The Center for New Words -- Where Women's Words Matter

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September
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Tuesday, September 6 @ 7PM

BEBE MOORE CAMPBELL
72 Hour Hold

In this novel of family and redemption, a mother struggles to save her eighteen-year-old daughter from the devastating consequences of mental illness and the bureaucracy that refuses to help her. Drawing on her own powerful emotions and African-American roots, this is some of New York Times bestselling author Campbell’s most electric writing yet - don’t miss her only Boston appearance!

(Co-sponsored by the Elizabeth Stone House and the Cambridge Family YMCA. At the Cambridge Family YMCA, 820 Mass. Ave., Cambridge.)

_________________________

Wednesday, September 7 @ 7PM

FEMINISM & DESSERT
Whose Wave Is It Anyway?
A Cross-Generational Conversation on Feminism

What could be better than smart talk, swell people and sweet food? Join us for this monthly series of engagingly informal talks about subjects that impact our daily lives. Feel free to bring your dinner, but dessert's on us!

_________________________

Wednesday, September 14 @ 7PM

MARY FRANCES BERRY
My Face is Black is True

Born in to slavery in 1861, Callie House started the Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association, which sought African American pensions based on those offered Union soldiers -- a movement so powerful it frightened the U.S. government, upset Jim Crow legislatures across the South, and gave hope to hundreds of thousands of destitute former slaves. Berry reclaims this magnificent heroine who -- though so long forgotten that the site of her grave is unknown -- emerges as a pioneering activist, a forerunner of both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

(Co-sponsored by the Museum of Afro American History. At the Old West Church, 131 Cambridge Street, Boston.)

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Thursday, September 15 @ 8PM

JILL SOLOWAY
Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants

Join Jill Soloway (writer and Co-Executive Producer for Six Feet Under), her sister Faith Soloway ("Jesus Has Two Mommies"), and various sparkling personalities for an unpreditcable evening in celebration of Jill's brand-new memoir about family, sex, "post-feminist" politics, Monica Lewinksy, love, television, and In Touch magazine. There'll be singing, reading, and only the Soloways know what else...

(Co-sponsored by the Cambridge Family YMCA. At the Cambridge Family YMCA, 820 Mass. Ave., Cambridge.)

_________________________

Friday, September 16 @ 7:30 PM

It's your turn at
NEW VOICES OPEN MIC
with this month's feature:
the 2005 Poetry Contest Winners

Our supportive literary open mic for women and their allies, held the third Friday of every month. All genres welcome. 5 and 10 minute slots available. Sign up at 7:15, and start at 7:30. $5 at the door.

_________________________

Wednesday, September 21 @ 5:00 PM

NEW WORDS: LIVE! on CCTV

Now you can connect with CNW in a whole new way! On the 3rd Wednesday of every month this Fall, we'll take to the airwaves to introduce you to a talented local woman writer, who'll read to us from her current work and discuss the ins & outs of the writing life.

_________________________

Thursday, September 22 @ 7PM

LEORA SKOLKIN-SMITH
Edges: O Israel, O Palestine

In this powerful debut novel, narrator Liana Bialik is fourteen years old when her American father’s suicide forces her family to leave their New York suburb and return to her mother’s native Jerusalem, where the beauty and turmoil are a startling backdrop to her sexual and emotional discovery. With her young lover, she escapes the stifling ties of her family and her mother's home to live in the Palestinian world beyond Jerusalem’s border.

_________________________

Thursday, September 29 @ 7PM

SARAH SENTILLES
Taught by America

After graduating from Yale, Sarah Sentilles joined the Teach for America program and began a two-year assignment as an elementary school teacher in Compton, California. Far from the hallowed halls of academe and the suburban streets where she grew up, in charge of thirty-six first graders in a classroom without books, Sentilles learns about the true meaning of poverty in America, and the strength children exhibit even when they're struggling to survive.

