Program Description
Event Details
Four writers and visual artists will present their own view on
BACK TO BASICS
Join us to celebrate The Scarsdale Salon’s 6th anniversary!
In October of 2015, Ines Rodrigues and Preeti Singh, both writers, journalists, and Scarsdale residents, started an event in partnership with The Scarsdale Public Library, periodically bringing together authors and their audience. Since then, hundreds of people connected with dozens of artists in person, making the Salon a great success. New friends later joined the party: during the library’s renovation, Bronx River Books, our local bookstore, hosted the live events. We also became international, creating a partnership with Salon de Belleville, a similar event that happens in Paris, France. Now, we do simultaneous readings and performances online, connecting different cultures and languages through literature and art.
For this anniversary celebration, we’ll present writers and visual artists from the US, Italy, France and South America, united by the theme BACK TO BASICS.
Patricia Dunn Italian American and Bronx-raised Patricia Dunn will launch her second novel, Last Stop on the 6, on November 9th. This is the story of a lively family from the Bronx, sprinkled with the right amount of love, toughness, and humor. We’ll have a first-hand preview of this new book at the Salon, with the chance to ask the author many questions.
Patricia Dunn is the former Senior Director of the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, a writing instructor, and the co-founder of The Joe Papaleo Writers Workshop in Cetara, Italy. Besides her first novel, Rebels by Accident, she has published stories on
The Village Voice, The Nation, LA Weekly, and The Christian Science Monitor.
William Papaleo is an American artist who has lived and worked in Italy for over 35 years. He created the cover for Dunn’s book, Last Stop on the 6. His paintings have been exhibited in museums and galleries in Europe and the United States. He has received various awards in international and juried shows in Italy and America. Papaleo will participate in a conversation with Patricia Dunn and the audience about art & books.
AARON POOCHIGIAN earned a PhD in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. His thriller in verse, Mr. Either/Or, was released by Etruscan Press in the fall of 2017. A recipient of an NEA Grant in translation, he has published translations with Penguin Classics and W. W. Norton. His latest book American Divine, the winner of the Richard Wilbur Award, came out in 2021. His other poetry collections are Manhattanite (Able Muse Press, 2017), winner of the 2016 Able Muse Book Award, and The Cosmic Purr (Able Muse Press, 2012). His work has appeared in such publications as Best American Poetry, the Paris Review and POETRY.
Poochigian will read his most recent translation of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, The Flowers of Evil, to be released this November. He will also read some of his own poetry and talk about the importance of translation, bringing world literature closer to us.
Gisele Giandoni Wolkoff Organized and translated the volumes of poetry Poem-ing Beyond Borders: ten contemporary Irish and Portuguese Women Poets (Coimbra: Palimage, 2011), and American Plural Voices/Plurivoces Americanas (Curitiba: CRV, 2015). Her own poetry books are Ar (2016), Rumo ao Sol (2014) e Partidas (2012), all from Palimage (Coimbra, Portugal). She curates VITAMINA DE POESIA (POETRY’S VITAMIN), a literary channel, open to collaborations. Wolkoff is also the coordinator of the project Cultura e Artes no sul-fluminense: memória & história (Culture and Arts in the Fluminense south – memory & history); and she edits the Vozes do Sul (Voices of the South), to be published soon. More about Wolkoff on her website: https://gwolkoff.com/
Xavier Bartaburu has been working for over 20 years as a journalist, writer, photographer and musician, always focusing in the Brazilian socio-biodiversity through the cultural projects he’s involved with, such as books, articles, photography and records. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from University of São Paulo, and he’s now doing a master’s degree program in Digital Journalism, at NYU.
Etienne Bompais-Pham Born in 1987, in the little town of Salon-de-Provence (South of France), Étienne Bompais-Pham, launched his own blog - LGBThèque in 2019, where he specialized as gay literature critic. In the end of 2020 he started a YouTube channel, « Les conversations roses » (‘The pink conversation’) with his friend Buck Jones. In 2021, he released his first novel, « Tuer le bon gay » (‘Kill the good gay’), at Maïa Editor. In this book, we have the story of a 30yo men who decides to run away his parisian life the day que found out that he’s just a perverted homosexual and a failed writer.
The same year, Étienne started his chronicles at Homomicro radio program/podcast, where he reads gay novels, chosen accorded to his own background. https://lgbtheque.fr/
The hosts:
Ines Rodrigues (US) is the curator of The Scarsdale Salon is a Brazilian writer and teacher, based in New York for many years. She published the novel Days of Bossa Nova in 2017 (Black Opal Books) and currently is doing her MFA in Fiction at Columbia University (NY). Read more of her stories on her website: www.inesrodriguesauthor.com
Plinio Ribeiro Jr. (France) is the curator of the Salon de Belleville. Plinio is a researcher and artist based in Paris, France. Writing and visual arts are part of his interdisciplinary projects. He holds a master’s degree in Literature, Arts & Aesthetic at Paris Diderot University. More about his work on https://purinio.fr/.