The Enclave Reading Series

June 1: Jessica Hagedorn, Michael Cunningham, and Angelo Nikolopolous at the Enclave!

Mon, 13 May 2013 18:50:00 -0400

For the Enclave’s season closer we’re giving you a truly blockbuster line-up. Literary legends Jessica Hagedorn and Michael Cunningham will be accompanied by debut poet Angelo Nikolopolus. Don’t sit this out! And as always admission is free, the drinks are cheap, and the lights will be down low.

Saturday…June 1, 2013…4Pm - 6Pm…Cake Shop…152 Ludlow St.

THE AUTHORS…

JESSICA HAGEDORN’s novels include Dream Jungle, The Gangster Of Love, which was nominated for the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and Dogeaters, which was nominated for a National Book Award, and Toxicology. She is also the author of Danger And Beauty, a collection of poetry and prose, and the editor of Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction and Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: At Home In The World, and Manila Noir.

MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours (winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award & Pulitzer Prize), and Specimen Days. He lives in New York.

ANGELO NIKOLOPOLOUS’ first book of poems is Obscenely Yours, winner of the 2011 Kinereth Gensler Award (Alice James Books 2013). His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2012, Best New Poets 2011, Boston Review, Fence, The Los Angeles Review, The New York Quarterly, Tin House, and elsewhere. He is a winner of the 2011 “Discovery” / Boston Review Poetry Contest and the founder of the White Swallow Reading Series in Manhattan. He teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick and lives in New York City

April 27: Tony O'Neill, Kristopher Jansma, Mark SaFranko, and Brian Conn!

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:27:00 -0400

The Enclave Reading Series is back with what can only be described as a powerhouse line-up: the incomparable Tony O’Neill (author of one our favorite novels, Sick City) is joined by Mark SaFranko, Kristopher Jansma, and Brian Conn. Rosewater Thieves will provide a musical interlude. It’s a eclectic billing with some serious literary chops. It’s April 27, it’s free, and it’s at Cake Shop, where the bar is open and the room is dark.

RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/553338341372867/

The Authors:

In a previous life TONY O’NEILL played keyboards for bands and artists as diverse as Kenickie, Marc Almond and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. He is the author of the novels Digging the Vein, Down and Out on Murder Mile, Sick City, and Black Neon. He has also written a poetry collection, Songs from the Shooting Gallery, and a book of short stories, Notre Dame Du Vide. He co-wrote the New York Times bestseller Hero of the Underground with Jason Peter, and the LA Times bestseller Neon Angel with Cherie Currie. His work has been described as “disturbingly twisted” by Slash and as the ravings of “a man who writes like he has his tongue in a light socket and his toe in a puddle of spilled blood” by Jerry Stahl. He lives in New Jersey.

KRISTOPHER JANSMA’s debut novel is The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards, published by Viking/Penguin in March of 2013. His writing has been published by Shaking Literary Magazine, Opium, and The Millions. He was also selected as a finalist for BOMB Magazine’s 2011 Fiction Contest for his story. Kristopher writes a monthly column for Electric Literature.

MARK SAFRANKO’s novels include Hating Olivia (Harper Perennial), No Strings (Black Coffee Press), Lounge Lizard (Murder Slim Press), God Bless America (Murder Slim Press) and Dirty Work (13E Note Editions). They have collected rave reviews and a cult following in Europe, especially in France, where a fourth novel was just published. His stories have appeared in over 60 magazines and journals internationally, including the renowned Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. In 2005 he won the Frank O’Connor Award from descant magazine for his short fiction. He was cited in Best American Mystery Stories 2000 and has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. SaFranko is also a playwright. His plays have been seen on stages in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland as well as many in the United States. As an actor he has appeared in several independent films, including Inner Rage, A Better Place, Shoot George, and The Road From Erebus, which are seen on cable television. His music is available on iTunes.

BRIAN CONN’s debut novel, The Fixed Stars, won the 2013 Bard Fiction Prize, and appeared on Amazon.com’s list of the ten best science fiction and fantasy books of 2010. His short fiction has appeared in journals such as Conjunctions, The Cincinnati Review, Unstuck, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. With Joanna Ruocco, he co-edits Birkensnake, a fiction annual. He lives in California.

