Category Archives: Blog

I’ll be in conversation with Italian author and translator Claudia Durastanti on Monday, April 4th, 2022, 6 PM

03 Sunday Apr 2022

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I’m looking forward to being not only in conversation but also in person (my first in-person event since 2020) with Italian author and translator Claudia Durastanti this Monday, April 4th, 6 PM, for the U.S. book launch of the English edition of her novel STRANGERS I KNOW, translated by Elizabeth Harris. (Originally published in Italian in 2019 as La Straniera.) Claudia Durastanti is the Italian translator of Joshua Cohen, Donna Haraway, Ocean Vuong and the most recent edition of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The event will take place at at the John D Calandra Italian American Institute at Queens College, CUNY, at 6 PM for their Writers Read Series: 25 West 43rd Street, 17th Floor New York, N.Y. 10036

Writers Read: Claudia Durastanti Reads from Strangers I Know

Jhumpa Lahiri says: “Formally innovative and emotionally complex, STRANGERS I KNOW explores themes of communication, family, and belonging with exceptional insight. Durastanti, celebrated in Italy for her intelligent voice and her hybrid perspective, speaks to all who are outside and in-between. Strangers I Know, in a bracing translation by Elizabeth Harris, is a stunning English-language debut.”

STRANGERS I KNOW is the fourth novel by Claudia Durastanti and her first to be translated to English; the book is a bestseller in Italy and winner of the Premio Pozzale Luigi Russo and the Premio Strega Off. The largely autobiographical novel is a subversive story about family and coming of age; it crosses oceans, languages, and generations, bringing readers into small pastoral villages of Southern Italy as well as into smoky night clubs and the NYC punk rock scene. The novel’s narrator finds herself living in a strange transnational atmosphere in which communication is nearly nonexistent. An outsider in every way, she longs for a freedom she isn’t sure exists and attempts to create her own version of her life.

Free, open to the public, and held in person at the Calandra Institute.

RSVP by calling (212) 642-2094.

Registration is required for all events in order to follow current CUNY COVID guidelines. Proof of vaccination and ID are required upon entry. Masks are encouraged but not required. We will continue to assess the latest data and public health guidance and to act in compliance with CUNY protocols.

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TONIGHT! May 13, 2020, I’m reading a new story at Guerrilla Lit, 7:30 PM. See the event listing for details!

13 Wednesday May 2020

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Here’s a story for you. Once upon a time, I would promote on social media my own local NYC readings by addressing my ‘local friends,’ those folks who could jump on a subway or walk to a bookstore or bar to attend a lit reading in the bustling, dense, soul-revivifying metropolis that is New York F*cking City. But what do terms like ‘local’ or ‘far-flung’ even mean anymore? We all live virtually inside a little digital box now. Which scares the hell out of me. In fact, since the pandemic shut down Gotham City, I’ve heard more people say that this whole thing seems like a nightmare. Fear, anxiety, suspicion and doubt pervade. And so, my friends (both local and far-flung), tonight, from inside my tiny digital cell, I will read to you a Tiny Nightmare, which just happens to appear in the soon-to-be-released anthology of horror-inspired flash fiction—TINY NIGHTMARES: VERY SHORT TALES OF HORROR (Catapult, 2020)—featuring over 40 new stories from literary, horror, and emerging writers—edited by Lincoln Michel and Nadxieli Nieto, the twisted minds behind Tiny Crimes: Very Short Tales of Mystery and Murder (Black Balloon, 2018). If you want to hear my tale of horror, join me tonight online from where ever you are currently holed up. The reading will be hosted by the august Guerrilla Lit: John Domini, Joseph Salvatore, Suzanne Dottino, which I will link below. And if you’d like to support this dark new anthology, please consider pre-ordering TINY NIGHTMARES: VERY SHORT TALES OF HORROR (Catapult, 2020). Here’s that link (which has Bookshop listed there, my favorite way to buy books these days):

https://books.catapult.co/…/tiny-nightmares-very-short-tale…

Join me tonight, friends from all over. I’ve got something especially nightmarish to read to you. Details about the reading will be in the comments below.

