James J. Patterson Reads from MELANIE’S SONG on Latest LFTRR
The new mystery novel by ASP's Joanna Biggar is given the Patterson treatment in Episode 11 of Live from the Reading Room
“Melanie’s Song is an unputdownable, riveting feat of storytelling.”
Set in the era of Woodstock and Watergate, Melanie’s Song centers on a young woman’s mysterious disappearance, and on her friend’s determined search for her.
Melanie, who fled her marriage to a straight-laced classical musician in order to hitch-hike to Woodstock and San Francisco, was last seen at a commune in the California hills. Rumors abound: that she took up with a Black radical; that she had his child; that she and her lover, armed, ran a bank heist a la Patty Hearst; that she developed a mystical gift for spiritual healing; that she died in a possible accidental, possibly staged commune fire.
Trying to sift truth from invention pulls her friend, the young reporter, J.J., into the underbelly of the sexual and social revolutions of the 60s and early 70s, where she encounters corrupt cops, paranoid hippies, activists, mystics, drug-runners,and most astonishingly, Melanie’s own parents. Risking her job, her connections, her life, J.J. follows Melanie’s trail, determined to find out what happened to her once-compliant friend now turned, it seems, into a rebel angel.
Keeping up with Reuben Jackson: Bon Appetit, COMP, Friday Night Jazz and more!
Reuben Jackson has been busy as of late, publishing in a well-known journal, contributing to a piece in Bon Appetit, hosting a WPFW show and more!
“Persuasive” Woman Drinking Absinthe explores “Illicit Love” in New Review from Compulsive Reader
In his new review of Katherine E. Young’s Woman Drinking Absinthe, Charles Rammelkamp delivers a review worthy of the subject. With careful erudition, and no lack of wit, he mines Katherine’s beautiful and heartbreaking poesy about “illicit love” for words of affirmation.
7 Upbeat Poems to Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day (with printable PDFs)
Poem in Your Pocket Day was created by the Office of the Mayor of New York City in 2002 in partnership with the New York Department of Cultural Affairs and Education. Its goal is to reintroduce poetry, a traditionally performative art, into social situations and normal everyday life. As such, PIYPD marks the end of National Poetry Month, bringing the lessons of the month out into the rest of the year.