Sunday at Seaport
Where: McNally Jackson Seaport
4 Fulton St.
646-964-4232 Price: Free
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Join us at our new South Seaport location for a full day of readings, writings, conversation, and cookery.
12:00 – Children’s Art Workshop: Design Your Own Lighthouse
When merchants, whalers, and immigrants from all corners of the world sailed into New York toward the docks of lower Manhattan, it was lightships and lighthouses that led them to safe harbor. Sunday, Sept. 8, at noon, we’re hosting a lighthouse workshop for kids of all ages. We’ll read stories together about lighthouses, then kids can design their own. Choosing from a range of lighthouse styles, kids can invent unique features (maybe a wall of whirligigs or a tide pool aquarium) as they embellish their lighthouses to reflect each child’s imagination. Hosted by Yvonne Brooks. All ages welcome. Free.
2-5 PM in the Cafe: Cookery by the Book Unplugged: Pesto, The Modern Mother Sauce
Join Suzy Chase and Leslie Lennox for a pesto chat + book signing + small bites in the cafe.
Suzy Chase is the host of the #1 Cookbook Podcast, Cookery by the Book.
Leslie Lennox is the author, stylist and photographer of Pesto: The Modern Mother Sauce cookbook.
2:00 – American Catch: The Fight for our Local Seafood
Paul Greenberg
From the acclaimed author of Four Fish and The Omega Principle, Paul Greenberg uncovers the tragic unraveling of the nation’s seafood supply—telling the surprising story of why Americans stopped eating from their own waters in American Catch.
American Catch examines New York oysters, Gulf shrimp, and Alaskan salmon to reveal how it came to be that 91 percent of the seafood Americans eat is foreign.
In the 1920s, the average New Yorker ate six hundred local oysters a year. Today, the only edible oysters lie outside city limits. Following the trail of environmental desecration, Greenberg comes to view the New York City oyster as a reminder of what is lost when local waters are not valued as a food source.
Farther south, a different catastrophe threatens another seafood-rich environment. When Greenberg visits the Gulf of Mexico, he arrives expecting to learn of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill’s lingering effects on shrimpers, but instead finds that the more immediate threat to business comes from overseas. Asian-farmed shrimp—cheap, abundant, and a perfect vehicle for the frying and sauces Americans love—have flooded the American market.
Finally, Greenberg visits Bristol Bay, Alaska, home to the biggest wild sockeye salmon run left in the world. A pristine, productive fishery, Bristol Bay is now at great risk: The proposed Pebble Mine project could under¬mine the very spawning grounds that make this great run possible. In his search to discover why this pre¬cious renewable resource isn’t better protected, Green¬berg encounters a shocking truth: the great majority of Alaskan salmon is sent out of the country, much of it to Asia. Sockeye salmon is one of the most nutritionally dense animal proteins on the planet, yet Americans are shipping it abroad.
Despite the challenges, hope abounds. In New York, Greenberg connects an oyster restoration project with a vision for how the bivalves might save the city from rising tides. In the Gulf, shrimpers band together to offer local catch direct to consumers. And in Bristol Bay, fishermen, environmentalists, and local Alaskans gather to roadblock Pebble Mine. With American Catch, Paul Greenberg proposes a way to break the current destructive patterns of consumption and return American catch back to American eaters.
4:00 – Overthrow: A Novel
Caleb Crain and Astra Taylor
A deeply humane novel that explores the fate of candor, good will, and the utopian spirit in a world where technology and surveillance are weaponizing human relationships
One autumn night, as a grad student named Matthew is walking home from the subway, a handsome skateboarder catches his eye. Leif, mesmerizing and enigmatic, invites Matthew to meet his friends, who are experimenting with tarot cards. It’s easier to know what’s in other people’s minds than most people realize, the friends claim. Do they believe in telepathy? Can they actually do it? Though Matthew should be writing his dissertation on the poetry of kingship, he soon finds himself falling in love with Leif–a poet of the internet age–and entangled with Leif’s group as they visit the Occupy movement’s encampment across the river, where they hope their ideas about radical empathy will help heal a divided world and destabilize the 1%.
When the group falls afoul of a security contractor freelancing for the government, the news coverage, internet outrage, and legal repercussions damage the romances and alliances that hold the friends together, and complicate the faith the members of the group have–or, in some cases, don’t have–in the powers they’ve been nurturing. Elspeth and Raleigh, two of Leif’s oldest friends, will see if their relationship can weather the strains of criminal charges; Chris and Julia, who drifted into the group more recently, will have their loyalties tested; and Matthew, entranced by the man at the center of it all, will have to decide what he owes Leif and how much he’s willing to give him. All six will be forced to reckon with the ambiguous nature of transparency and with the insidious natures of power and privilege.
