AWP Event News Flash: Victor LaValle Joins Us!

Fabulous news, folks: Victor LaValle will now be joining us at our AWP event at Toledo Lounge on Thursday, February 3! It's a can't-miss event if you'll be in DC for the festivities this year!

Our full list of readers now includes Victor LaValle, Robert Lasner, Molly McCloy, Irina Reyn, Margarita Shalina, and Mark Swartz!

Click here for more information and to RSVP!

Buzz Poole on Forgotten Borough

A shout-out to Forgotten Borough comes today from book contributor Buzz Poole, who speaks at his blog about his piece for the book, "To Bridge: The Spaces Between, Behind, and Around Us" and why he loves Queens. Thanks, Buzz!

Check out Buzz's blog entry here!

Forgotten Borough at AWP 2011!

Forgotten Borough makes its debut on February 1 and you can score your own copy, hot off the press, if you're in town for this year's AWP conference in Washington, D.C.

We're celebrating with a reading on Thursday, February 3 at 6 p.m. at Toledo Lounge! Featured readers include ROBERT LASNER, MOLLY MCCLOY, IRINA REYN, MARGARITA SHALINA, and MARK SWARTZ!

Have a beer with us (some nachos, too) and indulge in a taste of Queens, NY! SUNY Press will provide copies of the book for sale and the readers will sign copies!

To learn more about the event and to RSVP, visit our Facebook event page: Forgotten Borough AWP Reading!

Refreshing the Supply

I discovered stewardesses. The airlines put them up in the high-rise condos that lined Queens Boulevard, refreshing the supply daily. Once you cleaned up (and I cleaned up nice), all you had to do was make your way over to the 5 Burros after 11 and ask one if she wanted another margarita. They were perfume-soaked sitting ducks, bored, restless, desperate for someone to listen to them about annoying passengers, heartless pilots, mothers who always phoned too early or too late. Guess who was all ears.

—from Mark Swartz's "Accent Reduction" in the upcoming anthology Forgotten Borough

Pre-order your copy of Forgotten Borough @ SUNY Press, Amazon, or other book retailers.

Above: "Forest Hills Sunset 4/11/09" by beau-dog on flickr

Full of Secrets

I loved Sunnyside Gardens park, the wooden jungle gym that my father, an engineer, had helped design and build; the tiny two-feet-deep swimming pool; the hidden courtyards of Sunnyside Gardens that seemed full of secrets: mulberry trees dropping sweet, ripe fruit, a hutch of baby bunnies in a neighbor's yard, weeping willows and magnolias and maples. I thought the squat brick houses were beautiful, with the snow collecting in their eaves, and the giant trees arching over the street, their roots cracking up the cement sidewalks.

Still, it wasn't exactly a bucolic idyll.

—from Margo Rabb's "Love and Shame" in the upcoming anthology Forgotten Borough

Pre-order your copy of Forgotten Borough @ SUNY Press, Amazon, or other book retailers.

Above: "Sunnyside Gardens: Common Court in Spring" by Kate Anne on flickr

SUNY Press 2011 Catalog

The SUNY Press Spring 2011 is now available to peruse online. Click here to read more about Forgotten Borough and other upcoming SUNY titles!

And don't forget to visit SUNY Press on Facebook!

The Highways, Expressways, and Parkways of Queens

"Van Wyck Expressway (Northbound)" by Spamdude060 on flickr


"Cross Island Parkway - New York" by dougtone on flickr



"Grand Central Parkway" by umussahar.khatri on flickr


"Jackie Robinson Parkway at Queens Blvd." by Sekkle on flickr


"Under the Long Island Expressway" by Rheingold_Room on flickr


"BQE At Night" by Always Been Mad on flickr

Labor on the Night Shift

Maspeth consists of warehouses, factories, Western Beef Supermarket, New Penn Trucking, Asian Import/Exporters, gas stations advertising diesel, garages, the surprise of nearly forgotten train tracks that still transport freight, junkyard cemeteries encapsulating the vestiges of dead cars, junkyard dogs roaring unexpectedly at fences. It's the workplace of men and women who perform physically demanding labor and retire with back problems and painkiller addictions. A place where black P.O.W./M.I.A. flags still hang proudly below the promise of, "You are not forgotten." The workplace of men and women on work release—convicts. The workplace of newly arrived immigrants with limited skill sets, who have yet to achieve fluency in English. The workplace of labor on the night shift.

