Join us for our FREE Lit Fest event showcasing New Jersey local and emerging voices: Marina Antropow Cramer, Richard Klin, Johnny Lorenz, Dawn Raffel, and Frank Rubino. Start your morning at the festival with these inspiring writers!
10:15 in the YA room at the Montclair Public Library ___ Marina Antrapow Cramer - Born in postwar Germany into a family of refugees from the Soviet Union, Marina Antropow Cramer has enjoyed the benefit of lifelong ties to the Russian expatriate community on both sides of the Atlantic. She holds a BA degree in English from Upsala College in East Orange, NJ. Her work has been performed by Roselee Blooston's Short Story Theater, as part of the non-profit Tunnel Vision Writers' Project, which showcased spoken word, music, and visual art projects. Her short stories have appeared online in Blackbird Literary Journal, Istanbul Literary Review, and Wilderness House Literary Review. Between 1985 and 2002, she owned and operated The Cup and Chaucer Bookstore in Montclair, NJ. When its doors closed, she worked for Watchung booksellers, a fellow Montclair bookseller, until 2014, when she left bookselling to focus on writing full-time. She now lives in New York's Hudson Valley. Roads is her first novel.
Richard Klin's novel, Petroleum Transfer Engineer (Underground Voices), is set at the Jersey shore, circa 1983. The author of two nonfiction books, his work has been featured on Public Radio International's Studio 360 and has appeared in the Atlantic, the Brooklyn Rail, the Forward,Akashic Books' "Thursdaze' series, Flyover Country Review, and many others. www.richardklin.com
Johnny Lorenz is the son of Brazilian immigrants to the U.S., and he received his doctorate in English from the University of Texas at Austin in 2000. He is an associate professor at Montclair State University. His poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Quiddity, Rattapallax and the anthology Luso-American Literature. In 2013, he was a finalist for Best Translated Book for his translation of A Breath of Life by Clarice Lispector (New Directions), and his translation of Lispector's The Besieged City will appear in April 2019. His book of poems, Education by Windows, was published by Poets & Traitors Press in the summer of 2018. Photo Credit: Bernie Dechant
Dawn Raffel's new book is The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies. It’s the true story of the “incubator doctor” of Coney Island and Atlantic City who saved premature infants by placing them in sideshows on the boardwalk. NPR chose it as one of the great reads of 2018, describing it as “a mosaic mystery told in vignettes, cliffhangers, curious asides, and some surreal plot twists as Raffel investigates the secrets of the man who changed infant care in America.” Previous books include an illustrated memoir, The Secret Life of Objects, a novel, and two story collections. Photo Credit: Claire Holt
Frank Rubino’s poetry has been published in Vending Machine, DMQ Review, The Cape Rock, Caliban Online, Caveat Lector, Inscape, The Oleander Review, The World, and Little Light, among others. His poem, I'm Alive was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Carbon Culture Review. He’s performed his poetry since 1982, reading at St. Mark’s Poetry Project, The Ear Inn, The Cornelia Street Cafe, and numerous other locations in and around NYC. Like most other poets he knows, Rubino has a job— in a tech startup. He Instagrams as @xmlnovelist and lives in New Jersey.
