Welcome Brian Gresko!

We are delighted to welcome a new curator to the Pen Parentis Literary Salons!

Brian Gresko is the editor of the anthology When I First Held You: 22 Critically Acclaimed Writers on Fatherhood, forthcoming from Berkley Books/Penguin on Father's Day, 2014. He has contributed to The Huffington Post, and written about books and culture for Salon, TheAtlantic.com, The Daily Beast, The Paris Review Daily, The LA Review of Books, The Rumpus, and numerous other publications. Brian keeps a daily column on parenting and gender politics for Babble, where he often writes about balancing his writing life with caring for his son. In print, Brian's work has appeared in Glimmer Train Stories and Slice Literary Magazine. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from The New School, and studied film and literary theory at Oberlin College. Please visit his website for links and more information.

Brian will join us in September as we bid a fond farewell to our fantastic first curator, Arlaina Tibensky – who will still attend Salons as a regular, whenever she can fit it into her busy schedule. We are so honored to have Brian join our ranks!

So if you are an author with kids – or know an author who is also a parent who writes fiction that knocks your socks off, please email Brian at info@penparentis.org - now booking Spring 2014!

Snazzy Brian.

We interrupt this blog with an important Fellowship announcement!

I promised you Brooklyn's Peter von Ziegesar, and you shall have him -- next week.

This week we are delighted to announce that the winner of the 2013-2014 Pen Parentis Writing Fellowship for New Parents is JOHN JODZIO from Minneapolis, MN.  His story grabs you right up front and never lets you go - it is funny, yes, but funny in the way that real life is. You can't believe it. You refuse to believe it. And ultimately you must believe it--and then you have to laugh so you don't cry.

It's a terrific story and we are looking forward to presenting him with his $1000 check on September 10th at our Salon at the Andaz Wall Street. He will be reading alongside Liz Rosenberg and Will Allison.  Do join us at 7pm at the Andaz Wall Street in Lower Manhattan. Admission is free. Drinks are at happy hour pricing.

Can't make the Salon? Don't worry! For the first time this year, the unparalleled literary magazine Brain, Child is going to be publishing the winning story.

The stories this year were amazing. Check these two cool info-graphics to see where the entries were from and how many kids the entrants have.

CLICK HERE for the complete winners list.

And come back next week for Peter von Ziegesar's description of a book tour with his teenaged daughter to the midwest...

The post-hurricane blog

Remember that old thing you learned in English class about the "types of literary conflict" where one was Man vs. Nature?

Yeah. We're losing that one.

I suppose you've heard by now that the November 13th Pen Parentis Literary Salon was canceled. Our lovely host, the Andaz Wall Street, is not yet open for business after Sandy. (I keep thinking of Sandy as a Tarantino character who initially looks all wild and cool but then kills without remorse for so many scenes that you ultimately can't like her anymore.)

She killed our November salon. It feels like a personal defeat - In four years, I haven't ever canceled. Not when the restaurant "forgot" to tell the new manager that we existed. Not when Arlaina or I had personal emergencies that took us out of town. Not when there was a January blizzard. Not ever.  But this time, the whole neighborhood is suffering and we are just another bit of collateral damage. So okay. We step back and we rebuild. Again.

I know there are those of you out there who have lost more than just an event (my home lost heat but we are bundled up and will be fine) and for you who need them, I have these resources from the Fractured Atlas Blog including very good advice from ArtsReady, a nonprofit that takes care of artists affected by natural disasters.

In the meantime I'm going to work on our December 11th event - you'll recall that our December events are huge and fun and fundraiser-ish...we hope this one with Amy Sohn, Josh Henkin, Robin Black and the author of Triburbia, Karl Taro Greenfeld will blow you out of the water.

So to speak.

While I am off working on this in our unheated offices, I have a huge treat for you. Guest blogging for the next two or three blogs is a really cool member of Pen Parentis - Geoff Kirsch, who is a writer and part-time stay-at-home dad in Juneau, Alaska. He has published one book-length piece of humor, Run For Your Life Doomsday 2012! His work has also appeared in/on Comedy Central, Huffington Post and Adventure Cyclist and other national magazines. I'm really excited that he offered to guest-blog, not only because he's a wonderful writer but also because, well, he's from Alaska and he's a member. That's just...awesome.  

I totally can't wait.

New page in Salon history

A lot of you who follow this blog, I count as my friends - and as such, I want to take a little break from trying to inspire all writers who are parents and just sit back with a cup of coffee and thank you for everything you've ever done for me. You know who you are: I emailed or called you or you replied to a desperate Tweet or FB post and when you found me struggling to get my ass over whichever fence was currently in my way, you gave me either the shove or the swift kick in the rear to get me the rest of the way over. I'm being all facetious but that's my nature - so let me drop the eternal sarcasm and tell you seriously and with all warmth: thank you for not giving up on me.

