REKT - Alex Gonzalez book launch
Books will be for sale at the event. Friendly reminder, no outside books allowed at stanza events.
REKT
A lot of folks shun horror because they think it’s all slashers and blood and gore. But as I’ve said many times, I view horror as a direct descendent of Greek tragedy. Great horror, truly great horror, is about people. The monsters, ghosts, or otherwise beasties are symbols, metaphors, manifestations of the darkness that lives in us all.
So, I’m starting to fine-tune my horror book club to include more dark and gothic fiction, in the hopes of luring more of you in. Our current pick Hungerstone is a great example. Check out my write-up in the book clubs section.
For the launch of REKT, I’ve paired Alex with horror legend John Langan. Two radically different writers using fantastical scenarios to explore grief.
Langan’s The Fisherman imagines a man so distraught at the loss of his wife, he employs occult rituals and wrestles a leviathan for the power to bring her back.
The Fisherman is not exactly scary. It is a horrifying and awe-inspiring gaze into the darkest parts of the human heart, by a master of the genre.
Gonzalez’s REKT shows us how profound loss can drive us down the deepest rabbit holes. A stunning debut, REKT bears down with unrelenting dread and terror as the lead character spirals into the dark web.
If you’re not familiar, the dark web is a secret internet hidden from search engines, devoid of friendly domain names, and only accessible via arcane web addresses. The dark web is where criminals sell drugs, weapons, and much, much worse.
REKT takes us to the most sinister possible version of this dark web, but certainly not the version you expect. REKT will not show you child or animal abuse, or anything like that. Like the modern web itself, REKT’s terrors are personalized, tailored just for you. There are no ghosts, ghouls, or cryptids. Oh no, the monsters in REKT are the scariest of them all.
Fans of the crime fiction like, say Gillian Flynn, will find a lot to love in REKT.
The Fisherman roots itself in Hudson Valley and Catskills history, and is largely timeless. The modern sections do not rely too much on current tech or customs.
REKT is immediate. It speaks directly to the anxieties the modern web creates in us right now. Beyond being a good book, REKT is an important book to read in 2025.
I’m cooking up a range of questions to get these two authors riffing, and I hope y’all come out. It’s going to be a great night.
-Mark
Alex Gonzalez
Alex Gonzalez is a WGA screenwriter and horror fiction writer. He is the cofounder of the horror zine You Are Not Alone and has taught genre writing workshops at various magazines and institutions. Born and raised in Florida, he now lives with his wife in Beacon, New York.
in conversation with
John Langan
John Langan is the author of two novels and five collections of stories. For his work, he has received the Bram Stoker and This Is Horror awards. One of the founders of the Shirley Jackson award, he serves on its Board of Advisors. His reviews and essays have been widely published. He lives in New York's Mid-Hudson Valley with his wife, younger son, and bubbling fish tanks.
Lit book club
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Buy the book at Stanza(book club members get 10% off book club books!)
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Fear No Pharaoh
At the Howland Cultural Center
477 Main, Beacon NY
Books will be for sale and signing at the event. Friendly reminder, no outside books allowed at Stanza events.
A dramatic history of how American Jews reckoned with slavery—and fought the Civil War.
Since ancient times, the Jewish people have recalled the story of Exodus and reflected on the implications of having been slaves. Did the tradition teach that Jews should speak out against slavery and oppression everywhere, or act cautiously to protect themselves in a hostile world?
In Fear No Pharaoh, the journalist and historian Richard Kreitner sets this question at the heart of the Civil War era. Using original sources, he tells the intertwined stories of six American Jews who helped to shape a tumultuous time, including Judah Benjamin, the brilliant, secretive lawyer who became Jefferson Davis’s trusted confidante; Morris Raphall, a Swedish-born rabbi who defended slavery as biblically justified; and Raphall's rival rabbis—the celebrated Isaac Mayer Wise, who urged Jews to stay out of the slavery controversy to avoid attracting attention, and David Einhorn, whose fiery sermons condemning bondage led to a pro-slavery mob threatening his life. We also meet August Bondi, a veteran of Europe’s 1848 revolutions, who fought with John Brown in “Bleeding Kansas” and later in the Union Army, and the Polish émigré Ernestine Rose, a feminist, atheist, and abolitionist who championed “emancipation of all kinds.”
As he tracks these characters, Kreitner illuminates the shifting dynamics of Jewish life in America—and the debates about religion, morality, and politics that endure to this day.
