A Stanza Salon: The Long Game
Read all about our Salon Series here.
“Less rows of chairs, more community gathering”
This Salon is $5. And your $5 entry comes off the price of any visiting authors’ books you purchase at an event.
And of course, if you buy your book at Stanza ahead of time, you’re in! :)
The gripping account of the U.S. men’s national soccer team’s winding saga from obscurity to the global stage as they stand on the brink of a seminal World Cup in 2026
For almost half a century, the U.S. men’s national team existed on the fringes of world soccer—out of sight, out of mind, and, more often than not, out of the World Cup. Between 1950 and 1990, the program toiled in irrelevance, a collection of part-timers playing before empty bleachers.
Then, things began to shift, and today’s U.S. men’s team is loaded with young and pedigreed talent, expected to make its mark at the 2026 World Cup. The story of this team’s rise to prominence is a dramatic journey, with setbacks, buffoonery, misunderstandings, glory, and a wide, eccentric, talented cast of characters. With unprecedented access to former and current national team players, coaches, and administrators, Schaerlaeckens traces the sport’s evolution in the U.S.—from its outsider status to its modern foothold—and the challenges that have shaped the men’s national team along the way. From systemic obstacles in youth development to an American sports culture that expects instant dominance, he explores why success has been elusive, and why that might finally be changing.
With insight, wit, and razor-sharp storytelling, The Long Game is an unforgettable look at the past, present, and uncertain future of American soccer— and the team that could redefine it all.
Leander Schaerlaeckens
Leander Schaerlaeckens is a long-time soccer writer and has worked for ESPN, FOX Sports, and Yahoo Sports, among others, covering the United States men’s national team at three World Cups. He currently writes about soccer for The Guardian, ESPN and The Ringer. He teaches journalism and sports communication at Marist University. Born in the Netherlands and raised in Belgium, he went to college in London and Washington, D.C. He lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with his wife, son, and their mutt/squirrel-murderer, Eleanor Roosevelt
Seth Rosenthal
Seth Rosenthal is a producer at Secret Base, a sports documentary studio. He's written about sports for SB Nation, New York Magazine, and probably other places, but it was a long time ago.
Fantasy book club
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library, libro.fm/stanzabooks
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
Kids Comic Cluib
Get all details about the Young Storytellers Guild instructors, policies and expectations.
This club is for middle-grade comics lovers. Each month, we’ll discuss a current book. Come grab the book, give it a read, then come ready to talk about it. But that’s not all! After the book discussion, we’ll open the floor to all of you! Share what you’re working on. Share a graphic novel you love. Free-draw. Hang and talk comics with new friends!
Sci-Fi book club
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library, libro.fm/stanzabooks
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
Directing Comics Scenes
Get all details about the Young Storytellers Guild instructors, policies and expectations.
Comics aren’t movies…but they kind of are.
Every panel is a choice about what the reader sees, when they see it, and how it feels.
This workshop is about learning how comic artists “direct” a scene using panels, framing, angles, pacing, and visual focus.
We’ve already seen some of you intuiting these concepts in previous workshops. Now, we’ll help you articulate what you already feel as you work.
The artist controls:
What the reader notices
How powerful a moment feels
The tension of the scene
Storytime with Hobie the Bear!
Hobie the bear is different from the other cubs. He moves differently; he plays differently; he even eats differently. And when his friends want to try new things, he does too, but he wonders: can he do them? There is only one way to find out.
A sweet story about inclusivity, perseverance, and love, Hobie the Bear aims to highlight those who have physical disabilities, celebrating their efforts and those of the parents who support them.
Join author Meghan Arcuri for a special storytime! Meghan will read and lead the kids in activities!
Meghan Arcuri
Meghan Arcuri writes for both children and adults. Her children's books include Milk the Cat (Yap Jr.) and Hobie the Bear (Lawley Publishing). Her work for adults can be found in various anthologies, including Borderlands 7 and Chiral Mad 3.
She is a Bram Stoker Award®-nominated author and served as the Vice President of the Horror Writers Association for over four years, earning the Richard Laymon President’s Award in 2022.
She lives with her family in New York’s Hudson Valley. More about Meghan and her work can be found atmeghanarcuri.com, or on Instagram (@meghanarcurimoran) and Facebook.
A Stanza Salon: Loving Arrangements
Read all about our Salon Series here.
“Less rows of chairs, more community gathering”
One of the things I love most in Sci-Fi and Fantasy is the opportunity to completely reimagine how we live. In Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312, children are raised in community creches. In What We Are Seeking - one of my favorite books of the year - Cameron Reed throws together representatives of almost every kind of relationship, and minutely examines the results.
