A Missed Opportunity

Well, the weatherman and I conspired to ruin a perfectly good Monday evening last week-- with torrential rains and thunder coming down around non time, and with the memory of all of us huddled in the Gazebo sheltered from the hail still fresh in my mind, and the prediction of more thunder and lightening and hail!, I called off the Readings. Then watched as the clouds dissipated, the sun came out, and by 7 pm Schoolhouse Green was experiencing a beautiful summer evening--unfortunately without any Readers. For those of you who didn't get the message in time, I promise we'll come up with a better method of calling off the Readings for inclement weather--and I apologize to any of you who hung around the Green. I should have come down just to let you know it was canceled. It won;t happen again.

That said, we have a great lineup for this Monday--and we HAVE to have great weather!

The Readings start at 7pm at Schoolhouse Green, located on Foxhurst Road, just east of Long Beach Road, Oceanside NY. For more information, www.schoolhousegreen.org. or our new blog site http://summergazeboreadings.blogspot.com/

Don't forget--July 7 will be our Patriotic readings night--with a free barbecue-- so come on down and bring your friends!!

Next week, June 30, we feature:

Tom Phelan

Tom Phelan, a huge hit last summer, will read from his most recent novel, The Canal Bridge, a tale of Irish stretcher bearers serving in the British army in World War I.

The Canal Bridge has been praised as "another First World War masterpiece" by the Irish Independent and "powerful and deeply affecting" by Books Ireland. The Irish Echo called the novel "an incredibly moving story" in which "the writing is consistently stunning." And Irish Eyes commented, "Don't miss out on a great contemporary author."

Tom Phelan, author of the novels The Canal Bridge, In the Season of the Daisies, Iscariot, and Derrycloney, has seen his works published in four countries and three languages. He is currently at work on Nailer, about a man set on revenge, set against the backdrop of Ireland's abusive Industrial School System.

A frequent speaker, this winter Tom took part in the King's Lynn Fiction Festival in Norfolk, England. This fall he will be giving talks at Villanova University and Mount St. Vincent College and will be the guest at "Author Afternoons at Molloy College" on November 2.

Born and raised on a farm in County Laois, Ireland, Tom Phelan now makes his home on Long Island. For additional information, see www.TomPhelan.net.

Nancy Solomon

Nancy Solomon received her M.A. degree in American Studies & Folklife Studies from George Washington University. She is the Executive Director of Long Island Traditions, a non-profit folk arts organization dedicated to documenting, presenting and preserving the architectural, ethnic and occupational traditions of the region. Solomon is the author of On the Bay: Bay Houses & Maritime Culture of Long Island, West Meadow Beach: A Portrait of a Long Island Beach Community and Traditional Architecture of Long Island: A Teacher Resource Guide. Solomon has sponsored a wide variety of public programs on maritime culture including festivals, arts-in-education programs, boat tours to bay houses, and lecture-demonstration programs at area museums and libraries. She is the curator of "Sandy Shores: The creation of Jones Beach", an outdoor permanent exhibit at Jones Beach. She was the primary advisor to filmmaker Glenn Gebhard documentary "Baymen." Since 1999 she has been documenting the history and architecture of the Village of Great Neck Plaza for the Village's historic preservation plan. During 2003-04 she completed a survey of maritime structures for the South Shore estuary Reserve. Solomon has lectured extensively on historic preservation and documentation methods for Columbia University's Historic Preservation Program and area colleges. She is an adjunct professor of anthropology at Hofstra University.

Frank VanZandt

Frank Van Zant is the author of The Lives of the Two-Headed Baseball Siren (Kings Estate Press), voted by the board for acceptance into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and Climbing Daddy Mountain (Pudding House Press). With over 400 poems published, he appears most recently as the cover feature of Chiron Review. A semi-finalist at "Discovery/The Nation," Van Zant has won fellowships from Poets & Writers and Council for Basic Education (NEH), edited and presented poetry conferences at Hofstra University and Long Island University (Brooklyn), and is current poetry editor of Sport Literate.

In his working life, Van Zant is the Director of Greenhouse Alternative Program in Rockville Centre, one of the oldest alternative programs in the country.

Helen Donato

Helen will be reading her poetry in public for the first time. A 'protege" of Tom Phelan, we look forward to offering her this platform for her debut!

The Readings start at 7pm at Schoolhouse Green, located on Foxhurst Road, just east of Long Beach Road.