For info about Rosewater Thieves, check out: https://www.facebook.com/RosewaterThieves

March 23: KATHLEEN ALCOTT, NATHANIEL KRESSEN, and ASA GAUEN at the Enclave!

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 16:53:00 -0400

It seems like we’re just recovering from the last reading’s hangover, but here we are again, continuing the Enclave’s bombastic 2013 season with another ridiculously good line-up. Literary upstarts Kathleen Alcott and Nathaniel Kressen are on the bill. They’ll be joined by multimedia storyteller Asa Gauen and his slide show of wonders. That’s right, it’s all happening March 23, from 4:00 to 6:00 PM at Cake Shop (152 Ludlow Street, NYC). Mark those calendars!

The Readers…

Kathleen Alcott’s debut novel, The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets, published from Other Press in September of 2012. She came of age in Northern California, studied in Southern California, fell in love with San Francisco, hid for a while in Arkansas, and currently resides in Brooklyn. Her work appears on TheRumpus.net; Rumpus Women Vol. 1, an anthology of personal essays by women; The Bold Italic; and is forthcoming in Slice Magazine, American Short Fiction, and Explosion Proof.

Nathaniel Kressen is a novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. Upon completing his first novel Concrete Fever, he taught himself how to bookbind and personally stitched the novel’s first 200 copies. His fiction has been published by Vagabondage Press. His work for the stage has been published by YouthPlays, One Act Play Depot, and The Good Ear Review, and performed Off-Off-Broadway as well as regionally in ten states and counting. As a screenwriter he won First Place in The Relevance Group’s American Details Competition for his script Adopting Skins, which was filmed in 2011. He is a core member of the Greenpoint Writers Group, as well as the co-founder of Second Skin Books, a new publishing imprint specializing in “Five alarm fiction.” He lives and works in Brooklyn.

Asa Gauen is a video artist and filmmaker. His work has been screened at the Brick Theater and Kunsthalle Galapagos, among other places in Brooklyn, as well as galleries nationwide.

The Enclave Answers Your FAQ's...

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:33:00 -0400

The Enclave curators have been receiving a lot of the same the questions lately, either through email or in person at our events. We’ve finally got around to answering them (somewhat coherently):

How long has the Enclave Reading Series been around?

The Enclave Reading Series has been up and running for over six years. No small feat for a reading series in New York City these days. It all started in winter of 2007, when two wide-eyed fiction writers—Jim Freed and Jason Napoli Brooks—were asked by the owner of a Greenwich Village rock club to come up with a program to fill the 4-7 p.m. time slot, before the bands went on. Jim and Jason decided to organize a reading that featured several diverse and hitherto undiscovered writers, all of whom were completely excellent. The reading was meant to be a one-off event, but because of its success and popularity, the club asked Jim and Jason to make it a monthly event. Over the following year, the Enclave Reading Series grew and the curators eventually transplanted to Cake Shop in the Lower East Side.

This series is so cool! Why haven’t I heard about it before?

Hmmm. That question is more about you than it is about the Enclave. All we can say is that we’ve been slogging away for the past six years bringing downtown New York a truly excellent and unique reading series. Electric Literature, BOMB, Time Out, PBS, and The New York Times have all taken notice.

Which authors have read at your series?

We’ve hosted hundreds of established and emerging writers over the past six years. Here’s an abbreviated list, totally off the top of our heads, of authors who have read in the past or are slated to read in the coming months: Wayne Koestenbaum, Lynne Tillman, Philip Lopate, Laurie Weeks, Eileen Myles, Gary Indiana, Patrick McGrath, Mark Doten, Robert Coover, John Haskell, Abdellah Taia, Carmen Boullosa, Juan Villoro, Tony O’Neill, Jessica Hagedorn, AM Homes, Michael Cunningham Sharifa Rhodes-Pitt, Brian Conn, Mac Wellman, Dale Peck, Shelley Jackson,Tom McCarthy, and Michael Cunningham.

Who were some of the Enclave’s best readers?

Again, this is just off the top of our heads: Gary Indiana reading from his memoirs, Katie Wudel reading her short story about stealing blind woman, James Hannaham (basically everything he read for us), Carmen Boullosa’s reading of her story “El pedo del poeta”, Laurie Weeks’ reading of her story “Nachos from the Edge”, Catherine Lacey reading excerpts from her debut novel, CAConrad reading his somatic poems, and John Haskell reading from “Pickpocket”.

