826 Boston is nearing the end of its Moustache-a-Thon.* The non-profit, which has seven chapters across the country, gives grade-school kids opportunities to explore creative writing. So far the Moustache-a-Thon has raised over $5000 already as facial hair enthusiasts donate funds to their favorite lip ‘do. Personally, I think David up there is sweeping the floor with the competition, but check out the Boston 826 blog for all the competitors.

The event wraps up on Friday with a live event at PA’s Lounge in Somerville. There will be a moustache runway show, moustache games, and music by the half-Cranstonian Thick Shakes.

(*All seven chapters of 826 do the Moustache-A-Thon; the Boston and Chicago ones put the ‘o’ in moustache, while the Michigan and San Francisco ones don’t. Wordpress, it seems, would prefer that the ‘o’ wasn’t there, since half this post has red underlining under it.)

Tomorrow at Ada, I Could Not See The Sentence: Blake Butler, Claire Donato and Mike Young.  (I couldn’t find anything about Mike Young because thousands of people are named Mike Young.  No offense, Mike Young!)

Ada Books
717 Westminster St.
7 pm

Wouldn’t it be nice if this blog had a more interesting masthead?  Maybe one that didn’t look so much like a stock image?

If you’ve made anything bookish-looking and wouldn’t mind seeing it chopped into a 700X270 rectangle, drop me a line (at thebuildings at notaboutthebuildings dot com) and maybe I’ll feature your art for a few months.

Last weekend the snow pre-empted the first-ever Rhode Island Self-Published Author Fair at the Providence Public Library.  Good news, though; the event has been re-scheduled for this Sunday, and will feature works by fifteen local authors who have forsaken traditional publishing routes in order to get their books out to the public.

The Keynote Address will be given at 2pm by Christie O’Neil Harrison, and the fair itself will continue until 4pm.  Authors will be present for signings and discussions, and books will be for sale.

For more info, check out the library’s website.

There’s an exhibit of chapbooks right now in the windows of the URI library on Washington Street.  Organized by Kate Schapira in tandem with an exhibit at Pace University, the exhibit features work by author’artists including Jennifer Borges Foster, Anne Gorrick, Kate & Max Greenstreet, Jen Hofer, Brenda Iijima, Dorothea Lasky, Matthew Klane, Jill Magi, Lori Anderson Moseman, Kate Schapira, Jessica Smith, and Janaka Stucky.

On Wednesday, four of the artists will be reading at the URI Gallery, which is technically on Washington but more realistically on Union St.  That starts at 6pm.  Reader bios after the jump:

[Read more →]

This isn’t for a week-and-a-half yet, but I know how busy you all are, particularly on Mondays in the middle of March.  But prepare to take off your winter hat and put on your tam o’shanter because winter is (at least technically) ending soon and Saint Patrick’s Day is fast approaching.

On March 16th (St. Patrick’s Eve), I’ll be hosting The Dead-In at Ada Books, wherein I’ll mumble a few words about James Joyce before everybody launches into an out-loud reading of Joyce’s long short story/short novella.  It’ll be  a festive, though moody, way to say goodbye to winter and celebrate possibly the greatest short story to ever come out of Ireland.

(Last year’s Frome-In was lots of fun, and by several accounts the best thing that Not About The Buildings has organized so far.  I can only imagine that this one will be better, especially since most people don’t generally have a deeply-rooted dread of “The Dead” the way they do with Ethan Frome.)

Ada Books
717 Westminster St
7 pm
free.

Tomorrow at the Athenaeum, a group of writers will be reading from the anthology Wild Dreams: The Best of Italian Americana. Writers attending the reading include co-editor Carol Bonomo (Ahearn) Albright and contributors Ann Hood, Mary Caponegro, Peter Covino, Christine Palamidessi Moore, and Christina Bevilacqua. Just the thing to rev one up for Saint Joseph’s Day, possibly my favorite food-related holiday, which is less than two weeks away.

Tangential story: during college, I used to work at the Warwick Mall with Ann Hood’s aunt, who was kind of mean and swore more than I had ever heard any old lady swear before (or since.) We got along really well, though, I think because I wasn’t a girl and could count money without making a big fuss about it.

Providence Athenaeum
251 Benefit St.
5-7 PM
Free

I had to read Octavia Butler’s Kindred in college and really, really hated almost every minute of it.  Not because of the somber story, in which a woman is mysteriously transported from 1976 Los Angeles to nineteenth-century Maryland, but because I find Butler’s prose style tedious and very annoying.  (Many, many people disagree with me, though.  Kindred is by far her most famous novel, and there are currently a quarter million copies of the book currently in print.)

Beacon Press, the Boston publisher, is looking to do a graphic novel adaptation of the book; if you’re an artist and you’re interested, email Allison Trzop, Beacon’s Graphic Books editor, at atrzop * at * beacon.org.

[via Bitch]

Gillian Kiley and Michael Carr will be reading at Ada Books tonight as part of the delightful Publicly Complex series.

About them:
Gillian Kiley’s work has appeared in various publications including the Colorado Review and American Letters & Commentary, and is forthcoming in Keyhole and in the Fence magazine and From the Fishouse anthologies. She is a fan of Pessoa and his heteronyms. She has taught literature and writing at the University of Iowa and the University of Rhode Island, coddled artists and writers at an artists’ colony, and now just enjoys living among artists and sort of enjoys working for Brown. There is a video of her dancing in a sheep costume to promote the annual party Woolly Fair. This video won’t go away no matter how hard she wishes it would.

Michael Carr is the author of Out Another, recently published by Petrichord Books. His other chapbooks include Softer White (House Press, 2007) and Platinum Blonde (Fewer & Further, 2006).  He edited A Book of Prophecies by John Wieners, and is an editor of Katalanche Press.  Cambridge, MA is where he lives.

Ada Books
717 Westminster St
6 pm
Free

New Art For The People, the winter fundraiser for Not About The Buildings, wraps up tomorrow.  Stop by Uptown Top Rankin from 10-4 for your last chance to see work by ten local artists:

Jen Corace
Jean Cozzens
Jyll Ethier-Mullen
Shawn Gilheeney
Corey Greyhorse
Delia Kovac
Alec Thibodeau
Jason Tranchida
Neal Walsh
Tom West

At our opening we raised enough money to plan events for the next few months, and any day now we’ll be announcing the first ones (including this blog, which I’ve yet to formally tell anybody about.)