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October
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Wednesday, October 5 @ 7PM

FEMINISM & DESSERT
Boobs and Tubes:
Women and the New TV Season

What could be better than smart talk, swell people and sweet food? Join us for this monthly series of engagingly informal talks about subjects that impact our daily lives. Feel free to bring your dinner, but dessert's on us!

_________________________

Sunday, October 16 @ 7PM

IVAN E. COYOTE & ANNA CAMILLERI
Loose End/Red Light

Don’t miss the thrilling collisions when unparalleled genderqueer storytelling meets ferocious third-wave theorizing. Anna Camilleri’s (Brazen Femme) new anthology Red Light takes on female icons from the Virgin Mary to Aileen Wuornos to Wonder Woman and beyond, while Ivan E. Coyote’s (One Man’s Trash) third short story collection, Loose End, mines one chaotic urban neighborhood for every jewel of humor and humanity. Together, they’ll upend all of your assumptions about gender - and even make you like it that way.

(Co-sponsored by GenderCrash. At Spontaneous Celebrations, 45 Danforth Street, Jamaica Plain.)

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Monday, October 17 @ 7PM

ZAINAB SALBI
Between Two Worlds

Zainab Salbi was eleven when her father was chosen to serve as Saddam Hussein’s personal pilot. Her mother eventually sent Zainab to America for an arranged marriage, to spare her from Saddam’s growing affection, but the marriage turned out to be another world of tyranny and abuse. Zainab started over. She forged a new identity as a champion of female victims of war, dedicating her life to speaking out on behalf of oppressed women around the world. In this intimate autobiographical portrait, she reveals the tyrant through the eyes of a child, a secretly rebellious teenager, an abused wife, and ultimately a professional woman coming to terms with the horror of her family story.

(Co-sponsored by Women Waging Peace and the Simmons Institute for Leadership and Change. At Simmons College, Linda K. Paresky Conference Center, 300 The Fenway, Boston.)

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Tuesday, October 18 @ 7PM

DENISE BERGMAN
Seeing Annie Sullivan

Although Annie Sullivan is known for her methods of educating her famous deaf and blind pupil, and for becoming Helen Keller’s lifelong friend and companion, most portrayals of her life have been overly simplified or relegated to the shadow of her remarkable student. The poems in Seeing Annie Sullivan evoke a complex and tragic childhood, and the random luck, stubborness, and obstinance that helped her survive.

(Co-sponsored by the Cambridge Public Library.)

_________________________

Wednesday, October 19 @ 5:00 PM

NEW WORDS: LIVE! on CCTV

Now you can connect with CNW in a whole new way! On the 3rd Wednesday of every month this Fall, we'll take to the airwaves to introduce you to a talented local woman writer, who'll read to us from her current work and discuss the ins & outs of the writing life.

_________________________

Friday, October 21 @ 7:30 PM

It's your turn at
NEW VOICES OPEN MIC

Our supportive literary open mic for women and their allies, held the third Friday of every month. All genres welcome. 5 and 10 minute slots available. Sign up at 7:15, and start at 7:30. $5 at the door.

_________________________

Thursday, October 27 @ 7PM

ROBYN OCHS, ed.
Getting Bi

Join editor Ochs, co-editor Sarah Rowley, and contributors Bobbi Keppel, Cathleen Finn, Carla Imperial, Marcia Deihl, and Julie Ebin for a celebration of the release of this groundbreaking anthology of modern bisexual voices from around the world!

_________________________

November
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Wednesday, November 2 @ 7PM

FEMINISM & DESSERT
Getting Even:
Why Women Don't Make as Much Money as Men
and What to Do About It

What could be better than smart talk, swell people and sweet food? Join us for this monthly series of engagingly informal talks about subjects that impact our daily lives. Feel free to bring your dinner, but dessert's on us!