Richard Kreitner
Richard Kreitner is the author of Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union and Booked: A Traveler’s Guide to Literary Locations Around the World. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Nation, Slate, Raritan, The Baffler, Jewish Currents, and other publications. He lives in Beacon.
in conversation with
Rabbi Brent Spodek
Rabbi Brent works extensively with couples preparing for marriage, serves as a member of the faculty at Pardes North America and is the emeritus rabbi at Beacon Hebrew Alliance.
He has been recognized by the Jewish Forward as one of the most inspiring rabbis in America, by Hudson Valley Magazine as a Person to Watch and by Newsweek as "a rabbi to watch." He is a Senior Rabbinic Fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute and a Fellow of the Schusterman Foundation.
Previously, Rabbi Brent served as the Rabbi in Residence at American Jewish World Service and was a Rabbinic Fellow at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York.
Rabbi Brent holds rabbinic ordination and a master's degree in philosophy from the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he was the first recipient of the Neubauer Fellowship.
Fantasy book club
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Buy the book at Stanza(book club members get 10% off book club books!)
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Then just RSVP on our site and come ready for great discussion!
Sci-fi book club
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Buy the book at Stanza(book club members get 10% off book club books!)
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Then just RSVP on our site and come ready for great discussion!
Horror book club
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Buy the book at Stanza(book club members get 10% off book club books!)
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Then just RSVP on our site and come ready for great discussion!
Horror book club
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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!
Mystery book club
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The Roaring 20s and the Harlem Renaissance
The Roaring 20s and the Harlem Renaissance
This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of three extraordinary events. The Harlem Renaissance became a national phenomenon in 1925, and it was also the year F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby and Edward Christopher Williams released his novel, When Washington Was in Vogue. In 1925, the Jazz Age was in full swing, flappers were challenging long-held gender norms, and artists, writers, and musicians were producing work that we still admire today. Join Eve Dunbar (Vassar College) and Adam McKible (John Jay College of Criminal Justice) for a discussion of the Roaring Twenties and a comparative look at two of the era’s most compelling novels.
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published by Scribner in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.
When Washington Was in Vogue
Nearly lost after its anonymous publication in 1926 and only recently rediscovered, When Washington Was in Vogue is an acclaimed love story written and set during the Harlem Renaissance. When bobbed-hair flappers were in vogue and Harlem was hopping, Washington, D.C., did its share of roaring, too.
Davy Carr, a veteran of the Great War and a new arrival in the nation's capital, is welcomed into the drawing rooms of the city's Black elite. Through letters, Davy regales an old friend in Harlem with his impressions of race, politics, and the state of Black America as well as his own experiences as an old-fashioned bachelor adrift in a world of alluring modern women.
With an introduction by Adam McKible and commentary by Emily Bernard, this novel, a timeless love story wonderfully enriched with the drama and style of one of the most hopeful moments in African American history, is as "delightful as it is significant" (Essence).
Adam McKible
Adam McKible is Associate Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. 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). He edited and introduced Edward Christopher Williams’s When Washington Was in Vogue (2004), a previously lost novel of the Harlem Renaissance, and he co-edited the collection, Little Magazines and Modernism: New Approaches (2005).
Eve Dunbar
Eve Dunbar is an English professor at Rice University (TX). She is the author of Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction: African American Women Writing Under Slavery (U of Minnesota Press, 2024), Black Regions of the Imagination: African American Writers Between the Nation and the World, and co-editor of African American Literature in Transition: 1930-1940.
Sci-Fi book club
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
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Then just RSVP on our site and come ready for great discussion!
VHS / It Was Her New York
VHS / It Was Her New York
Writer/instructor/teacher/community organizer Kathy Curto moderates what will be sure to be a fascinating and deep discussion between authors & artists C.O. Moed and Chris Campanioni. Both authors use experimental form to explore the personal and political.
Campanioni’s new work, “VHS”, fresh from indie darling Clash Books, uses autofiction, VHS footage, journal entries, and more to explore a family immigration story.
Moed’s latest, “It Was Her New York: True Stories & Snapshots” records a journey, in writing and photography, of a mother and daughter confronting dementia while living in New York City.
Curto’s an adept moderator and conversationalist: don’t miss this unique event.
Note: books will be for sale and signing. Friendly reminder, no outside books allowed at Stanza events.
