Recent Articles from RiR Author

Shelly Oria

By BrooklynTheBorough

Shelly Oria is our guest contributor this month. She was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Israel. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Shelly’s fiction has appeared in McSweeney’s, Quarterly West, cream city review, and fivechapters among other places. She curates the series Sweet! Actors Reading Writers in the East Village, teaches fiction at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop, and is the co-producer of Literary Death Match Tel Aviv. Shelly was awarded the 2008 Indiana Review Fiction Prize for her story “New York 1, Tel Aviv 0,” and is currently completing her first story collection, which carries the same title. She is represented by Janklow & Nesbit Associates in New York. Watch her reading at the Franklin Park Reading Series in October 2010.

Graphic Novelist Martin Lemelman

By BrooklynTheBorough

Martin Lemelman grew up in the back of a candy store in Brooklyn, and his graphic memoir Two Cents Plain, released in August, tells the story of his boyhood. Lemelman has been a freelance illustrator since 1976. In 2007 he released the graphic novel Mendel’s Daughter, a sort of memoir told in the voice of his mother, Gusta, a Holocaust survivor. He has illustrated more than thirty children’s books and his work has appeared in numerous magazines. Lemelman is a Professor in the Communication Design Department at Kutztown University and lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania, with his wife.

Deanna Fei

By BrooklynTheBorough

Deanna Fei is the author of the novel A Thread of Sky (Penguin Press, 2010), a New York Times Editors’ Choice and an Indie Next Notable Book. She was born in Flushing, New York, and has lived in Beijing and Shanghai, China. A graduate of Amherst College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has received a Fulbright Grant and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. A resident of Prospect Heights, she teaches in public schools and blogs at the Huffington Post.

Nathan Ward

By BrooklynTheBorough

Nathan Ward is BrooklynTheBorough.com’s Reader in Residence for June 2010. Look for his posts all month about the Brooklyn waterfront, which is the subject of new book, Dark Harbor: The War for the New York Waterfront, out this month from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Ward was an editor with American Heritage and has written for The New York Times and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, not far from the Red Hook piers. Check out his blog at http://darkharborbook.blogspot.com.

Each Thursday throughout the month of June, Ward will be on hand to introduce screenings of films about the New York waterfront at Freebird Books, located on Columbia Street. All four movies depict the more sordid side of New York stevedoring in the wake of newspaper exposes and crime commissions in the 1940s and ‘50s. A fifth bonus film will follow the launch party for Dark Harbor on Sunday, June 6. The first movie, screening Thursday, June 3, at 8 pm (outdoors if the weather permits, otherwise indoors) will be Port of New York starring Yul Brenner. For more info on the film series and the launch party, visit http://freebirdbooks.blogspot.com/

David Goodwillie

By BrooklynTheBorough

David Goodwillie is the author of the acclaimed novel American Subversive, and the memoir Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time, for which he was named one of the “Best New Writers of 2006” by members of the PEN American Center. He is a regular contributor to The Daily Beast, and his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous magazines, journals, and websites, including New York, Men’s Health, Black Book, the New York Times, the New York Post, The New York Observer, The Rumpus and Deadspin. He has also played professional baseball, worked as a private investigator, and been an expert at Sotheby’s. A graduate of Kenyon College, he lives and works in New York City.

Ryan Britt

By Nicole Brydson

Ryan Britt will spend the month of April writing one short fiction story per week set in a Brooklyn neighborhood. Ryan’s writing has been published with Nerve, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood and is forthcoming in Opium, and Clarkesworld. He has performed stories on stage with The Liar Show, The Moth, Stripped Stories, and Heeb. Ryan’s plays have enjoyed staged readings and full productions in New York City with Collective Unconscious, The Longest Lunch Theatre Company and The Tank. From 2008-2009 he wrote a short story every day and posted them to his blog called “Side Affects,” He lives in Brooklyn.

Matthue Roth

By Nicole Brydson

Matthue Roth is the author, most recently, of Losers, a geek-punk novel about Russian Jewish immigrant hackers, and the memoir Yom Kippur a Go-Go. He’s also the co-creator of animated Torah video series G-dcast.com. His first screenplay, 1/20, is currently in postproduction. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and …