EVENT!!! Join me at the 440 Gallery on Sunday, August 20 at 4pm.
Author Loretta Goldberg and I read from our novels, followed by Q&A and refreshments. While you’re there, take in Robin Epstein’s collage series, “In the Vortex: My Trauma Chronicles.”
The 440 Gallery is located at 440 Sixth Avenue @ Ninth Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
I’m thrilled to read with Loretta Goldberg, whose panoramic novel, The Reversible Mask: An Elizabethan Spy Novel, brings 1500s Europe to life through the dilemmas and exploits of Edward Latham, Elizabethan adventurer and double agent with a conscience. See below.
On view through August 27. Robin Epstein’s powerful Vortex collages, a series of inner explorations of coping with workplace and other trauma.
“Under New Management” by Robin Epstein
Reading: Sarah Relyea and Loretta Goldberg
Playground Zero by Sarah Relyea. 1968. Siren songs and loosened bonds. War, campaign slogans, and assassination. When the Raysons leave D.C. for the gathering anarchy of Berkeley, twelve-year-old Alice embraces the moment in America’s cultural ground zero. Feeling estranged from her family and school, Alice falls in with Jim and Valerie Dupres, who have been learning the ropes on Telegraph Avenue and camping out in People’s Park. As family and school fade away in a tear-gas fog, Alice feels an ambiguous freedom. Caught up in a rebellion that feels equally compelling and absurd, Alice could become a casualty—or she could defy the odds and become her own person. One thing is sure: there’s no going back.
Sarah Relyea’s Playground Zero (She Writes Press, 2020) was an International Book Awards and a Readers’ Favorite Book Awards finalist. Sarah grew up in Berkeley during the counterculture movement of the 1960s. As a young girl, she went to the infamous Altamont concert and frequented Telegraph Avenue. She would soon swap California’s psychedelic scene to study English literature at Harvard. A PhD who has taught at universities in New York and Taiwan, she has long addressed questions of identity, including in her book of literary criticism, Outsider Citizens: The Remaking of Postwar Identity in Wright, Beauvoir, and Baldwin. Sarah lives with her partner, Robin Epstein, in Brooklyn, New York.
The Reversible Mask by Loretta Goldberg. Plunge back into the sixteenth century with author Loretta Goldberg. Meet Edward Latham, Elizabethan adventurer and double agent with a conscience. In a time of relentless religious wars and upending discoveries of lands and inventions, can Edward balance his Catholic faith with his love of his Protestant country? As he roams Europe and Constantinople penetrating plots and battle plans, can he protect family, servants, and bed mates male and female, while thwarting the destruction of his birth country by the Catholic patrons who pay his salary?
Loretta Goldberg’s award-winning debut historical novel, The Reversible Mask: An Elizabethan Spy Novel, was published in 2019 by MadeGlobal Publishing. After earning a B.A. (Hons.) in English Literature, History and Music from the University of Melbourne, Australia, she taught English Literature at the university’s English Department. Not ready for a career in words, she took up a Fulbright Scholarship in Music to the USA as a professional pianist, specializing in premiering new music; her CDs are in over 700 libraries. In addition, G. Schirmer published her edition of a Franz Liszt piano work she discovered. To make a solid living, she built an insurance/investment practice. After selling it, she returned to her love of words. She is co-chair of The Historical Novel Society’s NY Chapter, and a member of The Authors Guild and PEN Women.
Come eat, drink, and enjoy warmth and fun in a stimulating afternoon. Seating is limited.
Sarah Relyea
Sarah Relyea is the author of Playground Zero, a coming-of-age novel for adults about the 1960s. Playground Zero is published by She Writes Press and available wherever books are sold.
