Konundrum: Selected Prose of Franz Kafka
Friday, December 2 at 6:30 pm
Deutsches Haus at NYU
42 Washington Mews
New York, NY 10003
Deutsches Haus at NYU presents a reading by award-winning translator, writer, and editor Peter Wortsman of Konundrum: Selected Prose of Franz Kafka. He will be joined by Tess Lewis to discuss the release of his new translation of Kafka’s short prose.
In this new selection and translation, Peter Wortsman mines Franz Kafka’s entire opus of short prose – including works published in the author’s brief lifetime, stories published posthumously, journals, and letters – for narratives that sound the imaginative depths of the great German-Jewish scribe from Prague. It is the first volume in English to consider his deeply strange, resonantly humane letters and journal entries alongside his classic short fiction and lyrical vignettes. Transformed is a vivid retranslation of one of Kafka’s signature stories, Die Verwandlung, commonly rendered in English as The Metamorphosis. Composed of short, black-comic parables, fables, fairy tales, reflections, as well as classic stories like In the Penal Colony, Kafka’s uncanny foreshadowing of the Twentieth Century’s nightmare, Konundrum refreshes the writer’s mythic storytelling powers for a new generation of readers.
Copies of Konundrum: Selected Prose of Franz Kafka will be sold by Archipelago Books at the event.
Events at Deutsches Haus are free and open to the public. If you would like to attend this event, please send an email to deutscheshaus.rsvp@nyu.edu. As space at Deutsches Haus is limited, please arrive ten minutes prior to the event to ensure you get a good seat.
7th Annual Dumbo Family Holiday Party
Sunday, December 4, at
3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
POWERHOUSE [Brooklyn/DUMBO]
28 Adams St.
Brooklyn , NY 11201
Join in on the holiday festivities with some holiday and winter-themed book readings! You’ll also have the chance to meet some of POWERHOUSE’s favorite kids books illustrators as they battle each other in a fun, good-natured drawing competition based on holiday-inspired suggestions from kids in the audience!
Participating authors and illustrators include:
Thyra Heder is the author of Fraidyzoo and The Bear Report, an ALA-ALSC Notable Book hailed by Kirkus as “riotous buffoonery” in a starred review. She is also an illustrator and storyboard artist for film and advertising. She lives in Brooklyn.
Stephanie Graegin has illustrated many popular books for children, including Peace Is an Offering and her brand-new picture book How to Build a Snow Bear. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Caroline Nastro was born and raised in New York City, where she currently lives. She is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and theater director. The Bear Who Couldn’t Sleep is her first picture book.
Brett Helquist is the illustrator of the best-selling A Series of Unfortunate Events books, as well as many other popular titles among them the new picture book The Doll People’s Christmas. He worked as a graphic designer before becoming a full-time illustrator. Brett lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York.
Ann M. Martin is the author of many books for young readers, including Rain Reign, Belle Teal, A Dog’s Life, and A Corner of the Universe, a 2003 Newbery Honor Book. She is also the author of the Baby-sitters Club series and the Family Tree series. Ms. Martin makes her home in upstate New York.
Laura Godwin, also known as Nola Buck, is the author of many popular picture books for children, including Oh, Cats!; One Moon, Two Cats; This Is the Firefighter; and Christmas in the Manger. Born and raised in Alberta, Canada, she now lives in New York City.
Admission is free. Please reserve a spot here.
PowerHouse Books Launch: Lo-Life: An American Classic by George “Rack-Lo” Billips and Jackson Blount in conversation with Sadat X
Monday December 5 at
7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
POWERHOUSE [Brooklyn/DUMBO]
28 Adams St.
Brooklyn , NY 11201
Jackson Blount will be here to talk about the extraordinary story behind the infamous Lo-Life crew! Members of the original Lo-Life crew will join the conversation. Sadat X will moderate the event.
Lo-Life: An American Classic takes the reader on a trip to New York City in the early 80s—a time when crime and violence ran the streets. The infamous Lo-Life gang emerged from this tumultuous time. Formed by crews of teenagers from the Brownsville and Crown Heights neighborhoods of Brooklyn, they made a name for themselves by dressing head-to-toe in expensive Ralph Lauren clothing, or “Lo.” Polo apparel—and other preppy 80s fashion labels like Guess, Nautica, and Benetton, among others—represented an aspirational lifestyle for these kids from rough neighborhoods just struggling to get by. Fighting for style and survival, the Lo-Lifes targeted these brands, and would acquire them by any means necessary, including stick-ups, shoplifting, and hustling. A reign of terror ensued, when your new winter coat could make you the target for a robbery—or worse.
What started as an informal gang uniform organized around clean designs and bright colors, became a devotion to a lifestyle brand, and eventually created an association between the streets and luxury that would fundamentally change the fashion industry. Lo-Life: An American Classic documents the personal collections of exclusive archival vintage photographs amassed by the crew and interviews with original members, presenting the first comprehensive oral history of this notorious New York collective.
Lo-Life is the remarkable story of a small group of teenagers fighting to make a name for themselves who eventually made themselves seen, heard, and emulated globally.
Admission is free RSVP appreciated: RSVP@powerHouseArena.com or please fill out the “Bookings” form at the bottom of this page.
Experiments & Disorders
Tuesday, December 6 at 7:30 pm
161A Chrystie St.
New York, NY 10002
Fiction, nonfiction, poetry & performance texts by the most adventurous, cross-genre established & emerging writers. Curated by Tom Cole & Christen Clifford.
Featuring:
Celeste Finn has studied acting at the British American Drama Academy and Bennington College, Landscape Architecture at the Graduate School of Design and Human Migration, with David Carrasco, at the Harvard Divinity School. She is especially interested in Visual Information, particularly documents narrating spacial timelines and patterns made over landscapes that are relative to environmental migrants, refugees, nomads and missionaries, and finds the term “eco-artist” distressing. She will be reading from Personal Proximity, which stems from a sketch developed for the group show Snuffload at the Oni Gallery in Boston around 2004.
Buzz Slutzky is an artist, writer, and curator whose practice incorporates drawing, sculpture, performance and video. Their work builds upon trans, queer, and feminist traditions with an often humorous and frankly sexual voice. Their writing has included poetry, screenwriting, creative nonfiction, and art criticism. From 2010-2012, Slutzky was a Curator of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, and has continued to organize art exhibitions relating to queerness, humor, politics, and history. Slutzky has exhibited, performed, and screened at at Los Ojos, Cooper Union, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Boston Center for the Arts, La Mama, MIX, Frameline, Columbia College Chicago, Mindscape Universe (Berlin), among others. Mentions of Slutzky’s work have appeared in Artforum, Vice, Art F City, ArtNews, Observer, Hyperallergic, and The New York Times. Slutzky earned their BA from Sarah Lawrence College in 2010, and their MFA from Parsons the New School for Design in 2015, after which, they were a resident at the Vermont Studio Center. They currently teach a course in video post-production at the College of Staten Island.
Admission is free. To reserve a seat click here.