White Suits in Summer
Rosary Hartel O'Neill

Monday, November 2, 7:00 p.m. in NYC

A reading of Rosary's play White Suits in Summer, set in New Orleans on the eve of Katrina. Starring Gary Schiro, Bob Burns, Alexandra Napier and Nancy Rothman. Free, reservations recommended.

The Hudson:
America's River
Fran Dunwell

Saturday, December 5, 2:00 p.m.

Drawing on her recently-published book The Hudson: America's River, Fran Dunwell recounts how the Hudson powered the growth of the country's greatest industrial and financial empire and also produced leading American artists, writers, engineers and environmentalists. Her dramatic tales bring to life the stories of visionary people who change the direction of our national history even today, inspired by their deep relationship with the river. Copies of The Hudson: America's River will be available for purchase. All royalties from sale of the book are being donated to the Natural Heritage Trust for conservation of the river.

White Suits in Summer
Rosary Hartel O'Neill

Sunday, October 25, 2:00 p.m. at HOH

A reading of Rosary's play White Suits in Summer, set in New Orleans on the eve of Katrina. Starring Gary Schiro, Bob Burns, Alexandra Napier and Nancy Rothman. Free, reservations recommended.

The Lonely Soldier:
The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq
&
The Edge of Eden
Helen Benedict

Saturday, October 17, 8:00 p.m.

Helen Benedict reads from two of her recent books, The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq (Beacon Press, April 2009) and The Edge of Eden (Soho Press, November 2009). A Columbia University professor, Helen has written four previous novels, five nonfiction books, and a play. Her play based on the book, The Lonely Soldier Monologues, was performed in New York City at The Theater for the New City and at La MaMa in 2009.

One of her articles on the subject, "The Private War of Women Soldiers" (Salon, March 2007) was awarded The James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism in 2008. She has since written other articles on women soldiers that have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Ms., In These Times, Huffington Post, and elsewhere.

Helen Benedict's other articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, Glamour, The Women's Review of Books, and in many other magazines. She is a professor of journalism at Columbia University.

Books will be available for purchase and signing.

The Lonely Soldier:
The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq
Beacon Press, April 2009

More women soldiers are fighting in Iraq than in any other American war in history, yet they face a dual challenge: they are participating in combat more than ever before, but because only one in ten soldiers is female, they are often painfully alone. This isolation, along with a military culture hostile to women, denies them the camaraderie soldiers depend on for survival and subjects them to sexual persecution by their comrades. As one soldier said, "I ended up waging my own war against an enemy dressed in the same uniform as mine." In The Lonely Soldier, Benedict humanizes the complex issues of war, misogyny, class, race, homophobia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and more through the compelling stories of five women of diverse ethnicities and backgrounds who served in Iraq between 2003 and 2006. By following these women from their childhoods through enlistment, training, active duty in Iraq, and home again, Benedict vividly brings to life their struggles and challenges. Between their stories she weaves in accounts from numerous other Iraq War veterans, illuminating the wrenching and private war of female soldiers. Benedict ends by showing how these women came to face the truth of war and by offering suggestions for how the military can improve—including distributing women more evenly and rejecting male recruits with records of domestic or sexual violence.

The Edge of Eden
Soho Press, November 2009

Inspired by her parents' anthropological field notes, Helen Benedict has set her fifth novel in 1960, on the tropical Seychelles Islands, a thousand miles off the eastern coast of Africa. Benedict's lush descriptions of life on the islands are firmly based in the realities of the time. The role of black magic in Seychelles culture, passed down from the country's past as a former slave colony, the decaying culture of British colonialism's last gasp -- these form the background of this witty, sharp and yet heartbreaking novel about a family unraveling and a child's desperate attempts to save it.

For a new profile of Benedict in this month's Chronogram Magazine, visit www.chronogram.com/issue/2009/10/Books/North-of-Eden

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Nancy Wiley

Saturday, October 10, 2:00 p.m.

