Join us for a discussion of Ira Levin's novel Rosemary's Baby and its 1968 adaptation by auteur Roman Polanski
Rosemary Woodhouse and her struggling actor husband Guy move into the Bramford, an old New York City apartment building with an ominous reputation and mostly elderly residents. Neighbors Roman and Minnie Castavet soon come nosing around to welcome the Woodhouses to the building, and despite Rosemary's reservations about their eccentricity and the weird noises that she keeps hearing, her husband takes a shine to them.
Shortly after Guy lands a plum Broadway role, Rosemary becomes pregnant—and the Castavets start taking a special interest in her welfare. As the sickened Rosemary becomes increasingly isolated, she begins to suspect that the Castavets' circle is not what it seems...
The Double Negative Book Club is a discussion group in which a work of literature is examined in reference to its on-screen (film or TV) adaptation. October attendees will be reading a 50th anniversary edition of Rosemary's Baby. The film is available to rent via iTunes, Amazon Prime, and through the Las Vegas-Clark County Library district. Please note: The Writer's Block will not be screening Rosemary's Baby.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL REVISITED
Saturday December 07 @ 01:00PM - Saturday December 21 @ 02:00PM
WRITING WORKSHOP FOR STUDENTS AGES 9-12
SATURDAYS, DECEMBER 7, 14 & 21 FROM 1PM-2PM
The ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future are back and they are on the hunt for a new mission. Will they set another lost soul on the path to inner wisdom and intrinsic joy? Might they choose to retire, leaving the job postings open for new ghostly candidates? Only you know what they will do next.
This workshop will be the first to include an arts-and-crafts section—young writers will design the front cover to the hardcover copy of their book.
Registration for this workshop will close on Monday, December 2nd at 11:59pm. Parents will be notified of entry into the class by Tuesday, December 3rd. If more than 14 attendees register, there will be a random lottery to assign placement in the class.
THE SMELLY PRESENT
Saturday December 07 @ 11:00AM - Saturday December 21 @ 12:00PM
WRITING WORKSHOP FOR STUDENTS AGES 5-8
SATURDAYS, DECEMBER 7, 14 & 21 FROM 11AM-12PM
Behind the stockings and the twinkling lights of the tree, an odd smell emanates through the branches of pine and dangling decorations. The pungent and putrescent odor seems to be coming from one of the innocuous gifts bound in ribbon and festive tape. Why does the present smell so terribly? And who does the package belong to? These answers and more await those who dare to ask.
Registration for this workshop will close on Monday, December 2nd at 11:59pm. Parents will be notified of entry into the class by Tuesday, December 3rd. If more than 14 attendees register, there will be a random lottery to assign placement in the class.
WILLY VLAUTIN
Monday December 09 | 6:00PM - 7:00PM
THE AUTHOR OF DON'T SKIP OUT ON ME AND MOTEL LIFE
Nevada Humanities presents Willy Vlautin, Nevada's own award-winning author and musician on tour as a featured 2019 Nevada Reads author. Mr. Vlautin is the author of Don’t Skip Out On Me—a moving story about a young man’s search for belonging. The novel is a 2019 pick for Nevada Reads—a statewide, public book club offered by Nevada Humanities. Join Mr. Vlautin at the Writer's Block for a night of readings, a Q+A, and maybe a little bit of music too.
Additionally, as part of the 2019 Nevada Reads tour, Mr. Vlautin will be featured at a number of other locations throughout the Las Vegas area in early December. You can find more information about dates and locations here.
Willy Vlautin is the author of The Free, Lean on Pete, Northline, The Motel Life, and Don't Skip Out on Me. He is the singer and songwriter of the band Richmond Fontaine and a member of the band The Delines. He lives outside Portland, Oregon.
This event is free and open to the public.
Nevada Reads is a program of Nevada Humanities. Full details at nevadahumanities.org.
PLEASE SEND NOODLES BOOK CLUB
Wednesday December 11 | 6:00PM - 8:00PM
AN EATING-COOKING-READING-EATING-EATING-TOGETHER COOKBOOK CLUB
Love to cook? Wish you cooked more? Love eating and talking about food and great food writing? Join us as we devour Samin Nosrat's Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking
Every month, Please Send Noodles will introduce a cookbook, pore over it, discuss the food, cooking techniques, where to buy ingredients, and then, cook from the book for a month and come back together for a potluck we cooked right from the book. All cooks and eaters welcome, from beginner to pro. The mission: to create a beautiful community around cooking and eating together.
We will introduce a new book every month, have cookbook authors and chefs pop in for demos and talks, and will trouble-shoot recipes in an on-going Facebook group, then come back together for food and discussion about the book. This group will get you cooking!