_________________________

Thursday, November 3 @ 7PM

GLORIA GERVITZ (with Mark Schafer, trans.)
Migrations/Migraciones

Migrations/Migraciones is the life’s work of one of the most important Mexican poets of the post-Paz generation. At times frankly and lushly erotic, it is a complex interweaving of personal and family memory, Biblical reference, the mystical traditions of the Judaism of her family and the folk Catholicism of her paternal grandmother, who rises to the surface of the poem like a ghost of the imagination. With its mixed parentage and its sense of displacement, the journey is at once profoundly Mexican, and profoundly American, the discovery of a new internal place where warring selves may be brought together.

(Co-sponsored by the Simmons Institute for Leadership and Change. At Simmons College Alumnae Hall, 321 Brookline Ave., Boston.)

_________________________

Saturday & Sunday, November 5 & 6

SHACKLES AND SUGAR
Staged Reading of a New Play by Letta Neely
part of The Theater Offensive's Out on the Edge Festival

A depiction of the love between two Black women, both field hands on a plantation, as they live their lives branded as slaves. How far will they go to get freedom - all kinds of it? Fast forward to present day. How does the 150-year-old story of these women echo in the life of a modern-day Black businesswoman?

(Presented in collaboration with The Theater Offensive. At the Boston Center for the Arts, Hall A, Calderwood Pavillion, 527 Tremont Street, Boston.)

_________________________

Saturday & Sunday, November 12 & 13

SURVIVING THE NIAN
Staged Reading of a New Musical by Melissa Li
part of The Theater Offensive's Out on the Edge Festival

This new musical follows Kaylin Woo upon her return home to Hong Kong for Chinese New Year - with her Black lover in tow. After dashing her family’s expectations and betraying her lover’s trust, Kaylin scrambles to salvage her relationships.

(Presented in collaboration with The Theater Offensive. At the Boston Center for the Arts, Hall A, Calderwood Pavillion, 527 Tremont Street, Boston.)

_________________________

Wednesday, November 16 @ 5:00 PM

NEW WORDS: LIVE! on CCTV

Now you can connect with CNW in a whole new way! On the 3rd Wednesday of every month this Fall, we'll take to the airwaves to introduce you to a talented local woman writer, who'll read to us from her current work and discuss the ins & outs of the writing life.

_________________________

Friday, November 18 @ 7:30 PM

It's your turn at
NEW VOICES OPEN MIC

Our supportive literary open mic for women and their allies, held the third Friday of every month. All genres welcome. 5 and 10 minute slots available. Sign up at 7:15, and start at 7:30. $5 at the door.

_________________________

Tuesday, November 22 @ 7PM

ANDREA SMITH
Conquest

Cutting-edge scholar and cofounder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, Andrea Smith places Native American women at the center of her analysis of sexual violence, expanding our conception of violence to include the widespread appropriation of Indian cultural practices; environmental racism; and population control. Conquest deftly connects these and other examples of colonialism to the high rates of violence against Native American women, and articulates an agenda that is compelling to feminists, Native Americans, other people of color, and everyone committed to creating viable alternatives to state-based "solutions."

_________________________

December
_________________________

Thursday, December 15 @ 7PM

MARGE PIERCY
Sex Wars

Marge Piercy’s new novel, Sex Wars, hearkens back to her epic Gone to Soldiers with a vivid portrait of the women - from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to a Russian immigrant named Freydeh - who rebelled against the sexual politics of 19 th century America.

(Co-sponsored with Brookline Booksmith. At Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline.)

_________________________

Friday, December 16 @ 7:30 PM

It's your turn at
NEW VOICES OPEN MIC

Our supportive literary open mic for women and their allies, held the third Friday of every month. All genres welcome. 5 and 10 minute slots available. Sign up at 7:15, and start at 7:30. $5 at the door.