The Summer Gazebo Readings are sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside, in support of the Oceanside Education Foundation. The Gazebo Readings will be held each Monday evening in June, July and August, and will feature 4 readers each evening. Scheduled readers include some of Long Island's most prestigious poets, published authors, comedians, fiction and non-fiction writers, and local community members sharing some of their favorite literature. The Summer Gazebo Readings will be held outdoors; seating is limited, so bring a lawn chair, a blanket, a picnic table. The grounds are open, and the public is encouraged to come early and have a quiet summer's picnic on the grounds. Admission is free.

Sponsors include:
Home & Hearth Realty
Tower's Funeral Home
Oceanville Mason Supply
Westron's Light Bulb Warehouse
NY Municipal Credit Union
Childs Murphy Kuehn & Cesiro, Inc. Insurance
Dr. Aaron Rappaport, DDS & Dr. David Rappaport, DMD
Marsh Hawk Press
LI Pulse Magazine
Councilman Anthony J. Santino
M. Schamroth & Sons
E. Fine
C. Scarlata & Family
Kaufman Family
Doc's Mechanical Piping & Heating Corp.
Bondi & Iovino, Attorneys at Law

For more information:

Tony Iovino
68 Yorktown Street
Rockville Centre, NY 11570
H 516 763-1667
C 516 459-3262
W 516 741-8585
www.schoolhousegreen.org
http://summergazeboreadings.blogspot.com/

Readings Canceled For 6/23

Due to weather conditions, we are canceling tonight's Readings.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night....

It was a dark and stormy night....

We hoped it wouldn't turn out that way--indeed a hardy band of Gazeboans made their way to Schoolhouse Green in the hopes that the weatherman would be wrong.

Good news? We got to hear simply wonderful, funny, intelligent poetry from Harriet Slaughter.

And we got to hear an intriguing introduction by Paula Uruburu, the author of AMERICAN EVE: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the "It" Girl, and the Crime of the Century, and a rushed, though captivating, passage from that interesting book, when the black clouds rolled in, followed by vicious lightening, heavy, blowing rain, and...hail!

(photos courtesy of Betsy Transom)

We hope for a bit nicer weather next Monday, though those of us who packed into the Gazebo (it does hold a lot!) will likely never forget the experience!

That said, we hope to have the Readers we missed (and maybe Paula, too?) come back later in the summer.

This week we have a powerful, eclectic group of Readers.

The Readings start at 7pm at Schoolhouse Green, located on Foxhurst Road, just east of Long Beach Road, Oceanside NY. For more information, www.schoolhousegreen.org. or our new blog site http://summergazeboreadings.blogspot.com/

Monday June 23rd, we will feature:

David Axelrod

Dr. David B. Axelrod, Suffolk County, Long Island’s Poet Laureate, maintains a website at www.writersunlimited.org/laureate where he offers his services to the public. Dr. Axelrod has published in hundreds of magazines and anthologies. He is the recipient of three Fulbright Awards including his being the first official Fulbright Poet-in-Residence in the People’s Republic of China. This July he will perform in Vienna and teach young poets at the Gerard Manley Hopkins Festival and Summer Institute in Ireland. For more information about Dr. Axelrod and his eighteenth and newest book, Deciduous: Poems, due out in early 2008 from Ahadada Books (Toronto and Tokyo) visit their website at www.ahadadabook.com.

Clive Young

Clive Young is an author and lecturer covering the crossroads between high tech and popular culture. He is the author of Homemade Hollywood: Fans Behind The Camera [Continuum, 2008], the first in-depth look at the "Fan Film" movement, where amateurs create their own unauthorized movies starring world-famous characters, from Indiana Jones to Captain Kirk to Harry Potter. The book follows their stories and more as it traces Fan Films from the 1920s--when con men made fake Little Rascals movies--to the YouTube videos of today.

While senior editor of Pro Sound News since 1994, he has also written for MTV, VH1.com, American Songwriter, Music Business International, Wine Enthusiast and other outlets, and his book, Crank It Up [Backbeat Books, 2004], profiling the world's top roadies, received strong reviews from Billboard and Hit Parader, among others. As an in-demand speaker, Young has lectured extensively on film, fan films and music at universities, libraries and conventions around the U.S. He lives in Rockville Centre, NY with his wife and daughter. Visit his website, www.cliveyoung.com.

Austin Alexis

Austin Alexis attended the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University. He has published poetry and fiction in Barrow Street, The Journal, The Pedestal Magazine, Red River Review, Tryst, Clara Venus, Poets.com, the anthology Off the Cuffs: Poetry by and about the Police and elsewhere. One of his plays has been performed in the Samuel French Short
Plays Festival. He has a chapbook forthcoming in October from Poets Wear Prada Press. He received a Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Scholarship and a Millay Colony residency. He has taught at Nassau Community College and Hunter College and currently teaches at New York City College of Technology, CUNY.

