Book Markers: 06.12.14
Alice McDermott Online
Why fight it? Let’s go deep digital: A “virtual author talk” with Alice McDermott will crackle to life onscreen at the East Hampton Library on Monday, when Tom Beer, the books editor at Newsday, leads a discussion about the author’s latest, “Someone.”
The novel, which was on the long list for a 2013 National Book Award for fiction, traces the highs and lows of an Irish Catholic family in Brooklyn before the Great Depression. The talk will happen from noon to 1 p.m., with time for questions and answers. Registration is with the reference desk.
Ms. McDermott has been a summertime visitor to East Hampton since she was a child.
A Return to Fiction
Alexis De Veaux, Harlem born and raised, is known for a couple of substantial, well-received nonfiction volumes, “Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde” and “Don’t Explain: A Song of Billie Holiday.” Now, however, she’s returning to an early love, fiction, with “Yabo,” just out from Redbone Press. She’ll read from it on Saturday at 5 p.m. at Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor.
Ms. De Veaux’s work is said to be concerned with “making the racial and sexual experiences of black female characters central, and disrupting boundaries between forms” — the new book, for example, blends prose and poetry.
She is a partner with another poet and political activist, Kathy Engel of Sagaponack and N.Y.U., in Lyrical Democracies, a literary organization that offers projects in community-building and workshops on language and social action. The group is sponsoring Saturday’s reading.
In “The Best Emerging Poets”
Caitlin Doyle, who grew up in East Hampton, has work in a new anthology, “The Best Emerging Poets of 2013,” from Stay Thirsty Press. It features seven young poets of various nationalities.
Ms. Doyle was writer in residence at the James Merrill House in Stonington, Conn., not long ago and has wrapped up a term teaching poetry at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. Her poems have appeared in Boston Review and The Atlantic, among other publications, and she is working on her debut collection.