Wrapping up our 2023 Summer Author Series

Last week, we wrapped up our 2023 Summer Author Series with our final book signing on Saturday. We had so much fun hanging out with these incredibly talented local authors, and we’re so glad we were able to bring them together with readers and fellow book lovers in the community!

This summer’s author series included:

• Kathryn Kimiecik Foley, author of I Love You Kiss Me Goodnight and Air of Millennia

• Maria Blon, author of Create a Life You Love, Hearts Blooming, Haiku Journey and Living Passionately

• Maya Monique Grier, author of Submute

• Daniel Guilfoyle, author of From Shrink to Think and From Detect to Intellect

• Walter Worden, author of Verse and Verities

• Liza Laird, author of Yoga of Yarn

• Marina Antropow Cramer, author or Marfa's River, Roads and Anna Eva Mimi Adam

• Roselee Blooston, author of Almost: My Life in the Theater, The Chocolate Jar and Other Stories, Trial by Family and Dying in Dubai

• Marylou Ambrose, author of Your Number's Up

• Danielle Cancel, author of Blood & Sunlight and the upcoming Shadows & Secrets

• Luna Writes, author of An Adult Coloring Book: From The Mind Of A Burnt-Out Corporate Baddie

• Audrey Wojciechowski, author of Heartbeats

If you missed any of our book signing events, don’t worry! We still have signed copies available from most of our visiting writers. Contact the store or stop by to pick up your copies today!

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Announcing our 2023 Summer Author Series

This spring and summer, we're excited to welcome the following local authors to our store to meet with readers and sign copies of their books! Be sure to mark these dates on your calendar so you don't miss out!

All of our book signings will take place from 2-4 pm on select Saturdays.

May 20: Kathryn Kimiecik Foley, author of I Love You Kiss Me Goodnight and Air of Millennia

June 10: Maria Blon, author of Create a Life You Love, Hearts Blooming, Haiku Journey and Living Passionately

June 17: Maya Monique Grier, author of Submute

June 24: Daniel Guilfoyle, author of From Shrink to Think and From Detect to Intellect

July 1: Walter Worden, author of Verse and Verities

July 8: Liza Laird, author of Yoga of Yarn

July 15: Marina Antropow Cramer, author or Marfa's River, Roads and Anna Eva Mimi Adam; and Roselee Blooston, author of Almost: My Life in the Theater, The Chocolate Jar and Other Stories, Trial by Family and Dying in Dubai.

July 22: Marylou Ambrose, author of Your Number's Up

July 29: Danielle Cancel, author of Blood & Sunlight

August 12: Luna Writes, author of An Adult Coloring Book: From The Mind Of A Burnt-Out Corporate Baddie

August 19: Audrey Wojciechowski, author of Heartbeats

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You can learn more about these events and others on our Events page.

Meet the Author: Roselee Blooston

This week in our ongoing "Meet the Author" series, we spoke with Roselee Blooston, author of the novel Trial by Family (2019), a Gold Medal Winner in the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards; the memoir Dying in Dubai (2016), a 2016 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year and a 2017 Eric Hoffer Award Finalist; The Chocolate Jar and Other Stories (2022); and Almost: My Life in the Theater (2022), all published by Apprentice House Press, Loyola University Maryland.

She worked professionally as a solo performer, touring four of her plays nationally and internationally at the Edinburgh Festival and over Voice of America. In 2022, she merged her performing and writing lives by returning to the stage for the solo performance/book launch of Almost: My Life in the Theater at the Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck. Her other publications include AARP The Magazine, literary journals, and anthologies. She founded the New Jersey non-profit Tunnel Vision Writers Project Inc. Her fifty-year teaching career included university programs and conservatories. She has conducted writing master classes at Quinnipiac University, as well as Write Your Story workshops for the Nuvance Wellness Program, and Things Left Unsaid workshops for Camp Widow’s international conferences. Roselee Blooston lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Describe your book in 25 words or less.
Almost: My Life in the Theater, a memoir, deals with ambition, failure, and the drive to create. Anyone who has followed a passion will identify.

What inspired you to write this book?
I was wrestling with nagging questions about my past life in the theater. I asked myself and the reader to deeply consider the true meaning of success and the value of a creative life.

Tell us a little about the book writing process.
I wrote the first draft of this memoir in 2015 and then put it away, when my first memoir, Dying in Dubai, found a publisher. Over the next few years, while bringing a novel, Trial by Family, and a collection, The Chocolate Jar and Other Stories, to publication, I continued to work on drafts of Almost–a 7 year process. I tend to write 5-6 days a week when working on a first draft. During the revision process, I can work 7 days, if necessary. In order to write this memoir, I re-read my 13 diaries, from adolescence on. Research indeed!

What do you do for fun when you're not writing?
I love to read, go to concerts, museums, and the theater. In the summer, I swim and kayak.

What's the next project you're working on?
I am working on a collection of personal essays about my time in the Hudson Valley, tentatively titled, In Another Place.