Thanks to your belief, the Pen Parentis Literary Salons were picked up by Andaz. Starting on the Second Tuesday of September (which happens to land smack-dab on my least favorite day of the year, thanks to the fact that since 2001 I've lived one block from the madness) and going until May from 7pm -9pm, please join me at the Andaz. They have a spectacular bar and food menu - my favorite drink is the 'corpse-revivier' - and have been so welcoming and excited to host the Salons that I am shaking my head wondering why I never left the last million times they invited me.

For you, because you are so lovely, here's the messy story. Ready?

In late 2008, I was looking for a place to house a salon that Arlaina Tibensky and I were vaguely considering. We thought it would be inspiring to hear from a bunch of authors who had somehow managed to find time to write despite having little kids. I had date night with my husband at a "new Todd English" restaurant that had just opened nearby. It was overbooked, but the hostess was happy to let us eat "in the library"...one look at the floor-to-ceiling books and I knew Pen Parentis had found its home. It took a little negotiating to convince the GM of the place that we weren't a book club, but once he got the idea he was grudgingly interested in giving us a trial. We? Completely in love with our new space.

Once we had a location, we aimed higher: thought it would be great to hear from people who were able to actually manage to publish something great despite having kids. "Great" was loosely defined as: we liked it, or had heard of it and really wanted to read it. Luckily Arlaina and I have wonderfully divergent taste in books, so that she'd invite people I hadn't heard of and I suggested people she was wary of (our earliest meetings were fairly hilarious). What stunned us was the overwhelmingly positive response we got from everyone: even people like Jonathan Lethem, who we had tracked up to Maine where he has a secluded writing cabin, were intrigued by our idea. And others were positively gracious; Jennifer Egan and Deborah Copaken Kogan not only read for us but also gave us names of friends who had kids, who were also great writers. Arlaina and I were astonished by how many of the writers who were successful had a small tight community of other writer-parents to hang out with. Our salons mattered to people. Each time we'd present a pair of authors, at least one of them would tell us they ached for this sort of a group when their kids were really little.

Pen Parentis grew up around that idea. Building a community of writers that are parents has been a spectacular job - and social media has grown up with us, so that now we have not only this blog, but a Twitter feed (@PenParentis) and a Facebook page (www.facebook.com/penparentis) as well as our website. We just started a private LinkedIN group to allow for the kinds of intimate discussions that happen all the time at our salons -- if you or anyone you know is a writer with kids - please feel free to request membership! It's free and we'd love a huge active group!

Sorry - got off story!!  I was telling you about our move.  So over the years we learned that the location was a property that was used to train new managers. Over the three years, I met something in the line of seven restaurant managers, three events managers, four sales managers, and at least four GMs. Each time I called it seemed someone had moved on or was about to be replaced. It was a little exhausting to explain, over and over, that no, we were not a book club. Not even a "high-end" book club. But the library kept us. Brass railings, candles, and most importantly, books that someone lovingly chose - all of them were books a real human being might read. All the way to the ceiling.

Then this summer rolled around. We had our first community-wide children's lit festival. 175 people turned out. It was magic. I called up our space to make sure we were on track for September only to discover the whole restaurant had closed. The new GM was in the middle of ripping out the bookshelves. He told me I would be delighted with the results - it would be a lovely country Italian place. 

Like Harry's Italian across the street? I asked, or more like the expensive Italian around the corner?

He was ripping out the books. I felt justified in being a little bit mean.

But no hard feelings. I knew right where to go. The GM of Andaz Wall Street was constantly wondering if I was ready for a new location. I had always passionately loved his property: they brought in a farmers' market, opened an outdoor bier garden, their staff had always been so lovely to me. I loved going to Wall and Water to eat, it's by far one of the best restaurants downtown. The bar downstairs is sleek and spectacular. Really, all Andaz hotels are a vision, they just feel special the second you walk in. And how great was it to finally find a GM who loved the idea of hosting a series of literary salons. They showed me a lovely space with floor to ceiling windows - showed me where they would set up a bar. They were gracious and welcoming and excited to work with us to promote the event. It was a whole new partnership.

So now I share this excitement with you. We've worked hard to book gorgeous writers for this upcoming season. Our Fellowship winner, Sarah Gerkensmeyer is flying in from Fredonia to accept her award and read her winning story. September 11, 7pm -9pm - come to the second floor of 75 Wall Street (in the Andaz Hotel) and let us entertain you. You deserve it. You know you do.