your source for Red Hook info

Once again you are invited to come hear some of New York's finest published authors read in a beautiful old waterfront bar. The next SUNDAYS AT SUNNY'S reading will take place at 3 p.m. on Sunday, November 4.

At this reading we’ll be taking a trip from birth to childhood to family life. If you’re considering having a baby, or know someone who is, you won’t want to miss Jennifer Block’s bold investigation of the modern childbirth and maternity care industry. If you have a young child who keeps asking difficult questions like “Why is the sky blue?,” or "What would hurt more: getting run over by a car or getting stung by a jellyfish?," you won’t want to miss Wendell Jamieson’s smart and funny round-up of answers from experts. And if you have ever struggled with the mysteries and challenges of family life, you won’t want to miss Janice Eidus’s “Grim and incisive, caustically humorous, and affecting” (Booklist) tale of a young girl growing up in the Bronx.

[Please note: read the bottom of this e-mail for news of a cool upcoming Showboat Weekend to take place aboard the Waterfront Museum barge, just half a block from Sunny’s, on Oct. 20 and 21]

The November 4 Sundays at Sunny’s reading will feature:

Jennifer Block
Novelist, author of Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care

Janice Eidus
Novelist and short story writer, author of The War of the Rosens and The Celibacy Club

Wendell Jamieson
Journalist, author of Father Knows Less Or: "Can I Cook My Sister?": One Dad's Quest to Answer His Son's Most Baffling Questions

Jennifer Block has been a journalist for eight years, writing and editing for magazines and newsweeklies, frequently covering women's health and
politics and the intersection of the two. Her work has appeared in the Village Voice, Ms., The Nation, Salon.com, ELLE, and Plenty. A former editor at Ms. magazine, Jennifer also served as an editor of the revised classic, Our Bodies, Ourselves. Pushed is her first book. Janice Eidus's new novel, The War of the Rosens has been nominated for the prestigious 2007 Sophie Brody Medal, an award for the most distinguished contribution to Jewish Literature for Adults. She's twice won the O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction, and has published five other books, including the short story collection, The Celibacy Club. She writes frequently (whimsically, seriously, & iconoclastically) about Jewish identity, popular culture, sex and gender, and being a writer/parent. Wendell Jamieson, city editor for The New York Times, has been a newspaperman for twenty years. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, acclaimed nonfiction author Helene Stapinski, and their two children, three-year-old Paulina and seven-year-old Dean-who figures prominently in Father Knows Less.

The series, co-sponsored by BookCourt bookstore (www.bookcourt.org) (718-875-3677), will continue on the first Sunday of every month at 3:00 p.m at Sunny’s, a legendary old bar on the Brooklyn waterfront in Red Hook at 253 Conover Street (between Beard & Reed Streets). You can buy books and get them signed by the authors. Suggested donation: $3. The bar (cash) will be open. Free coffee and Italian pastries and cookies will be provided. Bar telephone (only available when the bar is open): 718-625-8211.

Upcoming: Dec. 2: novelist Jonathan Tropper, poet Brenda Coultas, journalist Sean Elder.

Getting to Sunny's is easy:

By bus: take the B61 toward Red Hook from Atlantic Ave. & Court St. (or from the A train midtrain exit at Jay Street Borough Hall). Get off near the end of the line at Van Brunt & Beard streets., walk 1 block right and 1/2 block left. Or take the B77 bus down 9th Street from Park Slope (or from the Smith and 9th Street F train stop--exit at the rear of the train and come down the stairs to street level and the corner bus stop.) Take the bus in the direction of Van Brunt Street and Red Hook.

If you're driving: From Manhattan, take the Brooklyn Bridge and get off at the Court Street exit--then take a left on Cadman Plaza West, which will turn into Court St. Go about a mile, past Atlantic Avenue, and take a right on Sackett Street. Continue straight for five blocks, across the overpass over the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, and take a left on Van Brunt Street. Continue down almost to the end of Van Brunt (you'll see the waterfront up ahead) and take a right on Reed Street. Go one block and take a right on Conover Street--you'll see a big sign that says BAR. That's Sunny's.

Sunny and I hope to see you at Sunny’s on November 4...

Cheers,

Gabriel Cohen, series coordinator