Books

Tales From New Haven's Abortion Underground Yield Modern Warning

by | Mar 14, 2024 12:30 pm | Comments (1)

Paul Bass Photo

Author Biederman at WNHH FM, and her new book about a the underbelly of New Haven-Bridgeport's turn-of-the-century abortion trade.

Emma Gill’s severed foot and severed head washed up on a beach. Three boys stumbled across them.

That was in 1898. Might new such discoveries loom as a new era of abortion prohibition looms?

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Laundromat Meets Library

by | Feb 23, 2024 5:11 pm | Comments (13)

A student gifts a book to the Little Free Library.

Sometimes when you talk, the universe listens.”

That’s what Chris Walker, manager of the new LaundroMax on Whalley Avenue, said to me as we watched 25 kids sit still between rows of gleaming washing machines and a cacophony of dryers tumbling and buzzers going off — and prepare to hear a story read aloud at New Haven’s most innovative new branch library.

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Ross Gay Incites Joy

by | Feb 21, 2024 8:48 am | Comments (1)

Karen Ponzio Photos

Ross Gay: "The hope is to be unmade in the process.”

Ross Gay practiced what he preaches last night at Possible Futures, as the poet, essayist, and teacher offered a grateful crowd a selection of his work encompassing joy and tenderness that brought them from rapt silence to riotous laughter and everywhere in between.

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A Portrait Of The Craftsman

by | Feb 15, 2024 9:12 am | Comments (4)

Bruce Oren Photos

Howard Gralla (pictured above; one of his books, below): A rare gift to mix beauty with utility.

Book designer Michael Russem gave the following eulogy at the recent funeral of Howard Gralla, a leader in the field who lived in Westville.

Yesterday morning I was in a used bookstore in Boston and spotted a book designed by Howard that I love: Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries and Flemish Drawings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in the Pierpont Morgan Library. It’s 9 × 12 inches, over 650 pages, and it weighs more than seven pounds.

This massive book had scores of Post-it notes poking out the top. The book was clearly well-used. Those Post-its were proof that Howard had done his job.

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Urban Life Book Group Puts Heart Into "Home"

by | Feb 12, 2024 8:58 am | Comments (0)

Karen Ponzio Photos

Members of the Urban Life Experience Book Discussion group.

As the temperature outside edged close to 60 degrees on Saturday, a warm and invigorating meeting of minds and hearts came together inside the Wilson branch of the New Haven Free Public Library for 2024’s first monthly installment of the Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series. 

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Kulturally Lit Launches Year Of Baldwin

by | Jan 29, 2024 9:05 am | Comments (0)

Karen Ponzio Photos

IfeMichelle Gardin offers gratitude.

The Bricks in Hamden was the place to be on Saturday night, as literature fans gathered to fete author and civil rights movement icon James Baldwin — and the beginning of a year’s worth of programming based on his works — helmed by IfeMichelle Gardin and her Kuturally Lit organization. 

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Book Club Kicks Off Year Of Baldwin

by | Jan 19, 2024 10:52 am | Comments (7)

Karen Ponzio Photos

Baldwin books available at Possible Futures.

Hosts Lauren Anderson and IfeMichelle Gardin spreading that "book joy" on kick-off night.

The vibe at Possible Futures was lit Thursday night — more specifically Kulturally Lit, as the literary-focused arts organization’s 100 Years of Baldwin Book Club had its inaugural meeting exploring the works of author, playwright, thinker, and civil rights icon James Baldwin.

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Zines Create Scene At Possible Futures

by | Nov 13, 2023 9:02 am | Comments (0)

Karen Ponzio Photos

Making zines at The New Haven Zine Club.

Tiny Ghosts Haunting Small Things, The Band Plays in Front of a Big Audience, and Cars Go Too Fast (and our road design encourages it) are not titles you might find on the bestseller list or at your local news stand. But you can find them in the zine library making its way through the city as part of the New Haven Zine Scene, a group of creatives that meet up once a month to make, read, and talk about zines and share everything and anything zine related. This past Saturday, the group met for the first time at Possible Futures on Edgewood Avenue, where it will continue to trade off monthly meeting dates with Witch Bitch Black Box on Whitney.

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New Book Explores Secret Life Of Monsters

by | Oct 26, 2023 2:59 pm | Comments (0)

Brian Slattery Photos

Patrick Scalisi and Valerie Ruby-Omen.

