Richard Jeffrey Newman

When: Sep­tem­ber 9^th
What Time: Open bar from 4 – 5 PM; read­ing starts at 5.
There is a $5 sug­gested dona­tion.
Where: Ver­laine, 110 Riv­ing­ton Street (take the F to Delancey Street)

I will be read­ing from my new trans­la­tion of the first five sto­ries of the Shah­nameh, The Teller of Tales: Sto­ries from Ferdowsi’s Shah­nameh, and I will be shar­ing the stage with two other poets whom you should come hear:

Sara Goudarzi is a New York City writer and per­former of poetry. She was born in Tehran and grew up in Iran, Kenya, and the U.S. Her work has appeared in The Adiron­dack Review, National Geo­graphic News, The Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, and Drunken Boat, among oth­ers. She is the founder and co-editor of /One/ The Jour­nal of Lit­er­a­ture, Art and Ideas. Sara teaches writ­ing at NYU and is work­ing on a first novel. Her web­site is www​.saragoudarzi​.com.

Sahar Muradi is a NY-based writer and per­former orig­i­nally from Kabul, Afghanistan. She is co-editor of One Story, Thirty Sto­ries: An Anthol­ogy of Con­tem­po­rary Afghan Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture (Uni­ver­sity of Arkansas Press, 2010) and co-founder of the Afghan Amer­i­can Artists & Writ­ers Asso­ci­a­tion.  She was a 2010 – 2011 Open City Orga­niz­ing Fel­low with the Asian Amer­i­can Writ­ers’ Work­shop. Sahar’s writ­ing has been fea­tured on pub­lic radio and pub­lished indOC­U­MENTA, phati’tude, Green Moun­tains Review, and HOW2 Jour­nal. Her recent the­ater cred­its include per­form­ing in a devised pro­duc­tion of “Masque of the Red Death” (Hive­Mind The­atre) and in a tour of “Undoc­u­mented” (Unboxed Voices), as well as help­ing to estab­lish an all-women’s the­ater group in Jalal­abad, Afghanistan. Sahar has an MPA in inter­na­tional devel­op­ment from New York Uni­ver­sity and a BA in lit­er­a­ture and cre­ative writ­ing from Hamp­shire College.

This pro­gram is made pos­si­ble by the New York State Coun­cil on the Arts with the sup­port of Gov­er­nor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Leg­is­la­ture and is also sup­ported, in part, by pub­lic funds from the New York City Depart­ment of Cul­tural Affairs in Part­ner­ship with the City Coun­cil, the Man­hat­tan Bor­ough President’s Office, and the National Endow­ment for the Arts.