Nancy Wiley has always thought of the doll as an art form. Her one-of-a-kind creations are shown in galleries and museums across the country. At HOH, Nancy presents her newly released book along with original illustrations and dolls that provide a unique interpretation of the Lewis Carroll timeless classic. Books will be available for purchase and signing.

click for a video of Wiley describing the artistic process in creating her new book "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll -- from making the dolls, creating the scenes and photographing the vignettes.

5th Annual Hudson Valley Literary Magazine & Small Press Book Fair

Saturday, May 23, 11:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Buy small press books and literary magazine and meet people who publish them at HOH. A reading and reception at Hudson Wine Merchants with Joshua Ferris (Then We Came to the End, National Book Award Finalist), Nelly Reifler, (See Through), and Ira Sher (Singer, Gentlemen of Space) at 5 p.m. Presented by The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, with Fence Books, Hudson Wine Merchants, & HOH. Free. Click for more info and for pdf poster.

The Hourglass Solution

A Boomer's Guide to the Rest of Your Life

Jeff Johnson, PhD

Paula Forman, PhD

Saturday, April 18, 2:00 p.m.

Join authors Jeff Johnson and Paula Forman as they present their new groundbreaking book of information and inspiration that says baby boomers can reclaim the wide range of choices they knew in their 20s and 30s. Books will be available for purchase and signing.

Laurie Stone Reading

Saturday, March 28, 3:00 p.m.

A reading with author Laurie Stone and participants from the creative writing workshop. Free and open to the public.

Women Who Dared
Book Discussion Group Series

Facilitated by Lisa Dolan, the series is focused around biographies that explore the lives of women who broke from convention to challenge American society to live up to its ideals of democracy and equality. The group meets monthly (2/1, 3/1, 4/5, and 5/3). Contact HOH for a copy of the books being discussed and to register. The project is free and is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities through the New York Council for the Humanities.

Hudson Talbott

River of Dreams

The Story of the Hudson River

Sunday, March 8, 2:00 p.m., free and open to the public

Hudson Talbott celebrates the Hudson River and all who have been affected by its power and beauty through the ages. Guest speaker Ned Sullivan, along with composer Frank Cuthbert and director Casey Biggs, who will share pieces from the musical "River of Dreams" as part of the Quadricentennial Celebrations. Books will be available for purchase and signing.

Free Black Communities in the Antebellum North

A lecture by Myra B. Young Armstead

Speakers in the Humanities

Co-Sponsored with Operation Unite, NY

Saturday, February 21, 2:00 p.m., free and open to the public

As part of the gradual emancipation process in New York and other northern states during the antebellum period, rural enclaves of African Americans formed within established counties or townships away from towns, cities or other incorporated areas. This process of free black community formation is overshadowed in historical accounts by attention to a more common pattern in which rural blacks moved into towns and cities during the years of gradual abolition as African Americans took up urban occupations in industrializing centers. But the existence of the types of free black communities discussed in this presentation suggests an alternative, less popular response to emancipation - the purchase of farmlands and a preference for a modest, pastoral lifestyle. Parting Ways, Massachusetts; Timbuctu in upstate New York’s North Country; Guinea in Hyde Park, New York; The Hills in Westchester County; and Skunk Hollow in Rockland County are surveyed as examples of this trend.

Dr. Myra Young Armstead is Professor of History at Bard College, where she teaches in both the undergraduate history department and in the college’s new Master of Arts in Teaching Program. She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago, where her training was in social history. Her teaching and research interests are in urban history, African American history, and transatlantic African diasporic history.

This Speakers in the Humanities event, Co-Sponsored with Operation Unite, NY, is free and open to the public, and is made possible through the support of the New York Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Book Discussion Group
The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

A free book discussion group facilitated by Lisa Dolan about Michael Chabon's novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

Millay Colony Artists

Remarkable artists (writers, composers and visual artists) from around the country and the world present their work at HOH completed during their stay at Columbia County’s Millay Colony. Occurs monthly on the third Saturday of each month. A reception with the artists follows each monthly event. Free.

