New Author Reading Series ‘Lit At Lark’ Coming To Church Ave

Even with all the growth Church Avenue, west of Coney Island Ave, has seen in the past couple years, who would have guessed it would soon be host to a burgeoning literary scene? Amy Shearn, a Kensington neighbor and author of this summer’s The Mermaid of Brooklyn, is curating a new monthly reading series called Lit at Lark, where writers from Brooklyn and beyond will discuss their work, while the audience can pick up a copy of their books and enjoy a glass of wine or coffee at Lark, 1007 Church Ave between E 10th and Stratford.

Lit at Lark will take place every third Sunday of the month, September through May, at 5pm. The first reading is on September 15, and will feature Windsor Terrace’s Darin Strauss, plus Leigh Newman and Fiona Maazel.

A recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and a winner of the American Library Association’s Alix Award and The National Book Critics Circle Award, the internationally-bestselling writer Darin Strauss is the author of the novels Chang & Eng, The Real McCoy, and More Than It Hurts You, and the NBCC-winning memoir Half a Life. Darin has been translated into 14 languages and published in 19 countries, and he is a Clinical Associate Professor at NYU’s creative writing program.

Leigh Newman’s memoir Still Points North: One Alaskan Childhood, One Grown-up World, One Long Journey Home came out with Dial Press in March 2013. Her fiction, essays and book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Modern Love, Vogue, O The Oprah Magazine, and elsewhere. She currently serves as Deputy Editor of Oprah.com and as an editor-at-large for the indie press Black Balloon Publishing.

Fiona Maazel is the author of the novels Last Last Chance (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008; Picador Paperback, 2009) and Woke Up Lonely (Graywolf, 2013). She is winner of the Bard Prize for Fiction and a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35″ honoree, which feels less potent now that she is 38. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The NY Times Sunday Book Review, This American Life, and elsewhere. She teaches at Brooklyn College, New York University, Columbia, and Princeton. She lives in Brooklyn.

Photo via Lit at Lark