What advice would you give to an aspiring author?
Read in all genres, not just your own. Write 5 or 6 days a week, even if for only 5 minutes. It's important to build the habit. Don't edit yourself when writing a first draft. Remember, you are making the clay. Later, you can shape it.

What are you currently reading?
Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris

Tell us about one of your favorite books or a book that changed your life.
As a young person, I read and reread Jane Eyre. I loved being transported to a country I didn't know, as well as the singularity of the heroine's sensibility. She had such a strong inner core and inspiring resilience.

Do you have a favorite quote from a book?
"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail Again. Fail better." —Worstward Ho, by Samuel Beckett

Who are some of your favorite authors?
Edith Wharton, Charles Dickens, Lionel Shriver, Alice Munro, and Salman Rushdie

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If you enjoyed this interview and would like to learn more about Roselee Blooston and her work, you can visit her website at roseleeblooston.com, or connect with her on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Dying in Dubai, Trial by Family, The Chocolate Jar and Other Stories, and Almost: My Life in the Theater are currently available in store and online.

Meet the Author: Kathryn Kimiecik Foley

This week in our ongoing "Meet the Author" series, we spoke with Kathryn Kimiecik Foley, author of I Love You Kiss Me Goodnight and The Air of Millenia.

Kathryn Kimiecik Foley (who also publishes under KMK Foley) was born in the Black Dirt area of New York State, where she is fifth generation Polish American. After attending OCCC, SUNY Binghamton, and Memorial University of Newfoundland, she worked for the Arts Council of Wyoming County, NY; the National Park Service; as an Executive Secretary; a Nursing Assistant; and was a school bus driver. She lived in Newfoundland, Canada for many years, and relocated to Florida, NY in April 2022, where she now lives with her husband and takes care of her mother full-time. She considers this the best time of her life.

Describe your book, I Love You Kiss Me Goodnight, in 25 words or less.
This poem of 10,000 words is a true narrative epic written within an exotic and geographically stunning and disorienting landscape: Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.

What inspired you to write this book?
My lover was a culturally similar man, slightly older, lively, and mad about me. Our cultural dissimilarity to where we lived glued us to each other. Words poured out of me while we were together and for a few months after it ended. At the time, I didn’t recognize any kind of genre. While I knew it told a story, it made no sense to me. Was it a diary? Was it 100 poems? Eventually I accepted that the narrative was one big poem. I also hid the manuscript away for decades, but I gave a copy to a dear friend who would keep it safe in case something happened to me or I lost it.

Tell us a little about the book writing process.
I Love You Kiss Me Goodnight was written exactly as the dates and times indicate. The chapters are separated by the successive months, so there are four chapters. The few sketches came much, much later. At the time, I was doing fieldwork, which requires daily note-writing about who I meet and what I did all day living in one tiny community. The poems came out instead. It was just everyday life with extraordinary newness. I consider all my poems non-fiction. I’m nearly always the narrator. No secret there.

What do you do for fun when you're not writing?
Lately I’ve been coloring. I’ll be embroidering a bit this winter. I read non-fiction almost exclusively. I’m doing a huge project now about the Black Dirt.

What's the next project you're working on?
I’m editing The Book of Whack, made of materials I wrote/drew during a three-month period of severe mania that saw me sign myself into a psychiatric hospital for a little less than three weeks. The works are one-page things I have no genre name for. They flew out one after another. My brain was solving a problem but I didn’t know what the question was. The works include words and symbols that I couldn’t read for a long time. Some are still unreadable but they don’t scare me anymore. At the time, I put all of it into a giant binder but it petrified me so I hid it away for years. It turns out they were experiments in language that I’ve continued to work on all my life. This book will be the first in a series of perhaps ten. Each book will be about 75 pages. The series is both about poetry and will include my own poems as well. I have also written self-guided lessons to improve reading comprehension at any level, which will be in the same series.

What advice would you give to an aspiring author?
While I appreciate the desire for a writing routine, I don’t keep one. On the other hand, early mornings and late afternoons seem to be productive for me. My actual advice comes from professor Neil V. Rosenberg when I asked him how to start my thesis. He said if I could write and study for three hours a day, I’d get it done. I’ve never had writer’s block because I prefer sanity to fetishized angst, which is what many English Departments demand. My second book, The Air of Millenia, includes Buffalo Chill and God Breath Math, three distinct poetry cycles I had from 1993-2012.

What are you currently reading?
“Archeological and Paleoenvironmental Investigations in the Dutchess Quarry Caves, Orange County, New York” by Robert E. Funk and David W. Steadman, Persimmon Press Monographs in Archeology, 1994 (available through the Ramapo Libraries). These caves overlook the Black Dirt. The book is full of graphs and things like that which I pretty much have ignored so far. It’s the local content I read. Two hearths and tools that date to at least 12,000 BC have been found there.

