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.)

Sister Spit, a legendary-in-certain-circles group of writers and performance artists, is in town today and tomorrow.  Led by the eternally awesome Michelle Tea, the raggle-taggle group of wordy gypsies will be hosting workshops at Brown starting, like, an hour from now, and continuing through tomorrow night.

Sister Spit was founded in 1997 as a means to tour queer, feminist, outsider, and otherwise marginalized poetry, spoken word, literature and performance.  This year’s tour (Sister Spit: The Next Generation) features Michelle Tea, Beth Lisick, Rhiannon Argo, spoken word champion Kirya Traber, photographer/curator Sara Seinberg, transgender performance artist Ben McCoy, and Ariel Schrag, whose name I still can not see without immediately singing this song.

I saw the tour last time it went to Boston and it was super, super, super.

Full schedge after the jump:

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Acclaimed poet and National Book Award winner Mark Doty is reading at Rhode Island College tonight. Doty is scheduled to read from Dog Years, the bestselling 2007 memoir which centers around the companionship of his two retrievers. The event is part of Vet Week, a celebration of animals and their health organized which is by the Rhode Island Veterinary Medical Association and which, oddly, includes a poetry reading every year.

7pm, Tuesday, Rhode Island College, Alger Hall 110

The weather completely blows right now, and it’s particularly annoying because right now we could all be on a love boat to the Bahamas with New Kids On The Block, but if there’s any chance of you leaving the warmth (or coldth) of your home tonight there’s two events on the West Side you might want to check out.  Conveniently, they’re also only about a block apart:

Gabrielle Bell (author of Lucky and Cecil & Jordan in New York) and Ron Rege (Against Pain and Skibber Bee-Bye) will be reading at Ada Books (717 Westminster St) at 7. [Beth already posted about this yesterday, but, you know, subtle re-enforcement never hurts.]

On your way there, you should stop by WestSide Arts (745 Westminster St) for Tacos For Casas.  Ten bucks gets you access to all the vegan and meat tacos you could dream of; all proceeds from that event are going to build houses in Mexico.  Even better, it starts at 4 and runs until 10pm, which means that you could have your thirdmeal and your fourthmeal in one place.

Tonight at Ada Books, celebrate the end of winter and St Patrick’s Eve with a marathon reading of James Joyce’s snowy story “The Dead.”  It’s long for a short story but short for anything else, so it’s not a major time investment, as far as marathon readings go.  And, as an extra bonus, it’s hosted by moi.

If you can take a break from your pre-game car bombs, you should stop by and read a few pages. (And get there early if you haven’t been to Ada lately, since their collection of small-press publications is getting pretty impressive.)

Ada Books
717 Westminster St.
(on the same block as White Electric)
7 pm
free

Next month it will be THREE YEARS since the Washington Park branch of the library closed. The old library, located near the south side entrance to Roger Williams Park, has been renovated, and has a new roof and shelves just waiting to be filled with books; the temporary location, in half of the old Benny’s on Broad Street, has been closed because of (probably very justified) fears about the building’s air quality.

In October of 2006, Save Our Branches, a group of Washington Park residents, staged a read-in in front of the library.  Everybody brought a book and read aloud, to show that the people of Washington Park actually care about reading.

Over two years later, there’s going to be another read-in.  Bring your own book, since the library doesn’t have any for you.

Saturday, 12:15pm

(Also, if you feel like library-hopping tomorrow, it’s also the Holiday Bazaar at the Smith Hill branch on Candace Street; that goes from 10am to 2pm.)

Ada Books, which recently moved from Dean Street (around the corner from White Electric) to Westminster (a couple of doors over from White Electric), hosts a weekly-ish poetry series organized by the great Kate Schapira.  It’s called Publicly Complex and it does wonders to patch the massive black hole in Providence where readings ought to be.

At the Dean Street location, the events were often full, to the point where one would occasionally find oneself standing on one leg with arms crossed, hoping not to tip over.  I had also seen people sitting in the showcasey windows to listen.  Now that the new location’s got more room, hopefully people can spread out a little bit and not trip over each other to get to the wine and cookies.

On tonight’s tomorrow night’s agenda, Adam Golaski (Worse Than Myself, Oh One Arrow) & Ken Rumble (Key Bridge).  Golaski’s the horror editor of New Genre magazine and is currently presenting his own translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  Rumble, meanwhile, is a poet and author of Key Bridge, a collection of poems about Washington, DC.

[Rumble, incidentally, is the one on the far left of this picture, which I found Google Image Searching him; it's sixteen years old and probably is not representative of his poetry (if it's even a picture of the same Ken Rumble), but I never turn down an opportunity to showcase quality flower girl dresses.]

Publicly Complex
Ada Books
717 Westminster St
7 pm
Free!