_________________________

Wednesday, December 21 @ 5:00 PM

NEW WORDS: LIVE! on CCTV

Now you can connect with CNW in a whole new way! On the 3rd Wednesday of every month this Fall, we'll take to the airwaves to introduce you to a talented local woman writer, who'll read to us from her current work and discuss the ins & outs of the writing life.
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	Calendar of Events Click here to download the complete Fall 2005 brochure! Unless otherwise noted, all events are free, wheelchair accessible, open to everyone, and held at the Center for New Words Reading Room 186 Hampshire Street, Cambridge. Click here for directions. Tickets are not required. Need more info? Give us a call at 617-876-5310. See you there! September / October / November / December _________________________ September _________________________ Tuesday, September 6 @ 7PM BEBE MOORE CAMPBELL 72 Hour Hold In this novel of family and redemption, a mother struggles to save her eighteen-year-old daughter from the devastating consequences of mental illness and the bureaucracy that refuses to help her. Drawing on her own powerful emotions and African-American roots, this is some of New York Times bestselling author Campbell’s most electric writing yet - don’t miss her only Boston appearance! (Co-sponsored by the Elizabeth Stone House and the Cambridge Family YMCA. At the Cambridge Family YMCA, 820 Mass. Ave., Cambridge.) _________________________ Wednesday, September 7 @ 7PM FEMINISM & DESSERT Whose Wave Is It Anyway? A Cross-Generational Conversation on Feminism What could be better than smart talk, swell people and sweet food? Join us for this monthly series of engagingly informal talks about subjects that impact our daily lives. Feel free to bring your dinner, but dessert's on us! _________________________ Wednesday, September 14 @ 7PM MARY FRANCES BERRY My Face is Black is True Born in to slavery in 1861, Callie House started the Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association, which sought African American pensions based on those offered Union soldiers -- a movement so powerful it frightened the U.S. government, upset Jim Crow legislatures across the South, and gave hope to hundreds of thousands of destitute former slaves. Berry reclaims this magnificent heroine who -- though so long forgotten that the site of her grave is unknown -- emerges as a pioneering activist, a forerunner of both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Co-sponsored by the Museum of Afro American History. At the Old West Church, 131 Cambridge Street, Boston.) _________________________ Thursday, September 15 @ 8PM JILL SOLOWAY Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants Join Jill Soloway (writer and Co-Executive Producer for Six Feet Under), her sister Faith Soloway ("Jesus Has Two Mommies"), and various sparkling personalities for an unpreditcable evening in celebration of Jill's brand-new memoir about family, sex, "post-feminist" politics, Monica Lewinksy, love, television, and In Touch magazine. There'll be singing, reading, and only the Soloways know what else... (Co-sponsored by the Cambridge Family YMCA. At the Cambridge Family YMCA, 820 Mass. Ave., Cambridge.) _________________________ Friday, September 16 @ 7:30 PM It's your turn at NEW VOICES OPEN MIC with this month's feature: the 2005 Poetry Contest Winners Our supportive literary open mic for women and their allies, held the third Friday of every month. All genres welcome. 5 and 10 minute slots available. Sign up at 7:15, and start at 7:30. $5 at the door. _________________________ Wednesday, September 21 @ 5:00 PM NEW WORDS: LIVE! on CCTV Now you can connect with CNW in a whole new way! On the 3rd Wednesday of every month this Fall, we'll take to the airwaves to introduce you to a talented local woman writer, who'll read to us from her current work and discuss the ins & outs of the writing life. _________________________ Thursday, September 22 @ 7PM LEORA SKOLKIN-SMITH Edges: O Israel, O Palestine In this powerful debut novel, narrator Liana Bialik is fourteen years old when her American father’s suicide forces her family to leave their New York suburb and return to her mother’s native Jerusalem, where the beauty and turmoil are a startling backdrop to her sexual and emotional discovery. With her young lover, she escapes the stifling ties of her family and her mother's home to live in the Palestinian world beyond Jerusalem’s border. _________________________ Thursday, September 29 @ 7PM SARAH SENTILLES Taught by America After graduating from