New Haven and Connecticut overall have a vibrant history, from the indigenous cultures that flourished here, to the religious zealots that founded the New Haven Colony, to the creation of the modern city as we know it in the 20th century. Weaving in and out of that is a folklore that includes sea serpents in the Long Island Sound, monsters in the woods in Winsted, Hamden, and elsewhere, and dragons in Fair Haven. All these and more are chronicled in Connecticut Cryptids: A Field Guide to the Weird and Wonderful Creatures of the Nutmeg State, written by Patrick Scalisi and illustrated by Valerie Ruby-Omen. The duo celebrated the book’s release with a party at Strange Ways this weekend, in which partygoers were invited to dress as their favorite fanciful creatures.

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Author Meetup Explores "The Other Side Of Yet"

by | Oct 5, 2023 10:00 pm | Comments (0)

Contributed photo

At the Sept. 29 New Haven Museum meetup, with author Michelle Hord.

The following photos were submitted by Links member Sheila Carmon about a Sept. 29 book signing and meet and greet with Daytime Emmy Award winner, author, and media executive Michelle Hord. The event was organized by the New Haven chapter of The Links, Incorporated.

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Possible Futures Looking Bright On Edgewood

by | Sep 26, 2023 12:17 pm | Comments (5)

Allan Appel photo

Author Winsome Bingham, at Possible Futures-hosted reading.

Over the course of just three days, the following all unfolded on the modest corner of Hotchkiss Street and Edgewood Avenue: A regular monthly meeting of a major local nonprofit; a happy hour for exhausted educators; three authors’ readings, and a two-hour-long neighbors’ knitting circle smack dab among the displays, plants, comfy couches, and shelf after shelf of shiny, new, colorful volumes.

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Music Writing Luminary Kicks Off Windham Campbell Festival

by | Sep 21, 2023 8:25 am | Comments (1)

Brian Slattery Photos

A rumination on the question of why people write — delivered by legendary culture writer Greil Marcus — that took in his personal history, the history of the tail end of World War II, and David Lynch’s classic Blue Velvet proved a moving and thought-provoking start to Yale’s Windham Campbell Festival on Wednesday evening. The festival, which runs Thursday and Friday, celebrates the world of words, centering on this year’s recipients of the Windham Campbell Prizes.

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Community Carries Fred Hampton's Ideas Forward

by | Aug 31, 2023 8:09 am | Comments (0)

Brian Slattery Photos

On one side of Hotchkiss Street at the intersection of Edgewood Avenue on Wednesday evening, along the side of the bookstore Possible Futures, a DJ on the corner pumped out irresistible grooves while friends greeted one another, browsed books, and snacked on empanadas and mimosas. 

On the other side of the street was a cheerful sign that read Happy 75th Birthday Fred!” with a timeline laid out beneath it. The Fred in question is none other than Fred Hampton, Black Panther Party leader and revolutionary.

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Brick Wall Sees Possible Abolitionist Future

by | Aug 23, 2023 8:24 am | Comments (1)

Eleanor Polak photo

Christina Duan, Jess X. Snow, Sheri, Sonja John, Aaron Jafferis, Sarah "TW" Tracy-Wanck, and Rheo June painting Possible Futures.

The outside wall of Possible Futures, the bookstore located at 318 Edgewood Ave., stood blank and dull against the street, devoid of inspiration and creativity. That was about to change. 

Tuesday marked the beginning of a 10-day-long painting project to design a mural, a tribute to New Haven local and celebrated prison abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore. The blank wall became a canvas, as muralists and community volunteers worked together to explore all the possible futures the space could hold.

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Climate Change Story Brought Home

by | Jul 21, 2023 9:52 am | Comments (1)

Brian Slattery Photo

Skedgell: Publish or perish.

Days of smoke. Heat waves. The return of El Niño. These large-scale climate events shape our lives. But so do the people giving over their property to rewilding, the people clearing parks of invasive species, the people who take time out from their day to unplug and put their hands in a garden’s soil.

Journalist, documentary filmmaker, and musician Lindsay Skedgell wants to hear about it all. She’s starting a new journal called Heel and Hive that explores the environmental and climate landscape of our times, our relationships to nature and ecology” — focusing on the region we live in.

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Groundbreaking Information System Sheds Light On The Past

by | Jul 11, 2023 11:31 am | Comments (4)

Courtesy Yale Peabody Museum

This torosarus skull, now part of the collection of the Yale Peabody Museum, was found at Lightning Creek in Wyoming in 1891 by American paleontologist John Bell Hatcher. A few years later, Hatcher would go fossil hunting in Patagonia and write a book about that expedition that would be published in 1903. Even with his success at the time, he may not have predicted that his star in paleontology would rise to the point where, in 2018, author and fellow paleontologist Lowell Dingus would publish a book about him called King of the Dinosaur Hunters. 

