Take part in Gallery Night Providence’s 14th season, Thursday 5pm to 9pm,

. . . a fun-filled cultural extravaganza. Twenty-one galleries, museums, and historic sites; convenient parking lots; live music; refreshments; art buses; celebrity guides and it’s all FREE!

New this season are the different tour themes with celebrity hosts — try emerging/contemporary, a bicycle tour, or check in with the awesome Christina Bevilaqua at the Providence Athenaeum for some fascinating traditional works with historic import (attn:Poe fans). All the details of when and where to get on the tours are at the Gallery Night website.

Pictured here are the ‘paint on raw canvas’ hangings of artist Jennifer Daltry currently featured in the windows of Trinity Rep (Empire at Washington) as part of the Providence Art Windows collaboration. PAW will conduct a tour of all their sites starting at Heir Antiques at 231 Westminster Street, meeting around 6-ish.

Ever dreamed of churning out your life story but never had the time?

Your problems will be solved tonight at the Providence Athenaeum, where a roomful of people will get thirty minutes to write their story in 200 words or less.  Everybody can, if they want to, read their story out loud afterwards and, if you want, your stories will be archived at the Athenaeum and on the Not About The Buildings website.  Micro-Memoir!’s co-presented by the Athenaeum and Not About The Buildings; the first one we did in March was actually amazingly fun, though I suppose I am sort of biased about these things.

It’s all ages; at the last one we had high school kids and senior citizens and people from every decade in-between.  The action starts at 5:30, but the space opens at 5 for wine and snacks.  And, of course, since it’s a library you can show up even earlier than that.

Providence Athenaeum
251 Benefit Street
Friday, 5:30pm
free

The public is invited to the next installment of the WRNI series, ‘Policy and Pinot’ this Tuesday at the Providence Atheneum.

A panel led by WRNI political reporters Ian Donnis and Scott MacKay will discuss Rhode Island Politics: The 2010 Election Cycle. Guest panelists will be former Providence Journal columnist and political editor M. Charles Bakst and former WJAR political reporter Dyana Koelsch. The event is free and open to the public, but reservations are required.

5:30pm reception, 6pm program, Tuesday, 251 Benefit Street, reservations 401.351.2800 or events@wrni.org

This Thursday, the Providence Athenaeum and Not About The Buildings are teaming up to bring you Micro-Memoir!, a lightning-fast event where people write really short memoirs (and read them aloud) in just two hours.  Hosted by Karen Donovan, founding editor of Paragraph magazine and artist-in-residence at the Athenaeum, the event is free and open to the public.  All ages are encouraged to attend, so feel free to bring your very young or very old friends and relatives.

Thursday, March 25
251 Benefit St.
5:30pm

Tomorrow night at the Providence Athenaeum, I’ll be hosting the prize reading for the Not About The Buildings Second Annual Writing Prize. In a crazy turn of events that seriously had nothing whatsoever to do with me, the prize was awarded (by an outside judge who blind-read the entries and lives halfway across the country) to the Daily Dose’s own Annie Messier.

The event starts at 7 and also features Allen Kurzweil, novelist and children’s book author. He’ll be reading from a forthcoming memoir. It’s free to attend.

(Although I can’t believe we’re competing with an anti-Carcieri vigil! Uggh.)

Tonight, join Rebel L and twenty-five of his closest friends at the third annual Not About The Buildings Spelling Bee.  I’ll be hosting, and the first thirty-six spellers to sign up will be competing for fame and fabulous prizes donated by Tiny Showcase, if’n books, and What Cheer Antiques.  The lucky bee winner will also receive a membership to the Providence Athenaeum, which (if you didn’t know) is an awesomely fantastic prize.

Spellers are encouraged to show up early, since last year we had to turn some tardy spellers away.

Spelling Bee
AS220
115 Empire St.
9pm
$5 to spell, free to watch

I’m wicked frazzled right now, but before I head out for a (hopefully) computer-free weekend, I just wanted to let you all know about two free happenings this evening:

1. At the Athenaeum (251 Benefit St):

Readings from the newly published anthology, Wild Dreams: the Best of Italian American, with editor-in-chief Carol Bonomo (Ahearn) Albright and contributors Ann Hood, Mary Caponegro, Peter Covino, Christine Palamidessi Moore, and Christina Bevilacqua. For over 30 years the journal Italian Americana has showcased writers who have chronicled Italian-American literary culture and helped to define an Italian-American imagination. Wild Dreams offers the best of those pages.

That runs from 5-7 and it’s free and open to the public; there’s also free sherry, if you’re into that sort of thing.

2. At Machines With Magnets (400 Main St, Pawtucket):

The Sight of Sound

OPENING PARTY: FRIDAY 3/6 7pm | free
+ DJ Heidi Phelps

FEATURING ::
Awesome Brothers, Michael Bizon, James Weinberg, Delia Kovac, Dave Kiersh, Jyll Ethier-Mullen, Lauren Minco, Andrea Kang, Jonathan Beller, Todd Sanchioni, Robert Adams Jr., James Re, Michelle Marchese, Shay Platz, Briana Horrigan, Christy Georg, John Jacobson & Shawn Wallace, Keith Souza, Lauren Holt, Allison Cole

No word on the sherry situation at this one.

[The photo, btw, is what comes up when you Google Image Search "Italian-Americans."  I kind of wish Google still had the "I'm feeling lucky!" button for situations like this.]

This is a heads-up for an event one week away. The Providence Athenaeum will be holding a fundraiser to commemorate the bicentennial of the birth of Edgar Allen Poe. (Actual birth date was January 19, same as hers.) The evening will include

… dramatic readings from Poe and his amours; an exhibit of rare Poe printed matter on loan from collector Susan Jaffe Tane; haunting music by Alec K. Redfearn; food for the soul; and the means by which you can drink to forget. Dress code: Raven-hued. Tickets are $75. To purchase click here or call 421-6970.

Poe is thought to have courted Sarah Helen Whitman in the stacks of the Athenaeum, an engagement that failed for reasons not too hard to imagine, although it is much debated.  Let’s face it, the guy had problems.  But she may have been kind of a loon as well.  And there seems to have been a lot of input from friends and family. In modern parlance. . . it’s complicated.  At any rate, her Wiki entry has it that she died at the home of a friend at 97 Bowen Street (is that house still there?) and is buried at the North Burial Ground. (To Helen, Poe 1848)