Can I apply to do a reading at the Enclave?

Sure, why not? The Enclave is a carefully curated series, so most of the time we approach writers for readings. But if you send us your work and we like it, we’ll definitely consider putting you on the bill. Just make sure your work is in line with the Enclave’s aesthetic, i.e. writing that takes risks in its approach to subject and/or narrative form. In general, we like writers who are pushing the boundaries with their work. If you’re a writer whose single goal in life is to have a story published in The New Yorker or to get a cushy teaching position at an upstate liberal arts college, we can smell that from a mile away and we’re not going to be into your stuff. Just be honest in your work and don’t come off like writing is some sort career choice for you. Also, if you’re writing a memoir about your drug addiction, your stint in rehab, a family member’s or your brush with terminal illness, your pregnancy, or the trials of being a new parent, well, that memoir better be really fucking good.

And a word to the agents and publicists who contact us: please familiarize yourself with our series (and other New York reading series for that matter) before sending inquiries. Don’t simply Google “reading series + new york” then carpet bomb us with form-emails, because doing this is the best way to ensure we will never program any writer you represent.

Why the fuck is your series at 4:00 in the afternoon?

4:00 is the time slot our series was originally given and we’ve stuck with it over the years. And you know what? We wouldn’t have it any other way. 4:00 p.m. is the perfect time to head down to the secluded basement bar of Cake Shop, have some drinks, hear some great readers, and then head back out into the city to kick into your Saturday night. It’s the pre-party party. Not to mention that Electric Literature has called the Enclave the “one best thing to do on Saturday afternoon.”

Just who are you guys?

The curators of the Enclave are first and foremost writers. Jason Napoli Brooks’ work has published in journals such as Ninth Letter, HOW, and Asymptote, and he was the recipient of the Chapbook Award for Best Fiction for an excerpt of his novel Shelter. He has also curated literary events at Brooklyn Academy of Music. His spy serial, Cock of the Walk, now has a growing mailing list in the hundreds. Jim Freed has had work in The New York Times, Monkey Bicycle, and has performed on NPR. Scott Geiger, the Enclave’s curatorial consultant, was the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a NYFA Fellowship. His work has appeared in various journals, including Conjunctions and Ninth Letter, and has been on display at Store Front for Architecture.

We never thought we’d be running this series for so long, as writing is our main business. But New York seems to have a dearth of curators these days, which is a shame since the arts can’t function without dedicated and astute curators. So, we figured since we (at least we think) have good literary tastes and we like to meet new people, why not curate a reading series that would feature the most interesting authors we could find and not be stale and pretentious about it?

Who are some of the Enclave’s literary heroes?

We’ll come right out and say this: we like Roberto Bolaño. We know it’s a controversial issue for some, but we can’t deny it. Read By Night in Chile and hopefully you’ll see where we’re coming from. Conversely, we don’t think much of Philip Roth. We know! Controversy! Some other authors we admire: Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, Jean Genet, Henry Miller, Paul Bowles, Georges Bataille, Kathy Acker, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Philip K. Dick, Clarice Lispector, Joan Didion, Samuel Delaney, Yukio Mishima, Marcel Proust, Henri Michaux, JG Ballard, and Kobo Abe. In terms of publishers, we really like New Directions, Dalkey Archive, Semiotext(e), City Lights, and Grove Atlantic (especially under the leadership of Barney Rosset, who is another of our heroes…and an authentic American hero). Some journals we’re partial to are Conjunctions, Monkey Bicycle, Black Clock, and Asymptote.

The Cake Shop’s basement bar is so dark. Has crazy shit happened down there during your readings?

More than you could imagine. We’re not at liberty to go into detail.

March 23: Kathleen Alcott, Nathaniel Kressen and Asa Gauen at the Enclave!

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 21:35:41 -0500

The Readers…

Asa Gauen is a video artist and filmmaker. His work has been screened at the Brick Theater and Galapagos Art Space, among other places in Brooklyn, as well as galleries nationwide.

FEB 23: James Hannaham, Catherine Lacey, & Eric Nelson!!!

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 10:53:00 -0500

The Enclave continues its already excellent winter program with three great authors: JAMES HANNAHAM, CATHERINE LACEY and ERIC NELSON. Our last reading was a crazy good time…so why would you want to miss this one? After all, it’s what Electric Literature has called “the one good thing to do on a Saturday afternoon.”