This salon, we’ll host editor Nan Bauer-Maglin. Nan is professor emerita at the City University of New York and the editor or coeditor of nine previous collections, including Gray Love: Stories About Dating and New Relationships After 60. Nan just edited a book of stories about modern love.
In this salon, we’ll explore the many kinds of modern love. From nonmonogamy to platonic marriages, to forming retirement communities with your friends. This is a perfect opportunity to join us in what I’m calling a chill party setting, where we can have a nosh, grab a drink, and chat about a topic that seems more popular than ever.
I’d love you to bring your curiosity, and your own experiences and stories. We’ll create a couple prompts based on topics in the book, to help kick off discussion. I want as many of you to share as Nan does.
This is an event for all of us.
-Mark
Dark Fiction book club
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library, libro.fm/stanzabooks
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
COMICS club
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library, libro.fm/stanzabooks
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
Mystery book club
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library, libro.fm/stanzabooks
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
Literature Book Club
Stanza book clubs
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library
Libro.fm
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
Plot and Conflict
Get all details about the Young Storytellers Guild instructors, policies and expectations.
Stories move because something goes wrong.
Characters want things. Obstacles get in the way. Decisions create new problems.
Readers keep turning pages because they want to know what happens next.
This workshop will teach you about objectives, conflict, and character action.
And this one isn't just for comics! These ideas are the heart of every story, from Homer to Harley Quinn.
Are you writing short stories? Making comics? Sign up! This workshop can be a foundation for every single fictional story you create.
In Comparison (Copy)
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library, libro.fm/stanzabooks
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
Mystery book club
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library, libro.fm/stanzabooks
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
Stanza COMICS CLUB
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library, libro.fm/stanzabooks
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
Dark Fiction book club
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library, libro.fm/stanzabooks
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
In Comparison
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library, libro.fm/stanzabooks
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
Greek Myths for Character Building
Get all details about the Young Storytellers Guild instructors, policies and expectations.
When I wrote my first novel, HEKATE’S RETURN, I spent months researching ancient cultures. This research gave me a solid foundation for social structures, magic systems, and gods and monsters. It gave me a well of inspiration I returned to over and over, and helped me create a grounded and believable fantasy world.
This workshop is for middle-grade comics creators and fiction writers both! It’s a fun way to learn some new stuff, and find inspiration in real world research. You can create a super hero, a villain or monster, or any character you want to write about.
We’ll provide research materials, creative materials, and character sheets. You bring your imagination and be ready to have fun!
-Mark
Sci-Fi book club
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library
Libro.fm
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
Fantasy book club
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library
Libro.fm
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
A Stanza Salon: Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York
Read all about our Salon Series here.
“Less rows of chairs, more community gathering”
Each Salon is $5. And your $5 entry comes off the price of any visiting authors’ books you purchase at an event.
Bring your brain! We’ll always have free snacks to keep you powered up.
Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York offers a fresh look at 1920s New York City, unearthing stories of everyday life and marginalized communities. In sections that intertwine entertainment, politics, art, technology, crime, shopping, eating, and recreation, the book portrays sweeping events such as the Harlem Renaissance, Prohibition, and immigration reform through anecdotes of individual experiences that counter the era's popular conceptions of ballooning wealth and uproarious celebration. Jonathan Ezra Goldman's whirlwind tour of early 1920s New York City visits an all-female police platoon, a Black amusement park shut down before it opened, an Arabic literary salon, socialist Puerto Rican cigar factories, Chinatown funerals, lesbian cafes, overcrowded jails, toxic dumps, and Ku Klux Klan recruitment offices. The grand narratives of the 1920s interweave with little-known anecdotes about well-known figures such as Marcus Garvey, Dorothy Parker, and Babe Ruth, serving as a backdrop to the everyday challenges and triumphs of a city beset by crowds, automobile traffic, and rapidly changing technology and urban infrastructure, as well as erased stories of injustices like Jim Crow practices, immigration anxieties, and the violent treatment of political dissent. These stories still resonate today, showing that this dizzying, exuberant ride through hidden history can help twenty-first readers see our own moment more clearly.
Jonathan Ezra Goldman, he/him (Professor, Department. of Humanities, New York Institute of Technology), is author of Hidden Histories of Jazz Age New York from the Suppressed to the Strange, and Modernism Is the Literature of Celebrity (University of Texas Press 2011), editor of Joyce and the Law (University Press of Florida 2017), and co-editor of Modernist Star Maps (Routledge 2010). He has published widely about nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and culture, directs the digital project, NY 1920s: 100 Years Ago Today, When We Became Modern and is president of the James Joyce Society.
