April 21: Randall Peffer and Ann Hood

Ann Hood is the author, most recently, of the novel The Knitting Circle and the forthcoming memoir, Comfort: A Journey Through Grief. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, The Paris Review, Bon Appetit, Traveler, and many more publications. She has won two Pushcart Prizes, The Paul Bowles Prize for Short Fiction, and a Best American Spiritual Writing Award.

Randall Peffer has written extensively in genres ranging from nonfiction, travel, and memoir through naval fiction and literary detective novels. His most recent work, Bangkok Dragons, Cape Cod Tears, is the fourth installment of the Cape Islands Mystery series, and in November, he introduced a Civil War naval trilogy with Southern Seahawk. His first publication, Watermen, which described the lives of Chesapeake Bay fishermen, won the Baltimore Sun's Critic's Choice award and was Maryland Book of the Year in 1985. Provincetown Follies/Bangkok Blues, the first of the Cape Islands Mystery series, was a finalist for the Lambda Award. His travel pieces appear in most major metro daily papers, and in magazines like National Geographic, Smithsonian, Reader's Digest, Travel Holiday, Islands, and Sail.

Randy captained the research schooner Sarah Abbot for 14 years, and has also worked as a commercial fisherman. Currently, he teaches literature and writing at Phillips Academy/Andover.

Ordinary Evening Reading Series Takes a Summer Break, Returns September 15

The Ordinary Evening Reading Series is on Summer Vacation! The 2009-2010 season will begin on September 15th with readers including the exciting new novelist Eugenia Kim, short-story writer Susan McCallum-Smith, poet April Bernard, and many other writers who will move, delight, and entertain you. If you wish to join our email list, send a note to news.ordinaryevening@gmail.com.

As in the past, our events will occur on Tuesday nights at 7PM in the Mermaid Room at the Anchor Bar & Restaurant (272 College Street, New Haven).

We welcome drinkers and teetotallers alike for an evening of readings by writers of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. We hope you can join us for what the New Haven Independent called "one of those unofficial civic ventures that make New Haven such a vibrant place."