—from Margarita Shalina's "The Maspeth Holders" in the upcoming anthology Forgotten Borough

Pre-order your copy of Forgotten Borough @ SUNY Press, Amazon, or other book retailers.

Above: "Moon over Maspeth, Queens" by LuckyRVA on flickr

The Politics of Space

There is a convergence of train lines at the Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Avenue station in Queens that makes Times Square seem downright tame. It's a place where the politics of space have devolved to anarchy, not violent but jostling. South Asians, Chinese, and Latinos are the majority; their prominence mirrors the world. The E train fills with them, as well as those from the projects of Jamaica and the more suburban settings of Queens that flirt with Long Island, plus the intrepid travelers who have just flown in from JFK, worrying that New York doesn't look like it does in the movies.

—from Buzz Poole's "To Bridge: The Spaces Between, Behind, and Around Us" in the upcoming anthology Forgotten Borough

Pre-order your copy of Forgotten Borough @ SUNY Press, Amazon, or other book retailers.

Above: "Jackson Heights in Three Levels" by lizzard_nyc on flickr

Forgotten Borough in the Queens Tribune

Forgotten Borough is featured in the leisure section of this week's Queens Tribune, in an article by Domenick Rafter. Read about editor Nicole Steinberg's connection to Queens and her process in putting together the book: "An Ode to our 'Forgotten Borough'"

Many thanks to Domenick and the Queens Tribune!

Like the above shot? It's by FB cover artist Sheryl Yvette, aka *Bitch Cakes*, a truly talented photographer. Stay tuned to the FB blog for more Queens photos, as well as news about the book and excerpts.

Above: "Overhead the 7 Train rumbles into the 45th Road Stop" by bitchcakesny on flickr

Forgotten Borough available for pre-order!

Forgotten Borough is now available for pre-order! Check out any or all of the following book retailers to secure your copy before the book's release from SUNY Press on February 1, 2011!

SUNY Press
St. Mark's Bookshop
Amazon
Barnes & Noble

Twenty-four contemporary writers reflect on life in New York City's biggest underdog, the "forgotten borough" of Queens.

The stories, poems, and essays in Forgotten Borough offer twenty-four takes on New York City’s biggest underdog: Queens. From the immigrant communities of Forest Hills to the unsung heroes of Maspeth and the bustling crowds of Flushing, Queens is the most diverse county in the United States, but unlike the iconic boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Bronx, it’s neither as well known in other parts of the country nor as well traveled by New Yorkers (at least those who don’t need to take the 7 train to get home). Featuring writers who hail from the borough as well as those who have moved there and have come to call it home, Forgotten Borough uncovers the New York stories that most of us don’t get to hear, tales that reflect not only upon contemporary life in Queens but also its humble history and its evolution to the multicultural community—the community of communities—it is today. Taken together, they offer a vivid, layered portrait of Queens as a microcosm of America, where race, ethnicity, class, and industrial growth all influence our collective past, as well as our present and future.

"Though Queens has been home to many great writers—including the father of American poetry Walt Whitman, Beat pioneer Jack Kerouac, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Alan Dugan, two-fisted journalist Jimmy Breslin, singer-songwriter Paul Simon, rap legend LL Cool J, and renowned novelist Mary Gordon—it rarely comes to mind as a breeding ground for major literary talent. Nicole Steinberg's first-rate book should go a long way toward rectifying that situation. A terrific read, it makes a powerful case for this long-overlooked borough as a place of remarkable artistic richness and vitality."
—Kimiko Hahn, author of Toxic Flora: Poems

Edited by Nicole Steinberg

Contributors: Julia Alvarez, Susan Y. Chi, Nicole Cooley, Marcy Dermansky, Jill Eisenstadt, Rigoberto González, Ron Hogan, Marc Landas, Robert Lasner, Victor LaValle, Jocelyn Lieu, Molly McCloy, Arthur Nersesian, Buzz Poole, Margo Rabb, Irina Reyn, Roger Sedarat, Margarita Shalina, Mark Swartz, Jayanti Tamm, Juanita Torrence-Thompson, Marissa Walsh, John Weir

Cover art by Sheryl Yvette, aka *Bitch Cakes*