Dixon Place Presents a Virtual Guerrilla Lit Reading Series

We are pleased to announce that the reading scheduled for Wednesday,May 13 features John Domini, Joseph Salvatore, Suzanne Dottino.

This virtual reading will occur on Zoom at 7:30 PM.

THIS EVENT REQUIRES ADVANCE REGISTRATION.

Register for this meeting here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcsfu-opzsqGdH_UVBMaMepPnip9a7zzgkr

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

About the Readers

John Domini’s latest book is The Color Inside a Melon. Blurbs came from Salman Rushdie and Marlon James, and the Washington Post praised it as it “sage,” “spry,” and “especially well-turned.” He has three earlier novels and three story collections; The Millions called his work “a new shriek for a new century.” Other books include selections of criticism and poetry. He’s published fiction in Paris Review and Ploughshares, non-fiction in GQ and the New York Times, and won a poetry prize from Meridian. Grants include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Domini has taught at Harvard and elsewhere and makes his home in Des Moines.

Joseph Salvatore is the author of the story collection To Assume A Pleasing Shape, published by BOA Editions, and the co-author of the college textbook Understanding English Grammar. A Spanish translation of his story collection, Presentarse En Forma Grata, was published in 2018 by Editorial Dos Bigotes. He is Books Editor at The Brooklyn Rail and a frequent contributor to The New York Times Sunday Book Review. His fiction has appeared in, among other places, The Collagist, Dossier, Epiphany, New York Tyrant, Open City, Post Road, Salt Hill, Sleeping Fish, and Willow Springs. His criticism has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Rain Taxi, the Routledge International Encyclopedia of Queer Culture, Angels of the Americlypse: an Anthology of New Latin@ Writing, the Believer Logger and elsewhere. He is an associate professor of writing at The New School in New York City, where he received the University Distinguished Teaching Award, and was the founding editor of the literary journal LIT. He lives in Queens.

Suzanne Dottino is a writer of fiction and plays. Her latest story “Angel of Mercy,” appears in the current Issue of The Bellevue Literary Review and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She teaches literature at BMCC. She is the editor of the online literary journal KGB Bar Lit.

Dixon Place Literary Programs are generously supported by the Axe Houghton Foundation and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.

We’d be so grateful if you considered making a donation to keep the literary fires burning at Dixon Place. If you can, please donate here:

https://shop.vendini.com/dixonplace/product-details/donation/054d4ca95ace388c1932e38137522652

KGB Bar Reading — SEPT 29, 2019 — 7 PM

29 Sunday Sep 2019

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Q: What better way to end such a lovely fall Sunday in NYC than by listening to the words of Emma Smith-Stevens, Lettie Prell John Domini, David Dario Winner, and yrs trly?

A: None. None better way.

SUNDAY NIGHT FICTION KGB BAR 7 PM

85 E 4th St, East Village, NYC

https://www.facebook.com/events/364645187756389/

Five writers with very different connections to New York– Joseph Salvatore, Emma Smith-Stevens, David Winner, Lettie Prell & John Domini– offer a handful of wild cards. Some work takes on the city, some looks elsewhere, and it all goes great with a couple of drinks from the bar. Books available as well.

AWP Panel: The Art of the Book Review (F220) Friday, March 29, 2019, at 1:30 PM – 2:45 PM PDT, Room B110-112, Oregon Convention Center, Level 1

28 Thursday Mar 2019

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AWP Panel: The Art of the Book Review (F220) B110-112, Oregon Convention Center, Level 1 55439572_2124140794334579_8148698784772128768_o

Please join me on Friday, March 29th, 1:30-2:45, as I chair an AWP panel called The Art of the Book Review. My fellow panelists will be Michele Filgate, Siddhartha Deb, Carolyn Kellogg, Mark Sarvas, and Chris Campanioni. Find the official AWP link here.
Thousands of books are published each year. We’re led to many of them by intelligent, engaging, well-made book reviews, which not only investigate and articulate the mysteries and pleasures a literary text offers, but also please the reader with their style. Five widely published writers/critics/editors discuss the review as a genre in its own right, a unique form that offers—and invites—critical reflection, raises the level of public discourse, and establishes professional reputation.