For the second meeting on December 11th, the group will convene for a potluck featuring dishes from Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.
Members (prospective members included) can see what other people are planning to make right here, and can register with their own dish here.
BOOK RELEASE AND READING WITH ANGELA M. BROMMEL, AUTHOR OF MOJAVE IN JULY, WITH HEATHER LANG AND SAMUEL PICCONE
In Mojave in July Angela Brommel walks a tightrope between desert and neon, the natural and the social, eco science and pop culture, always with a keen observational eye, luscious language, and scintillating imagery. Throughout these brilliant and intelligent poems, Brommel's attention to the senses is exquisite, especially taste, which is often the sense addressed least in poetry. Continually delicious and trenchant, these poems rock!
Angela M. Brommel is a Nevada writer with Iowa roots. Her poetry has been published in The Best American Poetry blog, The North American Review, The Literary Review's (TLR) Share, and many other journals and anthologies. A 2018 Red Rock Canyon Artist in Residence, Angela served as the inaugural poet of the program. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, and an MA in Theatre from the University of Northern Iowa. Mojave in July is her debut full- length poetry collection. Angela is the Executive Director of the Office of Arts & Culture as well as affiliate faculty in Humanities at Nevada State College. You can also find her at The Citron Review as Editor-in-Chief.
BOURBON BOOK CLUB
Thursday January 09 | 6:00PM - 7:30PM
A BOOK DISCUSSION PAIRED WITH WHISKEY
For January, Bourbon Book Club attendees will discuss Otessa Moshfegh's 2016 novel, Eileen
The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father’s caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys’ prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes. When the bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counselor at Moorehead, Eileen is enchanted and proves unable to resist what appears at first to be a miraculously budding friendship. In a Hitchcockian twist, her affection for Rebecca ultimately pulls her into complicity in a crime that surpasses her wildest imaginings.
Played out against the snowy landscape of coastal New England in the days leading up to Christmas, young Eileen’s story is told from the gimlet-eyed perspective of the now much older narrator. Creepy, mesmerizing, and sublimely funny, in the tradition of Shirley Jackson and early Vladimir Nabokov, this powerful debut novel enthralls and shocks, and introduces one of the most original new voices in contemporary literature.
The Book Club discussion will be complemented by a bourbon selected and provided by The Whiskey Attic. Attendees are expected to have read the book in advance.
THE BELIEVER PRESENTS: CARMEN MARIA MACHADO
Wednesday January 29 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
THE AUTHOR OF HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES IN CONVERSATION WITH NIELA ORR
Black Mountain Institute and The Writer’s Block are proud to present Carmen Maria Machado, whose debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. Machado will read from and discuss her genre-bending memoir, In the Dream House—an account of a relationship gone toxic, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms of psychological abuse. Machado will discuss her work with The Believer’s deputy editor, Niela Orr.
Carmen Maria Machado’s essays, fiction, and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, The Believer,Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, and Best American Nonrequired Reading. A 2019 Gugenheim Fellow, Machado is currently the Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia with her wife.
Niela Orr is a Deputy Editor of The Believer, a columnist at The Baffler, and a contributing editor of The Organist podcast. A 2019 Eleanor Kagi Foundation Writer-in-Residence at the Black Mountain Institute, her writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, BuzzFeed, Elle, Glamour, Harper's Bazaar, and McSweeney's Quarterly.
This event is free and open to the public.
BMI PRESENTS: KRISTEN ARNETT & LISA KO
Thursday February 06 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
AN EVENING WITH 2020 SHEARING FELLOWS KRISTEN ARNETTAND LISA KO
Incoming Black Mountain Institute Fellows Kristen Arnett (Mostly Dead Things) and Lisa Ko (The Leavers) kick off their residencies with an evening of readings and conversation
Kristen Arnettis a queer fiction and essay writer and the author of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestselling debut novel, Mostly Dead Things. A columnist for Literary Hub, her work has also appeared in North American Review, The Normal School, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, Guernica, Electric Literature, McSweeneys, PBS Newshour, Bennington Review, Tin House/The Guardian, Salon, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Her story collection, Felt in the Jaw was published by Split Lip Press and was awarded the 2017 Coil Book Award.
Lisa Ko is the author of The Leavers, which won the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. She was also a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction, the 2018 PEN/Hemingway Award, and the 2017 Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award. Ko's writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2016, The New York Times, BuzzFeed, and O The Oprah Magazine. Born in Queens and raised in New Jersey, she lives in Brooklyn.