February 23, 4:00 - 6:30 PM
Cake Shop
152 Ludlow Street, Lower East Side.

Admission is free and the bar is open!

RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/114993598680303/

The Readers…

JAMES HANNAHAM, author of the novel God Says No (McSweeney’s), has published stories in One Story, Fence, Open City, The Literary Review, and BOMB. For a long time he has contributed to the Village Voice and other publications. He was one of the co-founders of the performance group Elevator Repair Service and worked with them from 1992–2002. More recently he has exhibited text-based visual art at Samsøn Projects, Rosalux Gallery, and 490 Atlantic. His hopefully upcoming second novel is Delicious Foods. He teaches creative writing at The Pratt Institute and Columbia University.

CATHERINE LACEY received a NYFA Artist Fellowship for fiction in 2012. Her work has appeared in The Believer, The Atlantic, 52 Stories, Brooklyn Magazine & others. She is a founding owner of 3B, a cooperatively run bed & breakfast in downtown Brooklyn.

ERIC NELSON is originally from New Jersey. His essays,criticism and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in TheBillfold, HTMLGIANT, Chimes & Sirens, Volume 1 Brooklyn, Quail BellMagazine and Squawk Back, among others. His short story collection The Silk City Series was published by Knickerbocker Circus in 2010 and “The Walt Whitman House” was recently published as a chapbook by the Crumpled Press. He will be guest-editing the next issue of Five [Quarterly] and lives in Ridgewood, Queens.

The Enclave Goes to the Movies Jan. 26...with Gary Indiana, Cat Tyc, Rebekah Rutkoff, and Bethany Ides!

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 21:44:12 -0500

The Enclave Reading Series is back with four dynamic writers—Gary Indiana, Rebekah Rutkoff, Cat Tyc, and Bethany Ides—who will share their stories and essays about their cinematic obsessions. This will be an Enclave reading you won’t want to miss.

Saturday…January 26…4:00 - 6:30 pm…Cake Shop…152 Ludlow St…NYC

Admission is free and the bar is open!

The Readers…

GARY INDIANA is the author of seven novels, including The Shanghai Gesture, Do Everything in the Dark, Depraved Indifference and Resentment. He has also published several books of nonfiction and directed many theater plays and spectacles. His most recent publications are To Whom It May Concern (in collaboration with Louise Bourgeois) and Last Seen Entering the Biltmore, Plays, Short Fiction, Poems 1975-2010. His forthcoming books are a memoir, I Slept With the Dead, and a novel, Diving for Teeth.

REBEKAH RUTKOFF writes essays and fiction about art and film. She recently completed the PhD program in English at the CUNY Graduate Center and was awarded a 2012 Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Her work has appeared in various journals, including Semiotexte’s Animal Shelter, Brooklyn Rail, and ArtNet. She lives in Brooklyn.

CAT TYC is a video artist/filmmaker/poet whose work has appeared on MTVu, LOGO’s NewNowNext as well as galleries and museums around the world including the Brooklyn Museum and the Camac du’ Art in Paris. In 2006, she was a fellow at the Flaherty Seminar “Creative Demolition: Reconstructing Culture through Innovations in Film & Video” at Vassar College. Her writing has been published in journals Shampoo, Boog City, and NY Nights.

BETHANY IDES is a writer,installation/sound artist, and video artist. Her work has been presented at Fragmental Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, PS122, Performance Works NW, Gallery Homeland, Gowanus Studio Space, CounterPULSE Theater, and the Good Shepherd Arts Center. Her publication include the sci-fi prose poem Approximate L (Cosa Nostra Editions 2008) and the collection Indeed, Insist (Ugly Duckling Presse 2005). She teaches art theory & history, literature and the cultural study of sacred texts at School of the Visual Arts.

Our Favorite Books of 2012

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 13:37:00 -0500

The curators of the Enclave Reading Series read a lot this year. There were plenty of books published in 2012 that we liked, but in the end the following list is a celebration of our favorite books we read this past year, regardless of the year of publication. Does this buck the whole “Best of the Year” genre? Most likely, yes. But the Enclave has never been much a stickler for convention.

