Reading announcement!

Sunday, June 9th at Unnameable Books

On Sunday June 9th, 7pm, at Unnameable Books in Brooklyn, I’ll be reading with Walker Rutter-Bowman and Jonathan Woollen. Musical accompaniment by Jarrod Annis.

The theme is MONOLOGUES, inspired by our collective love of talky songs–ones that blend narration and music. The Clientele’s “Losing Haringey,” The Velvet Underground’s “The Gift,” Robert Wyatt’s “Pigs…(In There)” etc etc. You can listen to Walker’s fantastic collection of them HERE. 

It took years of floating in the same social circles for Jonathan, Walker, and me to click. J & W both lived in DC for a long time and had mutual friends, but somehow eluded each other. Jonathan and I were loosely acquainted through his position as the events coordinator at the Politics & Prose bookstore in DC and my publicity job at New Directions.

The three of us finally converged in 2021, shortly after they both moved to New York. Jonathan had just started as a publicist a FSG, and Walker as a publicist at Deep Vellum/Dalkey. The details in my memory are fuzzy, but I believe it was Jonathan who first proposed that we all meet for beers and (surprisingly good) hot dogs at Adirondack on a Tuesday. We hit it off immediately, talking late into the night about music, books, movies, and industry gossip. “Did you hear [inexplicably buff translator] works for the CIA?” 

We made plans to do it again–same time, same place–so we did, and then again and again and again. The bartender now greets us with “the gang’s all here!” and serves tequila shots on the house, although to be honest, we take them perfunctorily. Eventually, like all things you have strong feelings about, we gave it a nickname: Publicity Tuesday.

We have a fourth seat for occasional guests, including Jarrod, the marketing manager at Transit Books, writer for Aquarium Drunkard, player of slide guitar, former manager of Greenlight Bookstore, current friend, and new father (congrats Jarrod!).

In addition to being publicists, Walker is a fiction writer (I particularly loved his story “The Detective”), and Jonathan is a translator from French, writer, and music cataloger extraordinaire. Yes, it’s a cliché that everyone who works in publishing is also a writer, but at least with these two, they’re extremely talented. 

It’s going to be a fun event. Friends, I hope you can make it. If you’re a reader of this newsletter that I haven’t met yet, I’d love for you to come and introduce yourself.

Walker Rutter-Bowman received his MFA from Syracuse University. He has received fellowships from the Edward Albee Foundation and the Ucross Foundation. His work has been published in Joyland, Southwest Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Jonathan Woollen is a French-to-English translator originally from North Carolina. He currently works in marketing at Farrar, Straus and Giroux and previously led the in-store author event program at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, DC.

Brittany Dennison writes this newsletter and loves her friends very much. 

Strangely, sadly, I don’t have a picture of all of us, so you’ll have to make do with this one I took of Walker and Jonathan watching the Knicks lose their final game in the 2024 playoffs. 

<3 

Sunday, June 9th, 7pm
Unnameable Books in Brooklyn
Readings by yours truly, Walker Rutter-Bowman, and Jonathan Woollen
Music by Jarrod Annis