Adam McKible is Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where he teaches American and African American literature. He is the author of Circulating Jim Crow (2024) and The Space and Place of Modernism: The Russian Revolution, Little Magazines, and New York (2002), and he edited and introduced Edward Christopher Williams’s When Washington Was in Vogue (2004). He is also co-editor of Jim Crow Modernism (2026), special issues of the Journal of Modern Periodical Studies (2025) and Modernism/modernity (2013), and of the collection, Little Magazines and Modernism: New Approaches (2005).
A Stanza Salon: The White Pedestal
Read all about our Salon Series here.
“Less rows of chairs, more community gathering”
Each Salon is $5. And your $5 entry comes off the price of any visiting authors’ books you purchase at an event.
Bring your brain! We’ll always have free snacks to keep you powered up.
This is one of the most important discussions of our time. It’s so critical to understand why American culture is moving the way it is. So, we’re proud to host Curtis Dozier at a Stanza Salon.
About Curtis’s book:
How white nationalist thought leaders use ancient Greece and Rome to claim historical precedent for their violent and oppressive politics
It is difficult to ignore the resurgence of white nationalist movements in the United States, many of which employ symbols and slogans from Greco-Roman antiquity. A long-established neo-Nazi website incorporates an image of the Parthenon into its logo, and rioters wore Spartan helmets in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. These juxtapositions may appear incongruous to people who associate the ancient world with enlightened political ideals and sophisticated philosophical inquiry. But, as Curtis Dozier points out in this thought-provoking book, it’s hard to imagine a historical period better suited to rhetorical use by white nationalists. Indeed, some of the most widely admired voices from ancient literature and philosophy endorsed ideas that modern white supremacists promote, and the social and political realities of the ancient world provide models for political systems that white supremacists would like to establish today.
Part introduction to contemporary white nationalist thought, part exploration of ancient racism and xenophobia, and part intellectual history of the political entanglements of academic study of the past, this book reveals that contemporary white nationalist intellectuals know much more about history than many people assume—and they deploy this knowledge with disturbing success.
Curtis Dozier
Curtis Dozier received his Ph.D. in Classics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2008 and has taught at Vassar College since then. He is an internationally recognized expert on how extremists and hate groups invoke Greco-Roman antiquity to promote their politics. He is the author of the White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate (Yale University Press, 2026) and has been documenting examples of appropriations of Greco-Roman antiquity by hate groups online at his award-winning website Pharos: Doing Justice to the Classics since 2017 (https://doingjusticetotheclassics.org). He has appeared on Public Radio’s “Academic Minute,” BBC Radio 4’s “Anti-Social,” KPFA’s “Against the Grain,” and the Karen Hunter Show on Sirius XM.
Literature Book Club
Stanza book clubs
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library
Libro.fm
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
Mystery book club
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library, libro.fm/stanzabooks
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
Stanza COMICS CLUB
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library, libro.fm/stanzabooks
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
Dark Fiction book club
Stanza book clubs
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library, libro.fm/stanzabooks
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
Sci-Fi book club
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library
Libro.fm
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
CAMPERS - 5-7 YR OLDS
As promised, we're bringing our CAMPERS program back for 2026! This session, we'll read the book FORTY THE FORTUNETELLER. Then, we'll invite all kids and parents to make our OWN fortunetellers. This is one of the funnest things we can remember from our own childhoods, and we cannot wait to make some with all of you!
This CAMPERS is for 5-7 yr olds( or thereabouts ).
This session is for kids and parents or caregivers to collaborate! You will help your child make their very own fortuneteller :)
We're changing things up a bit, as we work out different funding models for the programs. We have numerous ideas cooking.
This is one:
We're charging a $5 fee for CAMPERS. BUT, that $5 comes off the price of any purchases you make at Stanza at CAMPERS. So, if you decide to buy the book we're reading, or you decide to buy another book for your child ( or even a book for mommy and daddy ), we'll take the $5 CAMPERS fee off the price of your purchase that day.
Grief and Mourning book club - BELOVED
We got lotsa easy ways to join any Stanza book club!
Buy the book at Stanza(book club members get 10% off book club books!)
Get the book from your local library
Get your audio book from Libro.fm
Then just RSVP on our site and come ready for great discussion!
Fantasy book club
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library
Libro.fm
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
Literature Book Club
Stanza book clubs
It’s easy to join any Stanza book club
Get your books at Stanza
-or-
your local library
Libro.fm
Then just RSVP and come ready for great discussion!
Storytime
No reservation, just show up!
Storytime is our ritual FREE storytime for babies and toddlers. Join Mr. Mark & Ms. Andi, and sometimes visiting authors, for new adventures every week!