Moderator:
Joseph Salvatore is books editor at the Brooklyn Rail and a frequent reviewer at the New York Times Book Review. He is an associate professor of writing at The New School, founding editor of their literary journal LIT, and the author of the story collection To Assume a Pleasing Shape.

Carolyn Kellogg is Books Editor at the LA Times. She assigns and edits all books coverage, online and in print, for the largest newspaper on the west coast. She also helps steer the paper’s Festival of Books, the nation’s largest literary festival. Her literary coverage is award winning.

Siddhartha Deb is the author of The Beautiful and the Damned, winner of the PEN Open award and a finalist for the Orwell Prize. A columnist for The Baffler and The New York Times Book Review and contributing editor to The New Republic, his writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Nation, and n+1.

Mark Sarvas‘s second novel, MEMENTO PARK, was just published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in March 2018. His debut novel, HARRY, REVISED (2008), was published in more than a dozen countries around the world. His book reviews and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Threepenny Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Bookforum, The Huffington Post, The Dallas Morning News, and the Los Angeles Review of Books (where he is a contributing editor). He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and PEN/America, PEN Center USA, and has judged the PEN Center USA Fiction Award, the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, the Kirkwood Prize and The Tournament of Books. He began his literary career as the host of the popular and controversial literary weblog “The Elegant Variation.”

Michele Filgate is the editor of What My Mother And I Don’t Talk About, forthcoming. She is a contributing editor at Literary Hub, and a board member of the National Book Critics Circle. She teaches creative nonfiction for Catapult and Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop.

Chris Campanioni‘s new book, the Internet is for real (C&R Press, 2019), re-enacts the language of the Internet as literary installations. His selected poetry was awarded an Academy of American Poets College Prize in 2013, his novel Going Down was named Best First Book at the 2014 International Latino Book Awards, and his hybrid piece This body’s long (& I’m still loading) was adapted as an official selection of the Canadian International Film Festival in 2017. He runs PANK and PANK Books, edits At Large Magazine and Tupelo Quarterly, and teaches Latinx literature and creative writing at Pace University and Baruch College. He is a frequent contributor to The Brooklyn Rail.

Featured in The New York Times Style Magazine of Spain

14 Wednesday Mar 2018

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My huge thanks to The New York Times Style Magazine of Spain, T Magazine España, for a full-page feature on the new Spanish translation of my story collection, PRESENTARSE EN FORMA GRATA, which they included in their latest issue’s book recommendations:

“These eleven stories by Joseph Salvatore portray the problems we have of being able to identify for ourselves the very fears and anxieties that cripple us in today’s society.”

I couldn’t be more grateful to Teresa Lanero for her fine translation, nor more grateful to Editorial Dos Bigotes for bringing my book to Spanish readers.

Thank you! xoxo

Spanish Translation of TO ASSUME A PLEASING SHAPE (2018)

28 Sunday Jan 2018

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I’m deeply honored to announce that my short fiction collection from BOA Editions, TO ASSUME A PLEASING SHAPE, has not only been translated into Spanish by the talented and brilliant Teresa Lanero, but also will be the first title published in 2018 by an independent publishing house in Madrid, Spain, Editorial Dos Bigotes. “Presentarse en Forma Grata” will be released on February 12th.

Editorial Dos Bigotes was founded in Madrid by Gonzalo Izquierdo Torres and Alberto Rodríguez. I want to express my immense thanks to both of them. I’m proud to be a new member of the ‘mustachioed club.’

My father, who spoke fluent Spanish and had book shelves full of Spanish authors and Spanish grammar books, would have been especially proud of this news. I wish he were here for me to give him one more title to add to his old bookshelf.

To celebrate this publication, I’ll reading from TO ASSUME A PLEASING SHAPE on Saturday, with poet Joanna Clapps Herman, at Cornelia St. Café, NYC, January 13, 2018, 5:45 – 7:45 pm.