Sick City by Tony O’Neill

At its heart, this book is a story about people trying to figure out what to do next. Yeah sure, most of these people are on hard drugs, but so are a lot of people. And maybe in a way everybody is? The way O’Neill put this together made questions like this come easy. He throws you right in there, right in the middle of these messy lives of people who want to get it together, well some days they do; on others it’s tough to find the point. It’s a dark book where there are just as many losers as there are winners, and one hell of a wild world. -Jim Freed

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick

So I’m a little late to the whole PKD party and this was the first book of his I’ve read, but I really loved it. I loved the randomness of the plot (both the ending and all the things that happen throughout). The language is abrupt and to the point, which I think really worked too - because sentences like this didn’t take anything away from the story at large. I also really like how Dick makes everything that has occurred seem so trivial in the end. Like not only is the nightmare over, but it doesn’t even matter anymore. -Jim Freed

The Trial by Franz Kafka

I like to read this book every year or two. I love its episodic structure and I love Kafka’s sense of humor. My favorite scene is at the lawyer’s house - K’s uncle has taken him there because he thinks he might be able to help, but K has already grown pretty indifferent to his whole situation by this point. In the middle of the meeting they hear something crash, so K runs out to see what it is. Just as he had hoped, it’s the lawyers maid Leni. They flirt for a little while and then have sex. K’s uncle obviously isn’t too happy about all this and goes on and on about how this sort of behavior can only hurt K’s case, but our hero doesn’t really care. Talk about freedom in the face of absurdity. I laugh out loud every time I read that scene and feel oddly empowered by man’s absolute right to just not give a damn. -Jim Freed

The Way to Rainy Mountain by N. Scott Momaday

What could conqueror say to the descendants of those who it’s conquered? “I’m sorry” could never possibly be enough. Thank god there’s a writer like Momaday who, with his stark and ghostly prose, transmits an ancient message from the Kiowa. Equal parts memoir and transcription of myth, The Way to Rainy Mountain offers a poignant and un-romanticized glimpse of an American society that most other Americans know almost nothing about. Because of its non-linear style and absence of central narrative, this book perplexed many a liberal academic who had hoped to use it as a go-to teaching tool in the classroom. But it’s non-linearity and bravery in form is exactly what’s attracted me to it.-Jason Napoli Brooks

Babylon by René Crevel

René Crevel was a brilliant young writer, and a homosexual. For the latter he was excommunicated by high priest Andre Breton from the Surrealists. Oh well, their loss! Babylon is wild and violent and beautiful, encapsulating the freedom and psycho sexuality the Surrealist were supposedly about. The opening line: “A little girl asks, ‘What is death?’ Try to make me believe it’s the same as being asleep.” -Jason Napoli Brooks

Zippermouth by Laurie Weeks

There’s really nothing like this book. It’s a collage of angry letters to dead writers, drug memoir, nightclub portraiture, and tale of unrequited love. But it’s also a transcendent and philosophical work that is all stitched together by Weeks’s addictive prose. The page-turner of my year, for sure; the best news is this is Week’s debut novel, no doubt foreshadowing the publication of even more incredible novels that have sprung from her genius. (I should also mention that Laurie Weeks read at The Enclave Series twice, and both times she was bombastic and captivating. And for Christ’s sake would someone please re-publish “Nachos from the Edge.”) –Jason Napoli Brooks

Gentrification of the Mind by Sarah Schulman

There’s an IHOP in the East Village and artisanal condiment boutiques blanketing the bulk of Brooklyn. I’m not sure which is worse. But one thing is certain, as a curator I can sure as hell see that New York—and its arts scene—is much more restrained and a lot less brave than I remembered it when I was growing up around here. Why has this happened? Follow the money, as any good Marxist would say—or as the amazing Sarah Schulman would argue, at least in part, in Gentrification of the Mind. Schulman has long been a vital and necessary voice among New York writers. This, her latest work of non-fiction, is not a grinding of an ax; it’s much more a catalog of the 80’s and 90’s New York artists, who in the face of the AIDS plague and a belligerent economic system , rose to the occasion and created ambitious, unapologetic work that fostered, not just a sense of, a community. –Jason Napoli Brooks

Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders by Samuel R. Delany

Standing at about seven-hundred pages, this novel wasn’t just my book of 2012—it was my book during 2012. It’s the sort of sweeping great American epic as only Samuel Delany could do it. That is, it’s a glorious trapdoor of a novel that starts in 2007 and shuttles you to fifty years in America’s future. Along the way there is plenty of dirty, nasty sex, this being Samuel Delany and all. However, the novel transcends its pornographic conceits, and even progresses beyond Delany’s previous (and uniformly excellent) works. I’m hoping this book ignites a renaissance in a wider appreciation of Delany’s writing, and signifies his rightful placement as one of America’s greatest living novelists. –Jason Napoli Brooks

The Enclave Presents Another Great Line-Up, Dec. 15

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 12:56:22 -0500

Following our November kick off to our Fall/Winter season, which saw four amazing writers reading before a packed house, The Enclave Reading Series is back, December 15 at Cake Shop. On tap are Eric Sasson, Elizabeth Reddin, J.E. Reich, and M. Craig. It’s a eccletic line-up that will have you on the edge of your seat, hanging on every single word of each these writer’s fantastic work. Come one, come all. Come. If ya’ know what I’m sayin…

Saturday…December 15…4:00 - 6:30 PM…Cake Shop…152 Ludlow St…New York

The Readers…

An MFA graduate of NYU, Eric Sasson has taught fiction writing at the Sackett Street Writers Workshop in Brooklyn. His short story collection, “Margins of Tolerance,” was the 2011 Tartt Award runner-up and was published by Livingston Press in May. This summer he was named a Tennessee Williams Scholar to the Sewanee Writers Conference and was granted residency fellowships to Ragdale and The Hambidge Center. His story “Floating” was named a finalist for the Robert Olen Butler prize. Other credits include pieces forthcoming in The Best Gay Stories 2013 Anthology as well as recently published in The Wall Street Journal Online, BLOOM, Nashville Review, The Puritan, Connotation Press, and THE2NDHAND, among others. He was born, bred and still lives in Brooklyn. www.ericsassonnow.com

Elizabeth Reddin was born in Torrance, California at the Little Company of Mary Hospital; in 1993 she moved to New York City. She plays music in a story band called Legends, with Raquel Vogl and James Loman. Her writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Poets and Writers, Beekiller, New York Nights and 6 x 6. Her first book, The Hot Garment of Love Is Insecure, was published by Ugly Duckling Press.

J.E. Reich hails from Pittsburgh and received her MA in English Literature from Brooklyn College. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Armchair/Shotgun, Everyday Genius, Volume 1 Brooklyn, Plain China: The Best of Undergraduate Writing 2010, KGB Bar& Lit Journal, Underground Voices, The Emerson Review, and other publications. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2010. A Brooklyn resident, she is a contributor at Thought Catalog and Critical Mob, and is working on her first novel.

M. Craig is a freak, a queer, and a punk who writes for freaks, queers, and punks. she likes to take real places and real issues and change them, make them the same but different so it’s easier to get at the truth in them. she makes ordinary things magical and shows the magic in ordinary things. She’s the founder of Papercut Press, which she started to publish her first novel, The Narrows.

The Enclave Returns with an AMAZING Line-up...NOVEMBER 17

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 15:21:32 -0500

We’re back with a bill that will knock your goddamn socks off (or whatever you kids are wearing nowadays). Four remarkable readers will take the Enclave stage: Susan Kirschbaum, Katie Wudel, Anne-E Wood, and Leopoldine Core. It’s a one of kind line-up not to be missed! Seriously, if you miss it you’ll know, deep down inside, that life’s not worth living. Plus, it’s Susan Kirschbaum’s birthday!

The Enclave…4:30 PM…November 17…Cake Shop…152 Ludlow Street…New York City…Free and open to all!

The Readers…

Susan Kirschbaum started her writing career as a journalist, penning cultural stories for Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, The Jewish Forward, The London Times, New York Observer, New York Magazine, and The New York Times, among others. Her first novel, Who Town, a social parody called the “New York hipster Less than Zero”, debuted in May 2012 on Amazon.

Anne-E. Wood is a fiction writer living in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in Lumina, Gargoyle, Tin House, Agni, AbleMuse, New Letters, The Chicago Quarterly Review, Fourteen Hills, The Beloit Fiction Journal, Other Voices, Fiction Attic, and others. Her story collection Two if By Sea was published by Fourteen Hills Press in 2006. She has an MFA in Fiction from San Francisco State University and teaches writing at Rutgers University and The Gotham Writers’ Workshop. She is at work on a novel.