Tell us about one of your favorite books or a book that changed your life.
I read Call it Sleep by Henry Roth around 1990. It was written in the 1930s, I believe. It is an amazing novel written from a six-year-old’s perspective. The boy is a rural Jewish immigrant whose parents move to NYC in the early 20th century. For me, this boy’s stream of consciousness written in astounding Yiddish dialect is almost unreadable but accurate without being written in a condescending way. For me, Roth is way better than James Joyce. The book has gone in and out of fashion. Shortly after, I wrote a very brief 200 word piece called “I am Five” that remains my best work. One editor desecrated it while another editor and famous novelist at the same company said it was “really quite beautiful” but refused to publish it. I guess they didn’t get it.

Do you have a favorite quote from a book?
There’s one sentiment from Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez that I can’t quite quote and couldn’t find the sentence the last time I looked for it! He writes something about the male character who, all his life, hopes and actually anticipates seeing the woman he loves but was rejected by, around every corner every day of his life while he goes about his daily life, something like that. It struck a chord.

Who are some of your favorite authors?
For novelists, I read Maeve Binchy’s books many years ago. The Lilac Bus and The Copper Beech were favorites. O. Henry remains probably my favorite. It’s hard for me to pick a non-fiction writer. I don’t get “creative non-fiction.” I do like to read autobiographies and biographies. I took a class from Dr. Endesha Ida Mae Holland, an African American activist and playwright, who taught those subjects. Bruce Springsteen’s book was fantastic. Truman Capote’s is also excellent.

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I Love You Kiss Me Goodnight and The Air of Millenia are currently available in store and online.

Meet the Author: Marina Antropow Cramer

This week in our ongoing "Meet the Author" series, we spoke with Marina Antropow Cramer, author of Roads (Chicago Review Press), Anna Eva Mimi Adam (RunAmok Books), and the forthcoming Marfa's River (Apprentice House Press).

Marina Antropow Cramer was born in Germany, the child of Russian refugees from the Soviet Union, and emigrated with her family to the United States in 1956. She holds a BA in English from Upsala College. She has been a waitress, fabric store manager, traveling saleswoman, telephone fundraiser, used book dealer, business owner, and bookseller. She lives in New York's Hudson Valley. Her work has appeared in Blackbird, Istanbul Literary Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Bloom Literary Magazine, and the other side of hope magazine.

Describe your book in 25 words or less.
Roads is the story of a Russian/Ukrainian family who become refugees in postwar Europe after being forced to work in Nazi labor camps. It deals with themes of separation, loss, displacement, and ultimately, hope.

What inspired you to write this book?
The story is based in part on family history, as well as first-hand accounts from other survivors. I felt that this part of the World War II experience - that of ordinary Russians and Ukrainians caught between Stalin and Hitler - had not received much attention in literature. It is another aspect of refugee and immigrant life, a universal theme that is still very much with us today, adding to the relevance of the story.

Tell us a little about the book writing process.
It took years! Though I have lived with some of this material all my life, through family recollections and contact with immigrant communities, I needed to develop the skills to put them into a cohesive narrative. I found I needed to do some serious research to get the history right, as a foundation for the story of what happened to these people and how it affected their lives.

My routine, in the beginning, was frequently interrupted -- the day job (which I left in 2012 to focus on writing), family obligations -- took their toll on my time and mental energy. Generally, the morning hours are best for new writing; rewrites and editing can happen anytime.

What do you do for fun when you're not writing?
Reading, of course, several books at a time, from novels to history, science, essays, and poetry. Listening to music, especially opera. Also cooking and being outdoors (where a good deal of writing/editing happens, in my favorite blue chair under the big pine in my yard). I have enjoyed growing vegetables in the past, but defeated by deer and groundhogs, now confine my efforts to herbs in pots.

What's the next project you're working on?
Marfa's River is the story of a character from Roads, and how her life is affected by the catastrophic death of her child in the earlier book. It takes place eleven years later, in the ‘50s, in Brussels. It's in production now, scheduled for a spring 2023 release.

What advice would you give to an aspiring author?
Just do it. Focus on the work and stay with it, even if seems to stray from your original intention. And hang out with other writers, in person or online, for mutual support and useful critique.

What are you currently reading?
Jim Harrison's Legends of the Fall; Hillary Mantel's The Giant, O'Brien; poetry by A. Molotkov, Future Symptoms; and an audiobook version of Ten Tomatoes That Changed the World, by William Alexander.

Tell us about one of your favorite books or a book that changed your life.
I will always love The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, for its wisdom, humanity, and gentle humor.

Do you have a favorite quote from a book?
"People finally don't have much affection for questions, especially one so leprous as the apparent lack of a fair system of rewards and punishments on earth...And we are not concerned with the grander issues:...we can't seem to go from large to small because everything is the same size. Everyone's skin is so particular and we are so largely unimaginable to one another." — Jim Harrison, Legends of the Fall

Who are some of your favorite authors?
Anton Chekhov, Virginia Woolf, Hillary Mantel, George Saunders, Margaret Atwood

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If you enjoyed this interview and would like to learn more about Marina Antropow Cramer and her work, you can visit her website at MarinaAntropowCramer.com, or connect with her on Facebook and Instagram.

Roads and Anna Eva Mimi Adam are currently available in store and online.