And a huge thanks to Peter Conners and Frederick Courtright for all their help.

For more information about Editorial Dos Bigotes: http://www.dosbigotes.es/quienes-somos/

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Reading at Pete’s Candy Store, Brooklyn, Thursday, August 18 at 6 PM – 7:45 PM

11 Thursday Aug 2016

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Recently, I read a stunning and gorgeous novella called ALL THE WORDS, by Maria Frances Brandt. I cannot recommend this book more highly. Brandt’s characters reminded me of myself and of the people I care about, at our best and at our most yearning. These characters struggle, each in their own way, to articulate all the necessary words to each other and to themselves. And their struggle is rendered, in Brandt’s careful and caring hand, artistically and dramatically. In this lyrically lush and beautifully cadenced novella about a family’s love and loss, words are, paradoxically, precious and scarce. Sentences start but sputter out; mouths go mute; memories, both allusive and elusive, tease then disappear, only to reappear as fragmented textual ghosts, italicized and erupting throughout the course of this family’s journey—a journey from trauma to understanding, and, ultimately, to a kind of acceptance. Such a story arc is easy enough to describe, but painstakingly difficult to render dramatically and truthfully. But Brandt pulls it off with élan and intelligence and, best of all, the crafty instincts of a natural storyteller.

I am so fortunate to be reading with this remarkable writer next week in Brooklyn, on Thursday, Aug, 18th, at Pete’s Candy Store, 6 PM. Also sharing work that evening will be Mirene Arsanios, Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, and and Emily Brandt. It will be a lovely late-summer event. I hope you’ll join us to celebrate.

Click here for more information.

My latest assignment for the New York Times Book Review, June 5, 2016

10 Friday Jun 2016

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Growing up in the Boston area in the 1970s, I was a faithful Red Sox fan during a time when it was a genuine hazard to one’s psychic well-being to do so. One of my great regrets is that my father, a life-long New Englander and a Sox fan himself who died in 2001, never got to see what I saw in 2004, watching it, as I did, in my new home of NYC. Actor David Duchovny’s new novel is about fathers and sons and the things they wish they could have said to each other; it’s about love and death, and it’s about the Red Sox and the Yankees. So grateful to my editor at the New York Times Book Review for this summer reading assignment. See what I had to say.

BOOK REVIEW | FICTION

BUCKY ____ DENT
By David Duchovny
296 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26.05Salvatore-blog427

My Speaking Schedule at the 2016 AWP Conference, Los Angeles, CA

31 Thursday Mar 2016

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I’m truly so fortunate to be charing and participating on these three incredible panels this week at the 2016 AWP Conference & Bookfair, in Los Angeles, California. #AWP16

Thanks to all my fellow panelists and to all my fellow AWP-goers! It’s already been such a blast. Come by and check out the panels.

TODAY! —Thursday, March 31, 2016, at 1:30 PM to 2:45 PM, in Gold Salon 4, JW Marriott LA, 1st Floor: I’ll be a panelist of “The Art of the Literary Interview” with Tony Leuzzi, Tod Marshall, Allie Larkin, and Catherine LaSota. #AWP16

Tomorrow—Friday, April 1, 2016, at 10:30 AM to 11:45 AM, in Gold Salon 1, JW Marriott LA, 1st Floor: I’ll be chairing panel “The Art of the Book Review” with Helen Schulman, Courtney Maum, Tony Leuzzi. #AWP16

Saturday, April 2nd, 2016, 10:30 AM to 11:45 AM, in Gold Salon 2, JW Marriott LA, 1st Floor (S134.) I’ll be a panelist on “What I Did When What I Did Wasn’t Working: Teachers on Retooling Their Teaching. with Joseph Scapellato, Matt Bell, Catherine Dent, Jameelah Lang. (Description: When our in-class lessons and out-of-class assignments don’t give our students what we hoped they would—when our pedagogical performances flop unexpectedly—how do we rework what’s left? In this panel, five teachers of writing share specific instances of course failure and the attempts at redesign that followed. Examples of activities, assignments, and approaches promise to make this panel helpful for teachers of all experience levels.)