Astoria Bookshop

Amy Feltman in Conversation with Jordan Kisner for Willa & Hesper

Tuesday February 04 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM

Join us for an event with author Amy Feltman and Jordan Kisner for the paperback release of WILLA & HESPER!

Willa's darkness enters Hesper's light late one night in Brooklyn. Theirs is a whirlwind romance until Willa starts to know Hesper too well, to crawl into her hidden spaces, and Hesper shuts her out. She runs, following her fractured family back to her grandfather's hometown of Tbilisi, Georgia, looking for the origin story that he is no longer able to tell. But once in Tbilisi, cracks appear in her grandfather's history-and a massive flood is heading toward Georgia, threatening any hope for repair.

Meanwhile, heartbroken Willa is so desperate to leave New York that she joins a group trip for Jewish twentysomethings to visit Holocaust sites in Germany and Poland, hoping to override her emotional state. When it proves to be more fraught than home, she must come to terms with her past-the ancestral past, her romantic past, and the past that can lead her forward.

Told from alternating perspectives, and ending in the shadow of Trump's presidency, WILLA & HESPER is a deeply moving, cerebral, and timely debut

Amy Feltman graduated with an M.F.A. in Fiction from Columbia University in 2016, and now works at Poets & Writers Magazine. An excerpt from "Willa and Hesper" appeared in Cosmonauts Avenue, and her writing has also appeared in The Believer logger, The Toast, The Millions, The Rumpus, Lilith Magazine, Slice Magazine, and elsewhere. Her short story, "Speculoos," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2016 and was long-listed for Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers. She lives with her partner in Astoria, NY.

Jordan Kisner is the author of Thin Places, which will be published on March 3, 2020, by Farrar Straus & Giroux. Her essays have appeared in n+1, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The Believer, and others. She has been awarded a Pushcart Prize and selected for residencies by PioneerWorks, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and Art OMI. She teaches writing at Columbia University.

Queens Poets Night with Rosebud Ben-Oni, Jared Harél, Safia Jama and Richard Jeffrey Newman

Wednesday February 05 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM

Join us for a night of readings from local poets and their works!

Rosebud Ben-Oni is the winner of the 2019 Alice James Award for If This Is the Age We End Discovery, forthcoming in 2021, and the author of turn around, BRXGHT XYXS (Get Fresh Books, 2019). She is a recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and CantoMundo. Her work appears in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, POETS.org, The Poetry Review (UK), Tin House, Guernica, Black Warrior Review, Prairie Schooner, Electric Literature, TriQuarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Journal ,Hunger Mountain, The Adroit Journal, The Southeast Review, North American Review, Salamander, Poetry Northwest, among others. Her poem "Poet Wrestling with Angels in the Dark" was commissioned by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City, and published by The Kenyon Review Online. She writes for The Kenyon Review blog. She is currently editing a special chemistry poetry portfolio for Pleiades, and is finishing a series called The Atomic Sonnets, in honor of the Periodic Table’s 150th Birthday. Find her at 7TrainLove.org

Jared Harél is the author of the poetry collections Go Because I Love You (Diode Editions, 2018) and The Body Double (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2012). He’s been awarded the ‘Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize’ from American Poetry Review, the ‘William Matthews Poetry Prize’ from Asheville Poetry Review, and two 'Artist Grants' from Queens Council on the Arts. New poems have recently appeared in APR, Arts & Letters, Harvard Review Online, New Ohio Review, Ploughshares and Threepenny Review. Further, Harél is on the Editorial Board for QUEENSBOUND, is a poetry editor for Newtown Literary and lives in Rego Park, NY with his wife and two kids.

Safia Jama was born to a Somali father and an Irish American mother in Queens, New York. A Cave Canem graduate fellow, she has published poetry in Ploughshares, RHINO, Cagibi, Boston Review, Spoken Black Girl, and No Dear. Her poetry has also been featured on WNYC’s Morning Edition and CUNY TV’s Shades of US series. Jama was a semifinalist in the Pleiades Press Editors Prize for Poetry and she is the author of “Notes on Resilience,” included in the New-Generation African Poets chapbook box set, an African Poetry Book Fund project, edited by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani, released through Akashic Books (May 2020).

Richard Jeffrey Newman has published two books of poetry, Words for What Those Men Have Done (Guernica Editions 2017) and The Silence of Men (CavanKerry Press 2006), as well as a chapbook, For My Son, A Kind of Prayer (Ghostbird Press 2016). In addition, he has co-translated three books of classical Persian poetry, most recently The Teller of Tales: Stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (Junction Press 2011). Newman is on the executive board of Newtown Literary, a Queens-based literary non-profit and curates the First Tuesdays reading series in Jackson Heights, NY. He is Professor of English at Nassau Community College, where he also serves as secretary of the faculty union, the Nassau Community College Federation of Teachers (NCCFT). His website is www.richardjnewman.com.

Patrice Caldwell, Charlotte Nicole Davis and J. Marcelle Corrie in Conversation for A Phoenix First Must Burn

Monday March 09 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM

Join us for a conversation with Patrice Caldwell, Charlotte Nicole Davis and J. Marcelle Corrie for A Phoenix First Must Burn!

Sixteen tales by bestselling and award-winning authors that explore the Black experience through fantasy, science fiction, and magic.

Evoking Beyoncé's Lemonade for a teen audience, these authors who are truly Octavia Butler's heirs, have woven worlds to create a stunning narrative that centers Black women and gender nonconforming individuals. A Phoenix First Must Burn will take you on a journey from folktales retold to futuristic societies and everything in between. Filled with stories of love and betrayal, strength and resistance, this collection contains an array of complex and true-to-life characters in which you cannot help but see yourself reflected. Witches and scientists, sisters and lovers, priestesses and rebels: the heroines of A Phoenix First Must Burn shine brightly. You will never forget them.

Patrice Caldwell is a graduate of Wellesley College and the founder and fundraising chair of People of Color in Publishing—a grassroots organization dedicated to supporting, empowering, and uplifting racially and ethnically marginalized members of the book publishing industry. Born and raised in Texas, Patrice was a children’s book editor before shifting to be a literary agent. In 2018, she was named a Publishers Weekly Star Watch honoree and featured on The Writer’s Digest podcast and Bustle’s inaugural “Lit List” as one of ten women changing the book world.

Charlotte Nicole Davis is the author of The Good Luck Girls, a young adult fantasy novel releasing in Fall 2019 with Tor Teen. A graduate of The New School’s Writing for Children MFA program, Charlotte loves comic book movies and books with maps in the front. She currently lives in Brooklyn with a cat with a crooked tail. Twitter:@charlottendavis Instagram: @charlottenicoledavis

After years of working in apparel and home furnishings, J. Marcelle Corrie is now a marketing professional in publishing. She writes young adult science fiction featuring people of her community and beyond. When she isn't writing or working, you can find her at bookish events across New York City. Visit her website at www.jmarcellecorrie.com and follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @jmarcellecorrie.