Skip to main content

Two Upcoming Events in Woburn

The Woburn library is hosting two events that I think might be interesting to readers of this blog living in the Northshore.

First up, this Friday the library is holding a "Board Game Night for Adults." The press release reads:
Here's your chance to put your phone down and spend a lovely summer evening playing some excellent boardgames and meeting other boardgame enthusiasts. After the library closes for regular business on Friday, August 12th, it will reopen at 6 PM, having been magically transformed into an old school gaming parlor. We'll have some games on-hand (Chess, Checkers, Scattergories, Quelf, Scrabble and Bananagrams), but we're encouraging you to bring your favorite ones from home. If the weather cooperates, this will be an indoor/outdoor event (BYO picnic blanket). Register at the main desk by August 11th, or RSVP to rmeehan@minlib.net.I'm planning on being there to bring a few Euro-style games such as Agricola, Power Grid, and my new favorite game - Splendor.

Also, I'll be helping organize a third public reading event for writers and poets. This event will be similar to last December's Open Mike in that writers of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry are encouraged submit work to be considered. We're looking for around ten readers for the event. The library's press release includes the following additional information:
Read it, speak it, and own it at Woburn Public Library Writers’ Cabaret, a public venue for sharing short fiction and nonfiction, as well as poetry. Share your own work or come to listen to others on Thursday, September 29th in the beautiful John E. Frizzell Study Hall at 7 pm. The theme of this cabaret is “Falling”- falling in love, falling out of favor, falling flat, etc.

Those wishing to participate should contact the Woburn Writing Workshop by email at woburnwritersworkshop@gmail.com with a short description of what you would like to read as well as a sample (less than 1000 words) of your work. Submissions will be accepted from August 1st through August 24th, and the committee will choose 8 to 10 participants by August 31st.
The library will be providing lights refreshments on September 29th. To arrange handicapped access, please call (781) 933-0148. 
So, if you are available Friday or you have a piece you'd like to share in front of an audience, give these two events a try!










Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Review of R. Scott Bakker's The Darkness That Comes Before

First, a word about how I came to pick up the first novel in R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing historical fantasy series. In short, after finishing "A Dance with Dragons," by George R.R. I googled what should I read next. This series came up. I mention this because it might serve as a usual gauge for what to expect from "The Darkness That Came Before;" people liking Martin's mix of history, in-depth characterization, dark subject matter, and world-building will probably like Bakker's work. People not fond of entire chapters devoted to the Byzantine political maneuvers, a dozen pages of appendices on characters, maps, and language trees, or character names with umlauts should avoid this book. Basically, the story of 'The Darkness That Comes Before," follows a warrior monk by the name of Anasürimbur Kellhus, who during a quest to find his father, becomes entwined with a Holy War against a nation of fanatical monotheists. The story is...

Death's End by Liu Cixin

Having recently finished the last book in Liu Cixin's instant classic "The Remembrance of Earth's Past" series, Death's End, I can only report a feeling of total amazement and awe. There is so much about this novel that blew my mind, that offered different and better ways of viewing the universe. This novel did what I wish more novels would, serve up a new universe entire, evoking beauty and horror, nobility and disgust, in a timeless monument to unfettered speculation.  Obviously, in discussing the events of the last of a trilogy books, spoilers are to be expected. I am, however, going to try to avoid discussing much beyond the first 100 pages of the third novel. I read the translation of this novel, as ushered into being by the amazing talent of Ken Liu. Ken has written of a certain prickliness when it comes to translating work. He makes an effort not to anglicize the source material, not smudging away the occasional difficulties in bringing Cixin...

A Reaction to Peter Watts' "Echopraxia"

Peter Watts’ Echopraxia  is a side-sequel to his previous hard sf horror novel  Blindsight . Daniel Bruks, a biologist in the Eastern Oregonian desert, gets stuck in the middle of a war between a fugitive vampire and a cult of rewired post-humans called Bicamerals, ultimately kidnapped by them as they head towards the sun. The goal of post-human and vampire alike is to investigate a possible alien intelligence gaining strength there, to determine if it poses a threat, or offers a weapon for the two sides as they struggle for advantage. Bruks' goal is simple survival. Reading Watts is a simultaneously bracing and discouraging experience. Bracing because his depiction of the future and the oddities who inhabit it continue to get better and better, his plots more complicated and more involving, his characters less like sock-puppets for his ideas and more like actual human beings (or whatevers). Discouraging because Watts uses his considerable gifts, artistic and academic, ...