A poetry and fiction reading to benefit Washington Square, the biannual literary journal published by New York University’s Graduate Creative Writing Program, will be held at NYU in the first-floor lounge of 19 University Place, Friday, December 17th, at 7 p.m. Featured readers will include James Frey, Matthew Rohrer, and Hannah Tinti. A wine reception will follow.
The event will also celebrate the upcoming release of the Winter 2005 Issue of Washington Square. This new issue includes the work of David Trinidad, Matthew Rohrer, Stephen Dixon, and Nin Andrews, among others.
Tickets for the event will be $5; $3 for students, and are available at the door. Copies of the Winter 2005 journal will be available for preorder and back issues will be available for sale, both at a discounted price of $5 per copy.
James Frey is the author of A Million Little Pieces. A former film writer, he has also worked as a skateboard salesman, a camp counselor, a picture-framer, a bouncer at a bar, a film director, a film producer, a busboy, a hotel security guard, and as both Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny at a major department store.
Matthew Rohrer was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and raised in Oklahoma. He earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan, where he won a Hopwood Award for poetry and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry from the University of Iowa. His books are A Green Light (2004), Satellite (2001), and A Hummock in the Malookas (1995), which was selected by Mary Oliver for the 1994 National Poetry Series. He is poetry editor for Fence and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Hannah Tinti grew up in Salem, Massachusetts. She earned her M.A. at New York University, where she was the fiction editor of Washington Square. Her work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Best American Mystery Stories 2003. Her short story collection, Animal Crackers, was released by the Dial Press in March 2004. She is currently the editor of One Story magazine.
Signed copies of books by award-winning authors E.L. Doctorow, Philip Levine, Paule Marshall, Brian Morton, and Chuck Wachtel will be on silent auction throughout the course of the reading.
Since its inception in the late ’80s, Washington Square has progressed at a rapid pace, and proceeds from the benefit will help the journal continue to improve. Staffed solely by students in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at NYU, the journal is funded largely by contributions from individual donors. Despite its small budget Washington Square has managed steady growth in its production and distribution capabilities. Ingram Periodicals, Inc. now delivers Washington Square to bookstores across the country.
Issue 15, Winter 2005 will be on newsstands by mid-January. For subscriptions and information e-mail washington.square.journal@nyu.edu. Washington Square is a nonprofit literary journal publishing fiction, poetry, interviews and essays by new and established writers.