The Happy Ending Music and Reading Series November 29, 2006

The Happy Ending Music and Reading Series, chosen by New York Magazine and NY Press as the best reading series in NYC, and singled out by the New York Times Magazine for helping to “Keep downtown alive,” features the most interesting storytellers, writers, musicians, raconteurs and personalities, and requires the readers to take one public risk, while the the musicians, who perform two short sets with their original, lyric-driven music, are required to play one cover song and try to get the audience to sing along.

Please come visit us the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of every month.

Wednesday November 29th, 2006

At 8pm sharp.

The doors open at 7:00.

Free

READERS:
Mila Drumke has recorded four albums: Gathering My Name, which features “Someone,” the theme from the film Go Fish; Illinois; Hip to Hip: A Collection of Standards; and, most recently, Radiate. “Someone” also appeared on the first Independent Film Channel release, In Your Ear. In 2005, Mila was awarded a NEA/Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation fellowship and residency at the Millay Colony for the Arts for her work on a non-fiction book, All the Time in the World. For more information, please visit miladrumke.com.

Robert Marshall was born in Oregon and grew up in Phoenix. He is an accomplished visual artist whose work has been exhibited in the United States, Europe, and South America, and his fiction has appeared in Blithe House Quarterly and Euphony as well as in the anthologies Afterwords, Queer 14, and Fresh Men II. In addition, his interviews and criticism have appeared in New York Press, on ArtNet, and in PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. Marshall founded "Prose in General" at New York's Art in General, and is the director of "Writers at the Alliance" at the Educational Alliance. He has received fellowships from the Macdowell Colony, Yaddo, the Virginia Center, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Alix Strauss is a trend writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Post, and Daily News, as well as national magazines: Time Magazine, Town & Country Travel, Travel & Leisure Golf, Marie Claire, Entertainment Weekly, Self, Wine Enthusiast, Esquire and Outside, among others. Her collection of shorts, THE JOY OF FUNERALS, was published by St. Martin's Press. Stockard Channing will be directing the film version, with Alix writing the screenplay. Currently, she is editing an anthology of blind date stories for Adam's Media called HAVE I GOT A GUY FOR YOU, due out in 2008.

Jennifer Banash was born and raised in New York City. She graduated with a B.A. in Fine Art from Arizona State University and has worked as a copywriter, editor, waitress, television news writer, party promoter, and exotic dancer. She lives, works and writes in Iowa City, Iowa, and is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Iowa. In August 2006, she co-founded Impetus Press with her partner, Willy Blackmore. Her poetry has been published in Black Spring Review, Poetry Motel, and The Colorado Review. Her first novel, Hollywoodland: An American Fairy Tale, is published by Impetus Press.

MUSICIAN:

Paul Brill forward-looking creator of 2004’s critically-acclaimed New Pagan Love Song, released his new LP, Harpooner, on his own Scarlet Shame Records last week. His most searing artistic statement to date, Harpooner marks the end of Brill’s Americana tinges and a full embrace of the intense musical collages he began on NPLS. It’s a stunning, challenging, and edgy piece of work, marking the welcome return of one of songwriterdom’s most independent and progressive artists. In addition to writing and recording songs for his own albums, Brill has composed music for several films, commercials, and, most recently, the theme for a NPR program. Brill’s original score for the upcoming HBO feature documentary, The Trials of Darryl Hunt, was hailed by Variety as “memorably chilling, sounding notes of purest dread." The film was most recently selected to the shortlist for the 2007 Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary.

HOST:

Amanda Stern is the author of the novel, The Long Haul (Soft Skull Press). Her stories, poetry and essays have been published in St. Ann’s Review, Salt Hill, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Spinning Jenny, The New York Times Magazine, the Believer, Paste and many others. She founded Happy Ending in 2003 and has been hosting and curating it ever since. She has held residencies at Macdowell and Yaddo. She is currently working on her second novel and teaching third through eighth graders at The School at Columbia University. She can be scoured at amandastern.com

BOOKS:

Provided by the amazing Mobile Libris

Wednesday (12.13.06): Come and hear LEANNE SHAPTON, MARCELLUS HALL and CHRIS LEO. With music from JENNIFER O CONNOR.

Happy Ending Bar
302 Broome Street
Between Forsyth and Eldridge
212-334-9676

Look for a hot pink awning with the words Health Club on it

J,M,Z,F to Delancey
B,D to Grand Street

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Amanda Stern
http://www.amandastern.com
Author, The Long Haul
Curator, The Happy Ending Music and Reading Series
http://www.myspace.com/ministerno (my publisher made me do it).

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A sparse, smattering and incomplete list of just a few of the Artists who have appeared or will appear at The Happy Ending Music and Reading Series: James Salter, Jim Shepard, Mary Gaitskill, A.M. Homes, David Means, Rick Moody, Tom Perrotta, Kate Braverman, Stephen Elliott, Lydia Davis, Eileen Myles, Amy Hempel, Sigrid Nunez, David Rakoff, Peter Rock and Paul Muldoon.

Official Website: http://www.amandastern.com/happyending.html