The Hudson Valley Writers Guild announces a reading by three local writers in its Community of Writers series. The reading by journalist Steve Barnes, poet/activist Nancy Klepsch and novelist Tom Swyers will be on Sunday, March 26, from 2-4 p.m. in the second floor Community Room at the Albany Public Library, 161 Washington Avenue, Albany. The reading is free and open to the public.
Steve Barnes is senior writer and restaurant columnist for the Albany Times Union, where he has worked for more than 20 years. In addition to covering local restaurants and the arts, he was commissioned by “The Colbert Report” to review a strip club from an aesthetic perspective, and he was once booed by an arena full of people after Billy Joel mentioned him by name from the stage. His “Table Hopping” blog, the most popular individually authored blog on timesunion.com, draws more than 400,000 readers per month. A proud resident of downtown Albany, where a cannon fired down Pearl Street after 5 p.m. would now actually kill someone, he has taught journalism at the University at Albany for the past 11 years.
Nancy Klepsch is a teacher, poet and community activist. She just recently finished leading a project called Breathing These Words to provide pop up poetry readings and workshops to youth and seniors and to create poetry walks around the topic of vacant buildings through Breathing Lights (www.breathinglights.com). Her poems have been published in The Altar Collective, Sinister Wisdom, Oberon, 13th Moon and Chronogram among others, and online on Barzakh and AlbanyPoets.com. She is the co-host, with Dan Wilcox, of the Second Sunday @ 2 open mic for poetry and prose in Troy, NY, where she lives, and one of the founders of Riverside Community Press.
Tom Swyers studied creative writing at the New York State Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore College. He is an attorney, New York State judge and award-winning author. His debut novel, Saving Babe Ruth, was a 2015 recipient of two Benjamin Franklin Book Awards for “Best First Book, Fiction” (first place) and “Best Popular Fiction” (second place). This spring, he plans to release his second novel: a legal thriller entitled The Killdeer Connection. It is set in Albany and its surroundings, as well as in North Dakota. He grew up in Niskayuna and lives there with his family today.
For more information about this event, contact Dan Wilcox at dwlcx@earthlink.net or (518) 482-0262.