Katie Wudel is a writer, educator, and arts advocate making her home in the wilds of Morningside Heights. Her writing has appeared in Tin House, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, Monkeybicycle, the Ploughshares blog, and many other publications. Katie has taught creative writing at San Francisco’s School of the Arts and the University of Nebraska-Omaha Writer’s Workshop, and has been awarded scholarships and fellowships from Hedgebrook, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and Summer Literary Seminars. In 2011, her story “Tongueless” was one of Wigleaf’s Top [Very] Short Fictions. You can find it, along with more of her work, at katiewudel.com.

Leopoldine Core was born and raised in Manhattan. Her poems and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Open City, The Literarian, Joyland Magazine, Agriculture Reader, Harp & Altar, Drunken Boat, The Brooklyn Rail and No, Dear.

The Enclave returns...with Susan Kirschbaum!!!

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 18:44:58 -0500

The Enclave Reading Series presents…Susan Kirschbaum…

4:30PM …Saturday…November 17…Cake Shop…152 Ludlow Street…NYC!

After an extended hiatus that saw its curators flung as far afield as the Joshua Tree Desert and the city (i.e. quaint town) of Boston, the Enclave Reading Series is back in full fucking force. To kick off the new season, The Enclave is presenting none other than Susan Kirschbaum, one of our favorite new writers. If you don’t know her work, you goddamn well better bone up before November 17, when she takes the Enclave stage along with two other writers (soon to be announced). So clear your calendar and come on out for a autumn afternoon in the Enclave’s “dungeon of fiction”…and be sure to say Happy Birthday to Susan!

About Susan…

Who Town’s cult appeal caught the attention of editors at Electric Literature, intrigued that Kirschbaum ditched an established literary agency in order to self publish, asked her to write about this modern act of self actualization, dubbing her ‘“the Rogue Writer.”

Kirschbaum’s second novel will pay homage to some of her literary heroes including Nabokov, Philip Roth, Henry Miller, Jim Morrison, and her eccentric late grandmother Eva “Marge” Kirschbaum, all great story tellers in their own right.

The Enclave is active!

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 11:06:00 -0400

The Enclave Reading Series is on summer hiatus and will return in September. In the meantime, check out what the Enclave curators have been up to:

An excerpt of Jim Freed’s novel, The Illiterate, appears in the latest issue of Monkey Bicycle, one of the Enclave’s favorite lit journals. A review of the excerpt can be found here. Frequent Enclave guest Jared Hohl is featured in the same issue of the journal. And…

Jason Napoli Brooks’s interview with the author Abdellah Taia now appears in the latest issue of Asymptote. Abedellah is Morocco’s first openly gay writer and was a special guest reader at the Enclave in 2011. Check out the interview here. Also, Jason’s short story “Crimean Holiday” appears in the currrent issue of the arts journal DUC.

And..Congratulations to co-curator Scott Geiger, a recipient of the NYFA 2012!

JAC JEMC and ANDREW ZORNOZA at The Enclave...May 19!

Thu, 17 May 2012 17:28:46 -0400

It’s about that time…The Enclave is about to go on our spring “creative hiatus”, which usually involves closing up shop, taking our asses on the road, and partaking in some of our favorite vices…But not before we put on one more show to close the season!

Jac Jemc and one of our favorite authors, Andrew Zornoza, are reading from their newest works. So come on out and have some drinks with us…

Saturday…May 19…4 PM…Cake Shop…152 Ludlow Street…NYC

The Readers…

Jac Jemc’s first novel, My Only Wife, was published by Dzanc Books in April 2012, and her chapbook of stories, This Stranger She’d Invited In, sold out at Greying Ghost Press in March 2011. Jac’s writing has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her story “Women in Wells” was featured in the 2010 Best of the Web. She is poetry editor at decomP and member of the editorial team at Tarpaulin Sky. She has served as a guest editor of Little White Poetry Journal and and Hobart Web, and worked as a reader at Our Stories and The Means. In 2012 she was the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Professional Development Grant. www.jacjmec.com

Andrew Zornoza is the author of the novel Where I Stay. His short fiction and essays have been featured at The Poetry Foundation, BOMB, Gastronomica, Confrontation, CapGun, and Matter Magazine, among many others. He teaches in the Design & Technology MFA program at Parsons in New York City and is a contributing editor to the arts journal HOW. www.andrewzornoza.com

Jac Jemc at the Enclave...May 19!

