Crossing the Line: Stephen Elliott + Terese Svoboda October 11, 2009

Please join us for "Crossing the Line," featuring Stephen Elliott, San Francisco-based author of THE ADDERALL DIARIES (Graywolf Press, September), "a memoir of moods, masochism and murder," and the founding editor of The Rumpus, and Terese Svoboda, whose two new books are WEAPONS GRADE (University of Arkansas Press, September), a poetry collection exploring occupation, and TRAILER GIRL (University of Nebraska Press, November), stories praised by Vanity Fair as "violent and enthralling," in conversation on the pleasures and perils of writing in different genres. How do readers, publishers and peers respond?

Svoboda -- whose previous book is BLACK GLASSES LIKE CLARK KENT, which won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize and is a memoir about her uncle who reported executions of GIs in the stockade he was guarding in postwar Japan and then committed suicide -- has also written a libretto, entitled WET, about the water crisis, that premiered at Disney's REDCAT performance space in Los Angeles, filmed dance in the Cook Islands and traveled to Sudan, living with the Nuer people, among many other projects. Elliott has also written erotica (MY GIRLFRIEND COMES TO THE CITY AND BEATS ME UP), political nonfiction (LOOKING FORWARD TO IT), and several novels, including HAPPY BABY, praised by The New York Times Book Review as "surely the most intelligent and beautiful book ever written about juvenile detention centers... and drugs."

Idlewild Books (www.idlewildbooks.com), a new independent store near Union Square, specializing in travel and international literature, is located at 12 W. 19th St. near 5th Ave.