity.

January Gill O’Neil (Underlife) reads her lyric poems which bring to light the unspeakable complications of marriage and family life.

This event is free and open to the public, but come early to grab a front-row seat.

For more information email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

 


 

As I Lay Dying

Elegies, Funeral Pyres and a Coffin! The Tannery Series Hosts a Literary All Souls Feast

Come get your ghost on with Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Paul Harding and acclaimed essayist Jaed Coffin.

October 15, 2011 @ 7p.m.

Tis’ the season for apparitions, lost souls and stories from the Beyond. The Tannery Series is celebrating the Halloween season with tales of death-bed visions and voices from the afterlife. Join authors Paul Harding and Jaed Coffin for As I Lay Dying, a literary visit with the mysterious, haunting and otherworldly.

On the program:

Paul Harding (Tinkers, Pulitzer Prize 2010) reading from his stunning debut novel, which follows three generations of New Englanders from life to death and back again. Beginning at the death-bed of George Washington Crosby and expanding to include the life of his epileptic father and the lives of his decedents, Harding’s characters make an ecstatic, transcendental journey—a journey which explores the mysteries of human consciousness and the beauty of nature.

Jaed Coffin (A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants) reading from his essay, "My Mother's Burning Body," first published in The Sun Magazine. Reaching from Maine to Thailand, this elegant memoir centers on Coffin’s startling remembrance of his mother's funeral pyre and probes the larger meaning of inheritance between a parent and child.

This event is free and open to the public, but come early to grab a front-row seat for the sweet hereafter.

For more information email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

 


 

Summer Lovin'

A Teen-Age Dwarf, an Extra-Marital Affair, the Dark History of the South and a Voice That Would Put Susan Boyle to Shame: This is Summer Love Like You’ve Never Felt it Before

Authors Rachel DeWoskin and Steve Yarbrough Read from Novels That Will Make Your Brain and Heart Sizzle

June 4, 2011 @ 7p.m.

Break out the fans and the cold drinks and join us for an evening of love, sex, song and murder. Authors Rachel DeWoskin and Steve Yarbrough roam from Michigan to Mississippi and from the halls of high school to the small towns of the South, exploring sexual politics, history, race, youth and innocence. The cruelties are casual and the flings are deadly serious.

On the program:

Rachel DeWoskin (Big Girl Small) reading from her fierce, brilliant new novel, which features the unforgettable Judy Lohden, a 3 foot 9 inch tall, 16-year-old musical phenom, who finds herself at the center of a scandal about to go viral.

Steve Yarbrough (Safe from the Neighbors) sharing his fictional world of Loring, MS. In this haunting, beautiful novel, which spans the civil rights era and the contemporary Delta, love tangles with murder and no one can escape history.

All events are free and open to the public. Come turn up the heat!

For more information email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

 


 

Podcast

The Tannery Series now has a podcast. At first we'll be featuring recordings of our events, but we'll be adding other snappy content over the coming months. Make your commute a little more provocative and entertaining.

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About

The Tannery Reading Series brings authors to the North Shore whose writing confronts the world in essential and curious ways. Showcasing newly evolving as well as traditional forms, burgeoning talent and the well-loved names of our age, the events create something smart, combustible and fun.

The reading series will take place three times over the course of 2012 at the Tannery Mall’s Jabberwocky Bookshop, in historic Newburyport.

Our next event, What's Love Got to Do with It?, will take place March 3rd at 7pm.

Our Scandalous Past

Did you miss a previous reading? Relive the glory. Click on the links below for recordings of the events.

Love, Lust and Loathing: Feb 13, 2010

Are You Cool?: Jun 26, 2010

Follow tanneryseries on Twitter

From Our Authors:

All The Single Ladies
Excerpt from "All The Single Ladies", by Kate Bolick.
Published in The Atlantic, November 2011

“As a woman who spent her early 30s actively putting off marriage, I have had ample time to investigate, if you will, the prevailing attitudes of the high-status American urban male. (Granted, given my taste for brainy, creatively ambitious men—or “scrawny nerds,” as a high-school friend describes them—my sample is skewed.) My spotty anecdotal findings have revealed that, yes, in many cases, the more successful a man is (or thinks he is), the less interested he is in commitment.

Take the high-powered magazine editor who declared on our first date that he was going to spend his 30s playing the field. Or the prominent academic who announced on our fifth date that he couldn’t maintain a committed emotional relationship but was very interested in a physical one. Or the novelist who, after a month of hanging out, said he had to get back out there and tomcat around, but asked if we could keep having sex anyhow, or at least just one last time. Or the writer (yes, another one) who announced after six months together that he had to end things because he “couldn’t continue fending off all the sexual offers.” And those are just the honest ones.