Sun, 13 May 2012 21:08:23 -0400

The final reading the Enclave’s season is upon us…and Jac Jemc headlines!

Come on out to the Enclave’s “dungeon of fiction” for a another (and last of the season) afternoon of readings and lots of drinks…

Saturday…May 19…4PM…Cake Shop…152 Ludlow Street…NYC

Jac Jemc’s first novel, My Only Wife, was published by Dzanc Books in April 2012, and her chapbook of stories, This Stranger She’d Invited In, sold out at Greying Ghost Press in March 2011. Jac’s writing has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her story “Women in Wells” was featured in the 2010 Best of the Web. She is poetry editor at decomP and member of the editorial team at Tarpaulin Sky. She has served as a guest editor of Little White Poetry Journal and and Hobart Web, and worked as a reader at Our Stories and The Means. In 2012 she was the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Professional Development Grant

TODAY! Martha Cooley and Gabriel Brownstein at the Enclave!

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 11:37:40 -0400

4/28…4pm…Cake Shop…152 Ludlow…Come on out for a pair of great readers, and of course many, many drinks…

The Enclave is thrilled to announce a co-curated reading with...

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:05:00 -0400

The Enclave is thrilled to announce a co-curated reading with The Common, one of our favorite literary journals. Martha Cooley and Gabriel Brownstein are on tap, so mark your calendars and plan to spend one of your spring evenings in the Enclave’s “Dungeon of Fiction”… 4PM…April 28…Cake Shop…152 Ludlow Street…NYC!

MARTHA COOLEY is the author of The Archivist, a national bestseller published in eleven foreign markets, and Thirty-Three Swoons. Her short fiction, essays, and translations of poetry have appeared in such journals as AGNI, A Public Space, West Branch, Consequence, and Bellevue Literary Review. She is associate professor of English at Adelphi University and also teaches fiction in the Bennington Writing Seminars.

GABRIEL BROWNSTEIN won the PEN/Hemingway Award for his book of stories The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Apt, 3W, and he is the author of the novel The Man from Beyond. He teaches English at St. John’s University in Queens, New York.

The Enclave's 5 Year Anniversary Reading Extravaganza!!!

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:12:00 -0400

The Enclave's 5 Year Anniversary will be Saturday March 31st!!!!

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 11:10:54 -0500

That’s right folks. Can’t believe we’ve been around for this long. To celebrate we’re having a reading at Cake Shop on Saturday March 31st from 4-6 featuring founders Jim Freed, Jason Napoli Brooks and Scott Geiger. Also we’ll have one special surprise guest that will be announced shortly. Put this shit on your calendars! We’ll put more details out soon. Hope to see you there…

Tomorrow at the Enclave…Daniel Polansky reads…and...

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 18:53:44 -0500

Tomorrow at the Enclave…Daniel Polansky reads…and gives away free copies of his remarkable new novel Low Town (Doubleday). Shya Scanlon and J Adam Wall are also on the bill, so get your ass down the Enclave’s dungeon of bad ass-ness.

Shya Scanlon * Daniel Polansky * J. Adam Wall to read on Sat. Feb. 25th @ 4PM

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 03:21:00 -0500

You’re invited in…

The Enclave is pleased to announce that our first reading of 2012 will feature Shya Scanlon, Daniel Polansky and Jeremy Wall. It all goes down on Sat. Feb 25th @ 4PM at the Cake Shop (152 Ludlow).

SHYA SCANLON is author of the novel Forecast and the collection of poetry In This Alone Impulse. He’s book reviews editor at The Nervous Breakdown, and co-edits Monkeybicycle. Visit him at www.shyascanlon.com.

DANIEL POLANSKY was born in Baltimore. THE STRAIGHT RAZOR CURE is his first novel, and the first part of the LOW TOWN series. For more info go to www.danielpolansky.com

As a musician, J. ADAM WALL has played and/or recorded with the Temptations, Marc Brussard„ and Yarn, among others. He works as a teacher, lives in Brooklyn with his wife, and is currently completing his first novel.

Hope to see you Sat. Feb 25th at The Enclave!