Blog Posts - Ada Books

may days

5/1/2018

Hello, Ada-ites! Here's what's happening in May:

On Friday, May 4th, Pattie McCarthy (and Guest) will read poems at you. The usual swanky foodstuffs will be available for snacking. The fun begins at 6pm!

On Thursday, May 10th, at 7pm, a new series begins at Ada Books: Stranger Stories, featuring non-fiction. More details later.

On Saturday, May 12th, Rita Bulwinkel will read from her new book of stories, Belly Up (pictured above.) Local wundurkind Joanna Howard will be her very special guest. The fun will begin at 6pm.

And on Sunday, May 20, Publicly Complex presents Tommy Pico & Joe Osmundson. What are they doing in Providence of all places? Come to Ada Books and find out. The fun begins at 6pm!

Public Complexities

4/8/2018

Two readings this month! First. . .

On Saturday, April 20, Kathline Carr, Rachel Hughes, & Diane Exavier will read selections from their pages. The free fun begins at 6pm! Nextly. . .

On FRIDAY, April 27th, also at 6pm, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram & Chaun Webster unleash lyrics of their own. There will be the usual uncomfortable chairs and substandard snacks at each event. Come for the spirit of it and bring your yay-game!

March 31st, 2018

3/31/2018

Sorry, bunnies, but Ada is closed on Easter!

March 11th, 2018

3/11/2018

On Thursday, March 22, 7pm, see and hear four incomparable authors at Ada Books:

Steven Seidenberg is the author of Situ (Black Sun Lit), Null Set (Spooky Actions Books), Itch (Raw Art Press), and numerous chapbooks of verse and aphorism. His collections of photographs include Pipevalve: Berlin (Lodima Press) and Kanazawa Void (Daylight Books, forthcoming 2018).

Mary-Kim Arnold is a poet, writer, and visual artist. Litany for the Long Moment, her book-length experimental essay, was selected by Carla Harryman for the 2016 Essay Press Prize. Other writings have appeared in Hyperallergic, The Georgia Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Arnold lives in Rhode Island with her husband and children.

Mairéad Byrne emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1994. Her books include Nelson & The Huruburu Bird (Wild Honey Press), Talk Poetry (Miami University Press), SOS Poetry (/ubu editions), The Best of (What’s Left of) Heaven (Publishing Genius), You Have to Laugh: New & Selected Poems (Barrow Street), Famosa na sua cabeça, selected and translated by Dirceu Villa (Dobra Editorial), also Jennifer’s Family (Schilt), with photographer Louisa Marie Summer. She earned a PhD in Theory and Cultural Studies (Purdue University) and works as Professor of Poetry & Poetics at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence.

Sara Wintz is the author of WALKING ACROSS A FIELD WE ARE FOCUSED ON AT THIS TIME NOW (Ugly Duckling Presse) and The Lauras (sus press). She's a contributing editor of Ugly Duckling Presse’s performance art sourcebook EMERGENCY INDEX. A staff writer for the Poetry Foundation’s blog, Harriet, since 2013, she’s contributed interviews with established and emerging writers such as Dodie Bellamy, Matthew Zapruder, Cheena Marie Lo, Marianne Morris, and Adam Fitzgerald.

welcome to the twilight zone!

2/25/2018

On Monday, March 5, at 7pm, join us at Ada for a night of "It's A Good Life" iterations. You will SEE: 2 episodes of The Twilight Zone, one segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie. You will HEAR: Walker Mettling reading the original story. You will EAT: snacks (that you bring*). PLUS: other stuff will happen, maybe. So, see you there!?

*Special props and prize for bringing "It's A Good LIfe" themed snackery.

rebellious mourning 1/31 at 7pm

1/12/2018

On Wednesday, January 31st, at 7pm, join Cindy Milstein, editor of "Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief" (AK Press, fall 2017) for reflections on the relation between structural losses, mourning, and resistance. This collection, as Silvia Federici, author of "Caliban and the Witch," puts it, "uncovers the destruction of life that capitalist development leaves in its trail. But it is also witness to the power of grief as a catalyst to collective resistance."

Through first-person and/or frontline stories, the anthology's thirty-seven contributors illuminate, bittersweetly, that we can bear almost anything when it is worked through collectively. Grief is generally thought of as something personal and insular, but when we publicly share loss and pain, we lessen the power of the forces that debilitate us, while at the same time building the humane social practices that reduce suffering and accentuate quality of life for everyone. Addressing tragedies from Fukushima to Palestine, incarceration to eviction, AIDS crises to border crossings, and racism to rape, the intimate yet tenacious writing in this volume shows that mourning can pry open spaces of contestation and reconstruction, empathy and solidarity.

Copies of the anthology will be available for sale at the event.

For more information on "Rebellious Mourning," see:
https://www.akpress.org/rebellious-mourning.html.

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Cindy Milstein is the author of Anarchism and Its Aspirations, coauthor Paths toward Utopia: Graphic Explorations of Everyday Anarchism, and editor of the anthology Taking Sides: Revolutionary Solidarity and the Poverty of Liberalism. Long engaged in anarchistic organizing, social movements, and collective spaces, Cindy was death doula for three parents over the past four years.

ada new year!

12/30/2017

Ada will be closed on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Happy New Year!

Huh huh huh!

12/6/2017

This Saturday, between 10am and 5pm, come to Ada Books to experience PVD Comics Consortium Pancakes which, as if you didn't know, is a delightful mash-up of Providence Comics Consortium and Cardboard Pancakes. The events are side by side so you'll def have time to do both. And while your plundering the local art and comics scene, you may not mind casting your eye towards Ada's bookshelves (Books make great gifts!) After the market (5:30ish), there'll be xmas cartoons and hot apple cider for all!

next year better!

11/29/2017

I don't know if next year will be any better than this one, but I do know that with a Leif Goldberg calendar dangling from the side of your fridge or pasted onto a dining room wall or pinned to your sleeve like lunch money everyday will have color and life -- even the winter months! They're now available at Ada Books (while supply lasts).

David Lazar with Mary Cappello at Ada Books

11/6/2017

Wednesday, November 15th at 7 pm:

Join us for a reading with DAVID LAZAR, in celebration of his new collection of essays, I'll Be Your Mirror, and in conversation with Mary Cappello. David Lazar was a Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction for 2015-16. His books include the just published I’ll Be Your Mirror: Essays and Aphorisms from the University of Nebraska Press, Who's Afraid of Helen of Troy, After Montaigne, Occasional Desire: Essays, The Body of Brooklyn, Truth in Nonfiction, Essaying the Essay, Powder Town, Michael Powell: Interviews, and Conversations with M.F.K. Fisher. Eight of his essays have been “Notable Essays of the Year” according to Best American Essays. Lazar received the first PhD in the United States in nonfiction writing, in 1989. He then created the PhD program in nonfiction writing at Ohio University and directed the creation of the undergraduate and M.F.A. programs in Nonfiction Writing at Columbia College Chicago where he is Professor of Creative Writing. He is founding editor of the literary magazine Hotel Amerika, now in its seventeenth year, and series editor, with Patrick Madden, of 21st Century Essays, at Ohio State University Press.

Surprise refreshments, book sale and signing.