CHRIS CAMPANIONI
CHRIS CAMPANIONI’s work on migration and media theory has been awarded the Calder Prize for interdisciplinary research and a Mellon Foundation fellowship, and his writing has received the Pushcart Prize, the International Latino Book Award, and the Academy of American Poets College Prize. His essays, poetry, and fiction have been translated into Spanish and Portuguese and have found a home in several venues, including Best American Essays and Latin American Literature Today. Recent books include a novel named VHS (CLASH Books, 2025), a creative nonfiction called north by north/west (West Virginia University Press, 2025), a notebook titled A and B and Also Nothing (Unbound Edition, 2023), and the poetry collection Windows 85 (Roof Books, 2024). He is the writer in residence at Pace University in New York City, where he teaches creative writing and media studies.
C.O. MOED
C.O. Moed grew up on New York’s Lower East Side when it was still a tough neighborhood. A recipient of the Elizabeth George Grant for Fiction and an alum of the groundbreaking WOW Cafe, her work has appeared in various publications, including the Silver Tongued Devil Anthology; AWAKE: Reader for the Sleepless; Thorn Literary Magazine; Unexpected Stories; Inspirational Art Magazine; and Sensitive Skin. She has been a featured reader at many venues and series, including the KGB Bar, great weather for MEDIA/Parkside, Singapore Unbound and the NYC Poetry Festival. Her debut memoir, It Was Her New York: True Stories and Snapshots (Rootstock Publishing, 2024) was a BookLife Editor's Pick, Kirkus Review Recommended Book and winner of the Firebird Book Award Judges' Pick, among others.
Kathy Curto
Kathy Curto teaches at Sarah Lawrence College/The Writing Institute and Montclair State University as well as several nonprofit organizations and writing centers in the metropolitan area. She is the author of Not for Nothing-Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, on NPR, and in the anthologies And There Were Red Geraniums Everywhere (released in both Italian and English) and Listen to Your Mother: What She Said Then, What We’re Saying Now. She has also published widely in a variety of literary journals and magazines. Kathy’s piece, “Still Cooking Side by Side” considered a “Modern Love in miniature” by The New York Times, was included in The Best of Tiny Love Stories in August 2021. She is co-founder of Key to the Castle Workshop and serves on the board of the Italian American Writers Association. Kathy lives with her family in the Hudson Valley.
Fantasy book club
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
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DARK SPORES - FUNGAL HORROR
DARK SPORES
Go ahead. Stick your hand into that slimy hollow. Bend down and touch that mushroom that may or may not be leaning your direction. Enter the world of fungal horror, a subgenre that encompasses many works, from Jeff VanderMere's The Southern Reach Trilogy, and the video game The Last of Us.
Stanza is proud to host 5 authors, who will discuss and read from DARK SPORES.
This anthology explores the mysterious world of fungi, spores...and things that dwell in the dim forest under the rotting leaves.
RSVP now. And don't think too hard about the mold growing along side that dark and lonely road...
Friendly reminder: no outsie books allowed at Stanza events.
Lit book club
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Buy the book at Stanza(book club members get 10% off book club books!)
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LET’S TALK MONSTERS - An evening with Dennis Mahoney & Robert Ottone
LET’S TALK MONSTERS
An evening with Dennis Mahoney & Robert Ottone
We’ll have lotsa books for purchase and signing. Friendly reminder, no outside books at Stanza events. :)
From Scylla and Charybdis, to Grendel, to Frankenstein, to Big Foot, we have always been fascinated by monsters. In this special book launch event, I’ll take the audience into the darkest parts of these writers’ minds, and try to reveal why.
OUR WINTER MONSTER
For the last year, Holly and Brian have been out of sync. Neither can forget what happened that one winter evening; neither can forgive what's happened since. Tonight, Holly and Brian race toward Pinebuck, New York, trying to outrun a blizzard on their way to the ski village getaway they hope will save their relationship. But soon they lose control of the car--and then of themselves.
Now Sheriff Kendra Book is getting calls about a couple in trouble--along with reports of a brutal and mysterious creature rampaging through town, leaving a trail of crushed cars, wrecked buildings, and mangled bodies in the snow.
To Kendra, who lost another couple to the snow just seven weeks ago, the danger feels personal. But not as personal as it feels to Holly and Brian, who are starting to see the past, the present, and themselves in a monstrous new light.
Mahoney's exhilarating story moves like an avalanche, but its desperate characters, claustrophobic setting, and shocking displays of gore will stay with you long after the snow has melted. Our Winter Monster captures the horrifying moments that test if we're strong enough to weather the worst--and asks who we might survive the storm with.
Dennis Mahoney
Dennis Mahoney is the author of Fellow Mortals, a Booklist Top Ten Debut; Bell Weather, an Indie Next pick; Ghostlove; and My Heart Is Full of Blood. He lives in Troy, NY, with his wife, son, and dog.