The Millay Colony for the Arts was founded in 1973 to honor the courageous life and work of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. The Colony offers one-month residencies to writers, visual artists and composers on the property the poet called home for more than thirty years in Austerlitz, New York. Our singular goal is to create a nurturing and inspiring space outside the pressures of daily life where artists can commit themselves fully to their work. Supporting the work of artists of all ages, cultures, communities, and in all stages of their artistic careers, the Colony offers comfortable rooms, private studios and ample time to work. Printable PDF poster available here...

Famous by Their Birth
by Jeffrey Mousseau and Ian Sullivan

A potent, fast-moving theatrical collage, drawing upon the poetry and remarkable insight of Shakespeare. This staged reading probes the complex psyches of leaders and the psychology of power.

An original work conceived by artist Jeffrey Mousseau, the staged reading examines what drives our leaders – be it ambition, greed, fame and/or vision. In it, Shakespeare’s best scenes are assembled to illuminate what goes on in the minds of those in charge. According to Mousseau, “This work is being created specifically to connect with contemporary American politics and the U.S. presidential election. The piece draws upon five of Shakespeare's most political plays (Julius Caesar, Henry V, Richard II, Richard III and Coriolanus) to examine the inner workings of power: of those who have it, seek it and lose it, and society's relationship with its leaders. The piece illuminates, in an accessible way, Shakespeare's universality and contemporary relevance by drawing allusions to current issues including the Iraq War and religion's influence in government. ” Free and open to the public.

The Spirit of the Place
Samuel Shem

A novel of love and death, of mothers and sons, of doctors and patients, and a quirky small Hudson River town plagued by breakage. Filled with the ineffable Shem-humor. Samuel Shem (pen-name of Stephen Bergman, M.D., Ph.D.) is a novelist, playwright, and for three decades a doctor on the Harvard Medical School faculty. Books will be available for purchase and signing.

His new novel, and most ambitious work yet, The Spirit of the Place, tells the story of an expatriate doctor called home to Columbia, New York, in the early 1980s to face his own history and that of the place. It is a novel of love and death, mothers and sons, ghosts and bullies, doctors and patients, illness and healing. The Spirit of the Place is Shem at his finest-compassionate, capacious, funny, full of big ideas and memorable personalities. It offers an authentic, unvarnished portrait of the medical profession and underscores the crucial link between the health of individuals and the health of communities.

His novels include The House of God, Fine, and Mount Misery. He is co-author with his wife, Janet Surrey, of the hit Off-Broadway play Bill W. and Dr. Bob, the story of the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous (winner of the 2007 Performing Arts Award of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence), and We Have to Talk: Healing Dialogues between Women and Men.

Beckett at Greystones Bay
Rosary O'Neill

The Hudson Opera House presents a staged reading of award-winning New Orleans playwright, Rosary Hartel O'Neill's play Beckett at Greystones Bay on Sunday, June 8 at 2:00 p.m. In Beckett at Greystones Bay, a young writer faces love, death and the challenges of creating a joyful life on the rocky coast of Ireland in the 1930's. The reading is free and open to the public.

A new two-volume anthology of her plays published by Samuel French: A Louisiana Gentleman and Other Comedies and Ghosts of New Orleans will be available for purchase and signing.

Rosary O'Neill is the author of fourteen plays produced internationally by invitation of the American embassy in Paris, Bonn, Tibilisi, Georgia, Budapest, Hungary, London and Moscow. Her play Uncle Victor was chosen Best New American Drama by the Cort Theater, Hollywood, and celebrated in the Chekhove Now Festival in New York. Blackjack was selected for Alice's Fourth Floor Best New Play Series. She was founding artistic director at Southern Rep Theater from 1987 to 2002. she has been playwright-in-residence at the Sorbonne University, Paris; Tulane University, New Orleans; Defiance College, Ohio, the University of Bonn, Germany and Visiting Scholar at Cornell.