Overthrow is a story about the aftermath of the search for a new moral idealism, in a world where new controls on us–through technology, surveillance, the law–seem to be changing the nature and shape of the boundaries that we imagine around our selves. Caleb Crain, with astonishing sensitivity, acuity, and grace, has captured the deep unease and ambiguity that threaten our contemporary lives, and has written a beautiful novel about the redemptive possibilities of love and friendship.
Caleb Crain has written for The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, n+1, and The New York Times Book Review. He is the author of the novel Necessary Errors and the critical work American Sympathy. He was born in Texas, raised in Massachusetts, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Astra Taylor is a filmmaker, writer, and organizer. She is the author of The People’s Platform (winner of the American Book Award) and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, n+1, and The Baffler, where she is a contributing editor. Her most recent documentary is What Is Democracy? and her new book is Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone.
5:30 – Cat Call: Reclaiming the Feral Feminine
Kristen J. Sollee and Pam Grossman
Interweaving historical research, pop culture, and original interviews, Kristen Sollée reclaims the cat archetype as a source of feminine identity and sexual power.
The cat: A sensual shapeshifter. A hearth keeper, aloof, tail aloft, stalking vermin. A satanic accomplice. A beloved familiar. A social media darling. A euphemism for reproductive parts. An epithet for the weak. A knitted hat on millions of marchers, fists in the air, pink pointed ears poking skyward. Cats and cat references are ubiquitous in art, pop culture, politics, and the occult, and throughout history, they have most often been coded female.
From the “crazy cat lady” unbowed by patriarchal prescriptions to the coveted sex kitten to the dreadful crone and her yowling compatriot, feminine feline archetypes reveal the ways in which women have been revered and reviled around the world―in Greek and Egyptian mythology, the European witch trials, Japanese folklore, and contemporary film.
By combining historical research, pop culture, art analyses, and original interviews, Cat Call explores the cat and its indivisible connection to femininity and teases out how this connection can help us better understand the relationship between myth, history, magic, womanhood in the digital age, and our beloved, clawed companions.
Kristen J. Sollée is a writer, curator, and educator exploring the intersections of art, sex, and occulture. She is the founding editrix of Slutist, a sex positive feminist website, and lectures at The New School and across the US and Europe. Sollée’s signature college course, “The Legacy of the Witch” follows the witch through history, pop culture, and politics. Her critically-acclaimed book inspired by the course, Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive, was published in 2017.
Pam Grossman is the creator and host of The Witch Wave podcast and the author of What Is A Witch. She is co-founder of the Occult Humanities Conference at NYU, and her art exhibitions and magical projects have been featured in The New York Times, Artforum, and The New Yorker. Her writing has appeared in such outlets as Sabat Magazine, HuffPost, and her occulture blog, Phantasmaphile. For her work as the Director of Visual Trends at Getty Images, she was chosen as one of Adweek’s Creative 100 and Marie Claire’s “20 Women Changing The Ratio.” She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two feline familiars. You can find her at PamGrossman.com and @Phantasmaphile.
6:00 – Gotham Writer’s Workshop: Creative Writing 101
with Alanna Schubach
Alanna Schubach is a Center for Fiction Emerging Writers Fellow and has been named a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Fiction. Her essays, articles, and criticism have appeared in The Atlantic, Refinery 29, The Washington Post, The Village Voice, and the LA Review of Books, among many others, and her short fiction has appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Post Road, the Lifted Brow, and Prick of the Spindle.
7:30 – Hard To Read, presented by Fiona Duncan
Jordan Barse and Eugenie Dalland
Hard to Read NYFW Special, presented by Fiona Alison Duncan
Hard to Read founder Fiona Alison Duncan hosts artist and writer Jordan Barse, stylist, writer, and founder of Riot of Perfume Eugenie Dalland, and more in this New York Fashion Week themed reading.
Jordan Barse is an artist and writer based in New York. Her fashion and art writing has appeared in GARAGE Magazine, Civilization, and Packet,among other publications.
Eugenie Dalland is a freelance writer and stylist based in New York. She is the founder and publisher of Riot of Perfume, an annual printed arts and culture magazine.
Hard to Read is a literary social practice. It aims to promote print reading and active listening as vital meditations for our maddening current.
Fiona Alison Duncan is a Canadian American artist, writer, and organizer. She’s the founding host of Hard to Read and its spinoff Pillow Talk, “a gentle forum for hard conversation.” Duncan’s debut novel, Exquisite Mariposa, is forthcoming from Soft Skull Press (October 2019). She lives in New York.
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