NOCTURNAL CREATURES
What lurks in the Dunderberg Mountains?
Teenager Cassie, growing up on her family’s apple and peach orchard in upstate New York, was the first to see one of the terrifying, strange creatures from the woods around their property.
Cassie’s crush, El Salvadorian Darwin, thinks it’s a Sisimito, a Central American creature of lore akin to the Sasquatch. Then, the family sees more of the frightening beasts, and it’s not long before the creatures take aggressive action toward Cassie’s family.
That launches a life-and-death battle that could have devastating consequences ...
Robert P. Ottone
Robert P. Ottone is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Triangle and is also the best-selling author of Curse of the Cob Man, The Sleepy Hollow Gang, The Vile Thing We Created and Nocturnal Creatures.
His short fiction has been collected in Wrapped in Plastic and Other Sweet Nothings as well as Her Infernal Name & Other Nightmares.
He holds two master’s degrees in Education, as well as an MFA in Children’s Literature.
Robert is also a true crime lecturer for various universities, libraries and groups.
A bagel-loving fabulist of spooky absurdity, Ottone enjoys cigars, cocktails and time with his wife.
PRE-LAUNCH: Twilight of the Gods
PRE-LAUNCH: Twilight of the Gods
This book comes out March 11, so join us at this PRE-LAUNCH event and get it before anyone else!
Friendly reminder: No outside books allowed at Stanza events. All books for signing must be purchased at Stanza.
This is not your comic book trickster.
Kurt Baumeister's Twilight of the Gods is satire and alternate history on an operatic, cinematic, and cosmic scale, with a cast that transcends time and space. The grinding of The Wheel of Fate is heard in Valhalla, as it is in Berlin and Boston.
Can Odin's many schemes be undone? Who can rewire the robotic nightmare of politics and write a brighter future for humanity? Only humanity's champion, the long misunderstood, supposed force of evil, Loki. This is a tale of fallen gods and failing humanity, of love lost and found, of parents and children, magic and sex, art and lies, good, evil, and the end of Fate.
This is the story of Loki. In his own words.
Kurt Baumeister
Kurt Baumeister's writing has appeared in Salon, Guernica, Electric Literature, Rain Taxi, The Brooklyn Rail, The Rumpus, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Nervous Breakdown, The Weeklings and other outlets. An acquisitions editor with 7.13 Books, Baumeister holds an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College. Twilight of the Gods is his second novel.
in conversation with
Jackie Corley
In past lives, Jackie Corley was a reporter, a drone operator, and the publisher of Word Riot. In the current one, she's VP of Content for a radio company. Corley received an MFA from the Bennington College. Her fiction has appeared in BULL, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Redivider and Fourteen Hills, among others. She lives in the Hudson Valley but will always be a Jersey girl at heart.
Mystery book club
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
Read books on Kindle? Sponsor a physical copy for another reader at Stanza!
Then just RSVP on our site and come ready for great discussion!
Horror book club
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
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Read eBooks? Go to Stanza’s https://bookshop.org/. Bookshop now has eBooks!
Then just RSVP on our site and come ready for great discussion!
Sam Rebelein + Clay McLeod Chapman - dual book launch
Friendly reminder: No outside books allowed at Stanza events. All books for signing must be purchased at Stanza.
In Comparison Book Club - Grendel + Autobiography of Red
Come get the books at Stanza, sign up at the link below, and show up ready for a great discussion.
Caroline Eisner
Caroline will be on hand to to moderate what will surely be a heady and lively discussion. Limited seats to allow for the best experience!
Caroline Eisner has lived in many places, but Beacon is currently her favorite. In one of her past lives, Caroline taught British literature and writing. These days, her preferred job is working with academic authors who want to express themselves and their work more clearly and concisely. And, luckily, because she works from home, every day is bring your dog to work day.
Sci-Fi book club
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
Read books on Kindle? Sponsor a physical copy for another reader at Stanza!
Then just RSVP on our site and come ready for great discussion!
Sargent + Stanza
Sargent + Stanza
We’re proud to partner with Sargent Elementary! Stanza will provide books for the Feb 12 assembly with Karina Yan Glaser!
Order any book and we’ll have it waiting for you at the school assembly Feb 12 :) Or, pick it up at Stanza!
Order all 7, get a BONUS $10 Stanza gift card!
Caroline Hagood + Lisa Marie Basile
Friendly reminder: No outside books allowed at Stanza events.
