Hosted by
Lisa McLaughlin
Wednesday, December 23rd, 7:00 p.m.
M. Thomas Gammarino reads from his book
Big In Japan
While playing to lackluster crowds in their hometown of Philadelphia, progressive rock band Agenbite clings to the comforting half-truth that they're doing better in Japan. When their manager agrees to send them on a shoestring tour of that country, however, they're swiftly forced to give up their illusions and return Stateside.
All but one of them, that is.
Brain Tedesco, the band's variously haunted chief composer, has fallen in love with a part-time sex worker--the first woman ever to have touched him--and his illusions have only just begun. What ensues is a Dantesque coming-of-age tale in which Brain must navigate the borderlands between fantasy and reality, past and present, sex and death--even as forces beyond his control conspire to undo him.
By turns compassionate and ruthless, erotic and grotesque, riotously serious and deadly funny, Big in Japan: A Ghost Story is a sparkling, gut-wrenching debut novel. Dealing humorously but also quite ruthlessly with the Caucasian male's sexual attraction to the Asian female, this is not one of those tell-all sexcapades books. It's a strong novel that will leave many young men squirming at perhaps an all-too-clear reflection of their own desires.
About Big in Japan, PF Kluge writes, "From Susie Wong to Madame Butterfly to Miss Saigon: you might think that we've had enough of American men adventuring, scoring, and coming undone in the Far East. But you'd be wrong. Thomas Gammarino's Big In Japan is a shrewd and lively book, sharp-eyed and unsparing... The writing is wired and the ultimate judgement is merciless. It's seductive and it's devastating." Writer Ron Currie Jr. (God is Dead) wrote, "Gammarino has created a perfect hero for the Age of Anxiety." He also praised Gammarino's "pitch-perfect dialogue and startling metaphors."
Rocky Sullivan's is pleased to welcome the
Last Wednesday Series Reading and Open Mike to Brooklyn, in collaboration with the
Seven Towers Agency.
The Last Wednesday Series Reading and Open Mike will run simultaneously in Cassidy's Bar, Westmoreland St, Dublin 2 and Rocky Sullivan's on, indeed, the last Wednesday of every month.
A showcase event for published writers as well as a showcase and peer review event for new and upcoming writers. Resident writers at The Last Wednesday Series in Ireland, MC'd by Declan McLoughlin currently include Ross Hattaway, Oran Ryan, Noel Ó Briain and Steve Conway.
Resident writers at The Last Wednesday Series in Brooklyn, MC'd by Lisa McLaughlin, will include Quincy Lehr, R. Nemo Hill and Rick Mullin.
If you would like to read, come at 7pm to sign up or contact Lisa McLaughlin.
Michael Atkinson
Hemingway Deadlights
Clifford D. Conner
Arthur O'Connor: The Most Important Irish Revolutionary You May Have Never Heard Of
Brian DeLeeuw
In This Way I Was Saved
Mary Beth Keane
The Walking People
Daniel Scott
Pay This Amount
Alan Black
Kick in the Balls: An Offensive Suburban Odyssey
Stefan Merrill Block
The Story of Forgetting
Joseph Caldwell
The Pig Did It
Rachel Cline
My Liar
T.J. English
Havana Nocturne:
How the Mob Owned Cuba and Then Lost It to the Revolution
Leonard Getz
From Broadway to the Bowery:
A History and Filmography of the Dead End Kids, Little Tough Guys, East Side Kids and Bowery Boys Films
N.S. Köenings
Theft
Michael Patrick MacDonald
Easter Rising: A Memoir of Roots and Rebellion
Oran Ryan
Poet and Author of Ten Short Novels by Arthur Kruger
Rachel Shukert
Have You No Shame?
C.J. Sullivan
Wild Tales From the Police Blotter
Jess Winfield
Freebird Books' Shakespeare Crawl through Red Hook
Solon Timothy Woodward
Cadillac Orpheus
Sol Yurick
"The Warriors"
Rich Blake
The Day Donny Herbert Woke Up
Daniel Cassidy
How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads
Bryan Charles
Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way
Peter Duffy
The Killing of Major Dennis Mahon, A Mystery of Old Ireland
John J. Finucane
When the Bronx Burned
Charles J. Hynes
Triple Homicide
John Kearns
Dreams and Dull Realities
Tom Kitts
Ray Davies: Not Like Everybody Else
Shelley Jackson
Half Life
Matt Marinovich
Strange Skies
Jeff Somers
The Electric Church