Yale, Sarah Sentilles joined the Teach for America program and began a two-year assignment as an elementary school teacher in Compton, California. Far from the hallowed halls of academe and the suburban streets where she grew up, in charge of thirty-six first graders in a classroom without books, Sentilles learns about the true meaning of poverty in America, and the strength children exhibit even when they're struggling to survive. _________________________ October _________________________ Wednesday, October 5 @ 7PM FEMINISM & DESSERT Boobs and Tubes: Women and the New TV Season What could be better than smart talk, swell people and sweet food? Join us for this monthly series of engagingly informal talks about subjects that impact our daily lives. Feel free to bring your dinner, but dessert's on us! _________________________ Sunday, October 16 @ 7PM IVAN E. COYOTE & ANNA CAMILLERI Loose End/Red Light Don’t miss the thrilling collisions when unparalleled genderqueer storytelling meets ferocious third-wave theorizing. Anna Camilleri’s (Brazen Femme) new anthology Red Light takes on female icons from the Virgin Mary to Aileen Wuornos to Wonder Woman and beyond, while Ivan E. Coyote’s (One Man’s Trash) third short story collection, Loose End, mines one chaotic urban neighborhood for every jewel of humor and humanity. Together, they’ll upend all of your assumptions about gender - and even make you like it that way. (Co-sponsored by GenderCrash. At Spontaneous Celebrations, 45 Danforth Street, Jamaica Plain.) _________________________ Monday, October 17 @ 7PM ZAINAB SALBI Between Two Worlds Zainab Salbi was eleven when her father was chosen to serve as Saddam Hussein’s personal pilot. Her mother eventually sent Zainab to America for an arranged marriage, to spare her from Saddam’s growing affection, but the marriage turned out to be another world of tyranny and abuse. Zainab started over. She forged a new identity as a champion of female victims of war, dedicating her life to speaking out on behalf of oppressed women around the world. In this intimate autobiographical portrait, she reveals the tyrant through the eyes of a child, a secretly rebellious teenager, an abused wife, and ultimately a professional woman coming to terms with the horror of her family story. (Co-sponsored by Women Waging Peace and the Simmons Institute for Leadership and Change. At Simmons College, Linda K. Paresky Conference Center, 300 The Fenway, Boston.) _________________________ Tuesday, October 18 @ 7PM DENISE BERGMAN Seeing Annie Sullivan Although Annie Sullivan is known for her methods of educating her famous deaf and blind pupil, and for becoming Helen Keller’s lifelong friend and companion, most portrayals of her life have been overly simplified or relegated to the shadow of her remarkable student. The poems in Seeing Annie Sullivan evoke a complex and tragic childhood, and the random luck, stubborness, and obstinance that helped her survive. (Co-sponsored by the Cambridge Public Library.) _________________________ Wednesday, October 19 @ 5:00 PM NEW WORDS: LIVE! on CCTV Now you can connect with CNW in a whole new way! On the 3rd Wednesday of every month this Fall, we'll take to the airwaves to introduce you to a talented local woman writer, who'll read to us from her current work and discuss the ins & outs of the writing life. _________________________ Friday, October 21 @ 7:30 PM It's your turn at NEW VOICES OPEN MIC Our supportive literary open mic for women and their allies, held the third Friday of every month. All genres welcome. 5 and 10 minute slots available. Sign up at 7:15, and start at 7:30. $5 at the door. _________________________ Thursday, October 27 @ 7PM ROBYN OCHS, ed. Getting Bi Join editor Ochs, co-editor Sarah Rowley, and contributors Bobbi Keppel, Cathleen Finn, Carla Imperial, Marcia Deihl, and Julie Ebin for a celebration of the release of this groundbreaking anthology of modern bisexual voices from around the world! _________________________ November _________________________ Wednesday, November 2 @ 7PM FEMINISM & DESSERT Getting Even: Why Women Don't Make as Much Money as Men and What to Do About It What could be better than smart talk, swell people and sweet food? Join us for this monthly series of engagingly informal talks about subjects that impact our daily lives. Feel free to bring your dinner, but dessert's on us! _________________________ Thursday, November 3 @ 7PM GLORIA GERVITZ (with Mark Schafer, trans.) Migrations/Migraciones Migrations/Migraciones is the life’s work of one of the most important Mexican poets of