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Beinecke Readings Examine Freedom From All Angles

by | Jul 6, 2023 9:10 am | Comments (5)

Eleanor Polak Photos

Original printing of the Declaration of Independence.

Eleanor Polak Photos

Exhibit on Frederick Douglass, William Grimes, and the Declaration of Sentiments at the Beinecke.

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library holds one of 26 known surviving copies of the first printing of the Declaration of Independence. The document, printed by John Dunlap in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, has a single typographical error, an indication that the founders issued it in a hurry to declare independence from England. 

On Wednesday, a few dozen New Haveners got to hear the words of that revolutionary broadside read aloud — along with that of Frederick Douglass’s 1852 oration What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” — as part of an annual primary-source-focused tradition to celebrate the 247th anniversary of Independence Day.

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Authors Embrace The Drama Of New Haven Characters

by | Jun 29, 2023 8:45 am | Comments (1)

Eleanor Polak Photos

Natalie and Randall Beach at RJ Julia.

My book wouldn’t exist without my dad, so doing a reading with him is only fair, only fitting,” said Natalie Beach. She read from her memoir-in-essays, Adult Drama, Thursday night at RJ Julia bookstore in Madison. Her father, Randall Beach, joined her, reading from his collection of profiles, Connecticut Characters: Profiles of Rascals and Renegades. The father-daughter duo presented their work to a crowd of dedicated New Haveners in an event that celebrated community, culture, and family — both born and made.

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Bill Lowe Keeps The Renaissance Alive

by | Jun 14, 2023 2:38 pm | Comments (0)

Bill Lowe let out a cry from his tuba, guttural and keening, ecstatic and heartbreaking at the same time. Ken Filiano responded in kind from his bass. Hafez Modirzadeh joined in with a moan from his saxophone. Naledi Masilo unspooled a string of skittering vocalizations. Taylor Ho Bynum release a plaintive wail as Kevin Harris laid down ominous piano lines. Luther Gray arrived with a rattling drum line that solidified into a rhythm that Lowe emphasized with snapping fingers. As he directed each of the players to take solos, Lowe broke into smiles. The music may have spoken about complex emotions, but there was great satisfaction in the telling.

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Hill: We Need A Kids' Librarian, Too

by | Mar 21, 2023 9:00 am | Comments (16)

Jordan Ashby photo

Ivana Lewis paints beside her mom, Shauniqua Davis, at a Wilson Library event.

The Wilson Library branch is a second home” to Helen and her children — especially to 7‑year-old Eli, who devours every animal-themed book he can find.

In spare moments, Wilson staff members set aside volumes they think Eli will like. But most days, they’re kept busy with adults needing job applications or a place to rest their head while inebriated.

So Wilson staff, regulars, and allies are calling on the city to fund a full-time children’s librarian at Wilson — the only branch in the city to lack the funding for one. 

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Possible Futures Takes Pride In Fred Hampton

by | Mar 21, 2023 8:15 am | Comments (2)

Brian Slattery Photos

Nzima Hutchings at Monday's "Fred Hampton 101" workshop.

The thoughts and deeds of a young fallen revolutionary became fuel for poetic pursuits Monday evening at Possible Futures, the bookstore and meeting place on Edgewood Avenue, as Nyzae James and Nzima Hutchings led a dozen participants through Fred Hampton 101,” a presentation that was part history, part poetry workshop, and all community building.

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Author Writes A Record Store Epic

by | Feb 24, 2023 9:13 am | Comments (1)

Stone.

Cult band Buttery Cake Ass are playing what might be their final show, and it might be their best. There aren’t many people in the audience, but what they’re hearing is blowing their minds. The saddest songs make them all cry. The songs filled with rage seem like they could set the hall on fire. The band members are engaged in the kind of musical alchemy that maybe only happens a few times in every musician’s life. Somewhere on the soundboard, a tape is rolling. What will it sound like when they take it home?

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Mardi Gras Hoopla Celebrates Library Love

by | Feb 22, 2023 10:23 am | Comments (1)

Allan Appel photo

Library revelers Holly Nardini, Scott McClean, and Lisa Brandes.

Glittering bead necklaces, feather boas, whimsical hats sprouting purple tulips, and — finally! — masks that cover the eyes and the top of your face instead of the nose and mouth were spotted in profusion Tuesday night at the Mardi Gras love-fest for the New Haven Free Public Library.

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