The MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation Reading Series Spring 2012
New Works by Louis Armstrong/MFA Writers-in-Residence:
Deborah Fried-Rubin, Jonathan Karpinos and Jonathan Kravetz
Wednesday, May 23rd
6:30 pm, Louis Armstrong House Museum,
34-56 107th Street, Corona, NY 11368
www.louisarmstronghouse.org, 718-478-8274
Join us for a wonderful evening of readings by our program’s forth Louis Armstrong/ Queens College MFA Writers-in-Residence in the beautiful garden of the Louis Armstrong House Museum. In case of rain, reading will be moved inside. Writers will be reading from new works that were created in response to the Armstrong House Museum & Archives, which houses Armstrong’s recordings, films, letters, photographs, and collages in a world renowned collection.
Deborah Fried-Rubin is a third-year graduate student in the Queens College MFA program, pursuing her interest in poetry after many years of practicing law, and is a recipient of Queens College’s Silverstein-Peiser Award for Poetry. Her work has appeared in the anthology Why I Am Not A Painter published by Argos Books and online at Broadsided Press, and will appear this spring in WSQ’s VIRAL issue. Her chapbook Language of the Lost and Found is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. She lives on Long Island with her husband and three children.
Jonathan Karpinos is a playwright, improviser, and teacher based in New York. His plays include Stay With Us (Freeplay/NYU Tisch School of the Arts), Fifty Cents to Touch the Sky (finalist, Barter Theatre’s Shaping of America Series), and Suicide/Joke (FringeNYC). He is also the co-author (with Benji Goldsmith) of The Averageachievers Club, which was featured in the National Alliance for Musical Theatre's Songwriters Showcase and workshopped by the Ira Brind School of Theater Arts at the University of the Arts. An experienced improviser, Jonathan is a veteran of Chicago's iO Theater and a regular player in The Scene at the Peoples Improv Theater. He has been a playwriting mentor for Hunter College High School's Brick Prison Playhouse and a Teaching Artist at Acting Manitou, a theater camp in Oakland, ME. He is thrilled to be a writer-in-residence at the Louis Armstrong House Museum, where he has, finally, commenced getting hep to the jive.
Jonathan Kravetz is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of DUCTS.org (1999), a biannual literary webzine devoted to publishing engaging personal essays, memoirs, art, fiction, humor and more. His play, Prayer, was recently produced in March, 2012 by Nouveau 47 in Dallas, Texas. It was first produced to sold-out houses at the New York City Fringe Festival, 2008 and was a semi-finalist in the annual Reverie Productions Play competition in New York, 2008. His play, Better Lucky Than Smart was produced last year by Manhattan Theatre Source in New York City. His comedy, The Beast in My Pants, has received two staged readings: one in NYC by Emerging Artists Theater, and the other by Nouveau 47 in Dallas. Violins, a ten-minute play, was one of the winners of the Bite-Sized International Playwriting Competition and was performed at the Brighton And Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, 2008, and was an audience favorite at the 2010 InGenius short play festival in New York City. His play, Jim and Dana, was a 2009 finalist in the Oxford, MS Ten-Minute Play Contest, and several of his short plays, including the award winning, Get Bruised, have been produced in New York. He has several published short stories and has written a dozen science non-fiction books for children. Mr. Kravetz has edited and ghostwritten several essays and and one memoir, The Missing Cub, the story of Chicago Cub lefty Darcy Fast. Mr. Kravetz is one of the founding members of the prestigious Writers Forum at the Manhattan Theatre Source in New York. Mr. Kravetz is also the founder of the monthly reading series, Trumpet Fiction, which is held the second Saturday of every month at KGB Bar in the East Village. Jonathan is currently pursuing his MFA in playwriting at Queens College. He holds a Masters Degree from NYU where he studied cinema and screenwriting, and he teaches fiction and screenwriting in New York City.