Death and Other Speculative Fictions
Caroline Hagood takes the reader on a wild ride, using surreal stories to process the recent death of her father. She mourns by making language work as a time machine to go back and let her father live again, bending space and time to make a place for him, if only in this book that is, above all, a séance. Death and Other Speculative Fictions is for anyone who is grieving the loss of a loved one and searching everywhere for answers.
Caroline Hagood
Caroline Hagood is an Assistant Professor of Literature, Writing and Publishing and Director of Undergraduate Writing at St. Francis College in Brooklyn. She is the author of two poetry books; the essay collections, Ways of Looking at a Woman and Weird Girls; and the novels, Ghosts of America and Filthy Creation. Her book Death and Other Speculative Fictions has just come out from Spuyten Duyvil press and her speculative memoir, Goblin Mode, is forthcoming from Santa Fe Writers Project in Fall 2025. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Creative Nonfiction, LitHub, the Kenyon Review, the Huffington Post, the Guardian, Salon, and Elle.
saint of
saint of is a gilded exploration of hunger—the hunger for the erotic, the ancestral, the forbidden, divinity, and hope. With themes of grief, illness, and generational trauma woven alongside sensuality and beauty, this collection is both sacrament and defiance. It traces the contours of longing, ruin, and transformation, blurring the boundaries between the carnal and the celestial. These poems are not only an invocation of saints—they are a declaration of self.
Lisa Marie Basile
Lisa Marie Basile is the author of a few books of nonfiction and poetry, including Light Magic for Dark Times, Andalucia, and Nympholepsy, among others. Her work can be found in The New York Times, Best American Experimental Writing, Best Small Fictions, Narratively, and more. Lisa Marie earned an MFA from The New School, and she's led workshops or spoken at Manhattanville College, Columbia University, Emerson College, and Pace University. She is the editor-in-chief of Luna Luna Magazine. Her work explores trauma, darkness, ritual, the body and chronic illness, Mediterranean ancestry, foster care, and place.
Literature book club
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Buy the book at Stanza
Get the book from your local library
Get your audio book from Libro.fm
Read books on Kindle? Sponsor a physical copy for another reader at Stanza!
Then just RSVP on our site and come ready for great discussion!
Jan HORROR book club
Joining any Stanza book club is easy!
Buy your copy at Stanza
RSVP
Show up ready for great discussion!
A Gorgeous Excitement
Friendly reminder: No outside books allowed at Stanza events. All books for signing must be purchased at Stanza.
A Gorgeous Excitement
Cynthia Weiner
A dazzling debut novel set in 1980s New York, when cocaine is as easy to get as ice cream, about one young woman's summer of infinite possibility--and looming danger.
It was the summer of 1986, when the girl was found dead in Central Park behind the Metropolitan Museum--half-naked, legs splayed, arms flung over her head. Larynx crushed.
There are two things Nina Jacobs is determined to do over the summer of 1986: avoid her mother's depression-fueled rages, and lose her virginity before she starts college in the fall. Both are seemingly impossible--when her mother isn't lying in bed for days, she's lashing out at Nina over any perceived slight. And after a blowjob gone spectacularly wrong, Nina is the talk of Flanagan's, the Upper East Side bar where young Manhattan society congregates. It doesn't help that she's Jewish, an outsider among the blue-eyed blondes who populate this rarified world. She can fit in, kind of, with enough alcohol and prescription drugs stolen from her parents' medicine cabinet.
Flanagan's is where she pines for the handsome, preppy, and charismatic Gardner Reed, whom every girl wants to sleep with and every guy wants to be. After she's introduced to cocaine, Nina plunges headlong into her pursuit of Gardner, oblivious to the warning signs. When a new medication seemingly frees her mother from darkness, and Nina and Gardner grow closer, it seems like Nina might finally get what she wants. But at what cost?
Sigmund Freud called a cocaine high "a gorgeous excitement" and, as Nina Jacobs is about to learn, New York City is a deadly place to be gorgeous.
In Comparison Book Club - Lolly Willowes + Sula
Come get the books at Stanza, sign up at the link below, and show up ready for a great discussion.
Caroline Eisner
Caroline will be on hand to to moderate what will surely be a heady and lively discussion. Limited seats to allow for the best experience!
Caroline Eisner has lived in many places, but Beacon is currently her favorite. In one of her past lives, Caroline taught British literature and writing. These days, her preferred job is working with academic authors who want to express themselves and their work more clearly and concisely. And, luckily, because she works from home, every day is bring your dog to work day.