the post-Paz generation. At times frankly and lushly erotic, it is a complex interweaving of personal and family memory, Biblical reference, the mystical traditions of the Judaism of her family and the folk Catholicism of her paternal grandmother, who rises to the surface of the poem like a ghost of the imagination. With its mixed parentage and its sense of displacement, the journey is at once profoundly Mexican, and profoundly American, the discovery of a new internal place where warring selves may be brought together. (Co-sponsored by the Simmons Institute for Leadership and Change. At Simmons College Alumnae Hall, 321 Brookline Ave., Boston.) _________________________ Saturday & Sunday, November 5 & 6 SHACKLES AND SUGAR Staged Reading of a New Play by Letta Neely part of The Theater Offensive's Out on the Edge Festival A depiction of the love between two Black women, both field hands on a plantation, as they live their lives branded as slaves. How far will they go to get freedom - all kinds of it? Fast forward to present day. How does the 150-year-old story of these women echo in the life of a modern-day Black businesswoman? (Presented in collaboration with The Theater Offensive. At the Boston Center for the Arts, Hall A, Calderwood Pavillion, 527 Tremont Street, Boston.) _________________________ Saturday & Sunday, November 12 & 13 SURVIVING THE NIAN Staged Reading of a New Musical by Melissa Li part of The Theater Offensive's Out on the Edge Festival This new musical follows Kaylin Woo upon her return home to Hong Kong for Chinese New Year - with her Black lover in tow. After dashing her family’s expectations and betraying her lover’s trust, Kaylin scrambles to salvage her relationships. (Presented in collaboration with The Theater Offensive. At the Boston Center for the Arts, Hall A, Calderwood Pavillion, 527 Tremont Street, Boston.) _________________________ Wednesday, November 16 @ 5:00 PM NEW WORDS: LIVE! on CCTV Now you can connect with CNW in a whole new way! On the 3rd Wednesday of every month this Fall, we'll take to the airwaves to introduce you to a talented local woman writer, who'll read to us from her current work and discuss the ins & outs of the writing life. _________________________ Friday, November 18 @ 7:30 PM It's your turn at NEW VOICES OPEN MIC Our supportive literary open mic for women and their allies, held the third Friday of every month. All genres welcome. 5 and 10 minute slots available. Sign up at 7:15, and start at 7:30. $5 at the door. _________________________ Tuesday, November 22 @ 7PM ANDREA SMITH Conquest Cutting-edge scholar and cofounder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, Andrea Smith places Native American women at the center of her analysis of sexual violence, expanding our conception of violence to include the widespread appropriation of Indian cultural practices; environmental racism; and population control. Conquest deftly connects these and other examples of colonialism to the high rates of violence against Native American women, and articulates an agenda that is compelling to feminists, Native Americans, other people of color, and everyone committed to creating viable alternatives to state-based "solutions." _________________________ December _________________________ Thursday, December 15 @ 7PM MARGE PIERCY Sex Wars Marge Piercy’s new novel, Sex Wars, hearkens back to her epic Gone to Soldiers with a vivid portrait of the women - from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to a Russian immigrant named Freydeh - who rebelled against the sexual politics of 19 th century America. (Co-sponsored with Brookline Booksmith. At Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline.) _________________________ Friday, December 16 @ 7:30 PM It's your turn at NEW VOICES OPEN MIC Our supportive literary open mic for women and their allies, held the third Friday of every month. All genres welcome. 5 and 10 minute slots available. Sign up at 7:15, and start at 7:30. $5 at the door. _________________________ Wednesday, December 21 @ 5:00 PM NEW WORDS: LIVE! on CCTV Now you can connect with CNW in a whole new way! On the 3rd Wednesday of every month this Fall, we'll take to the airwaves to introduce you to a talented local woman writer, who'll read to us from her current work and discuss the ins & outs of the writing life. _________________________ Don't miss a thing -- Sign up for the email list today! back to top Home page \| New/Hot books \| Search \| CDs, Videos, Gifts \| Shopping Cart \| What's new \| Events \| About us \| Visit us \| Links \| Contact us