Literature and Photography at St. Joseph's: March

I'm working on doing a general post on St. Joeseph's College, but in the meantime I'm going to start posting some of their cool, free community events.  They seem to host a LOT of high-profile authors as well as provide interesting art exhibits.  Here's some stuff going on there this month:READING St. Joseph's College is pleased to announce that Emily Barton will be the featured author for the spring 2007 installation of the McEntegart Hall Library Author Series. On March 29th, Ms. Barton will read an excerpt from her latest work, Brookland, and participate in a discussion with the audience. The event will be held at 12:40 p.m. in the library's second floor lounge at McEntegart Hall, located on 222 Clinton Avenue. The event is free and open to the public.

Brookland is the story of a determined and intelligent woman in 18th-century Brooklyn who is consumed by a vision of creating a bridge that crosses the East River to Manhattan. Told mostly through letters to the protagonist's daughter, Brookland imagines a world where personal drama, romance, family relationships, and tragedy play out against the construction of a fictional bridge.

Emily Barton earned her B.A. summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College, where she concentrated in English literature; she went on to earn an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her first novel, The Testament of Yves Gundron (2000) was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Month, and won the Bard Fiction Prize. Her second novel Brookland (2006) was also named a New York Times Notable Book, as well as one of the twenty-five best 2006 works of fiction and poetry by the Los Angeles Times.

Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Story magazine, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post Book World, Poetry magazine, the VLS, and Bookforum. Emily Barton has taught writing and humanities at Bard and at Eugene Lang College of the New School. She is currently a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, and she received a 2006 literature grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

PHOTOGRAPHY St. Joseph's College Council for the Arts is pleased to announce that it will present Transformations: Works by Kristin Holcomb from March 26 to April 26 in the Alumni Room Gallery at Tuohy Hall, 245 Clinton Avenue. The 4th event in the College's Nature’s Lasting Impression, Our Environmental Footprint series, Transformations will open on March 29th with a reception at 5:30 p.m., and there will be a gallery talk with the artist on April 10 at 12:40 p.m. All are free and open to the general public. Regular gallery hours are Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 4 to 8 p.m. and on Saturday from 12 to 3 p.m.

This exhibit features nature-inspired photographs that remind viewers how nature surrounds us and inspires beautiful art. In the artist’s words, "Transformations is a series of photographs of walls whose surfaces, after years of being changed by weather, paint, rust and algae, are becoming complex, organic paintings with the passing of time. The Transformations photographs are about rebirth; about the possibility of beauty in destruction or death.”

A working artist and educator, Kristin Holcomb received her BA from Cornell University and her Masters of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute. Her photography has been seen in numerous exhibitions locally in the New York City and Long Island area, nationally from Chicago to Arizona and recently extending globally to Gangneung, Korea. A Brooklyn resident, she currently teaches at the International Center for Photography, New York University and Nassau Community College.

Founded by Sister Elizabeth A. Hill, CSJ, J.D., president, the St. Joseph’s College Council for the Arts is a coalition of students, faculty members and staff who serve as a focal point for St. Joseph’s College’s educational and community outreach programming in the arts. By expanding and integrating campus arts activities, the Council seeks to enhance the public image of the College as a cultural center in Brooklyn and aims to make arts and cultural events more accessible to its students and area neighbors. For more information about this exhibit or other upcoming cultural events at the College's Brooklyn campus, please call (718) 399-6755.