Sonia Russell

Sonia Russell is an author, publisher, poet, and orator from Long Island, NY. Her first novel, “The Cost of Love,” debuted in September 2007 under the pseudonym of LeRoia. This novel, which is the first of a series, as well as the first publishing effort of her company SoniSpeaksVolumes Publishing, LLC, has sparked book clubs, book signings, and table talk book signings in several cities. Sonia (LeRoia) was the featured author at Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.’s Women’s Month “Meet the Author” in Jamaica, New York in March of this year. She was also featured at Hue-man Bookstore in Harlem, on a panel of five authors called “First Voices,” where she discussed “The Cost of Love,” in April. Sonia recently obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree in English, and endeavors to teach creative writing. Sonia’s readings at the Gazebo this year will focus on Love, the theme surrounding her book and recently inspired poetry.

The Readings start at 7pm at Schoolhouse Green, located on Foxhurst Road, just east of Long Beach Road.

The Summer Gazebo Readings are sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside, in support of the Oceanside Education Foundation. The Gazebo Readings will be held each Monday evening in June, July and August, and will feature 4 readers each evening. Scheduled readers include some of Long Island's most prestigious poets, published authors, comedians, fiction and non-fiction writers, and local community members sharing some of their favorite literature. The Summer Gazebo Readings will be held outdoors; seating is limited, so bring a lawn chair, a blanket, a picnic table. The grounds are open, and the public is encouraged to come early and have a quiet summer's picnic on the grounds. Admission is free.

Sponsors include:
Home & Hearth Realty
Tower's Funeral Home
Oceanville Mason Supply
Westron's Light Bulb Warehouse
NY Municipal Credit Union
Childs Murphy Kuehn & Cesiro, Inc. Insurance
Dr. Aaron Rappaport, DDS & Dr. David Rappaport, DMD
Marsh Hawk Press
LI Pulse Magazine
Councilman Anthony J. Santino
M. Schamroth & Sons
E. Fine
C. Scarlata & Family
Kaufman Family
Doc's Mechanical Piping & Heating Corp.
Bondi & Iovino, Attorneys at Law

For more information:

Tony Iovino
68 Yorktown Street
Rockville Centre, NY 11570
H 516 763-1667
C 516 459-3262
W 516 741-8585
www.schoolhousegreen.org
http://summergazeboreadings.blogspot.com/

Week Two

Temperatures hit almost 100 degrees on Monday--still, by the time we got to Schoolhouse Green we were treated to plenty of shade and a nice breeze-- more than enough to keep us bug-free and cool! A beautiful night--an excellent crowd--and great Readers!

Herb Siegel led off with wry poems that left everyone smiling--especially his crowd-pleasing "When Pasta was Spaghetti"; Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan followed with heartfelt, touching poetry; Peter Dugan brought his usual edge, crisp observations of our world that hit home; and Robert Savino finished off with entertaining and thought-provoking works that left everyone hungry for more. Tammy & Peter added to their generosity of time and talent by donating the sales proceeds of their works to our Kamp Kiwanis fund!

This week promises to be extraordinary-- we have some of my personal favorites--and nationally reknown-- poets and authors joining us! Don't miss it!

The Readings start at 7pm at Schoolhouse Green, located on Foxhurst Road, just east of Long Beach Road, Oceanside NY. For more information, www.schoolhousegreen.org. or our new blog site http://summergazeboreadings.blogspot.com/

Next week, June 16, we feature:

Richard Vetere

Mr. Vetere, one of our favorites from last year, is a novelist, playwright, film and TV writer and actor. He teaches a masterscreenwriting class at NYU and screenwriting at Queens College. He wrote the novel The Third Miracle published by Simon & Schuster and he co-authored the screenplay which stars Ed Harris, Anne Heche and is produced by Francis Ford Coppola. The novel has been translated into seven languages so far. He is also the author of eleven plays all published by Dramatic Publishing. His play Machiavelli, which ran Off-Broadway last season and his play Caravaggio, which had its world premiere in Chicago last season, will both be available this month. He wrote the movie How To Go Out on a Date in Queens which stars Jason Alexander and Kimberely Williams. His other movies include The Marriage Fool staring Walter Mathau and Carol Brunett and Vigilante . His new musical A 100 Yrs Into the Heart opens Off-Broadway this fall. His TV shows include Threat Matrix for ABC and The Wonder for CBS produced by George Clooney. He has two volumes of published poetry Memories of Human Hands and A Dream of Angels. He is on the board of directors for the Queens International Film Festival and a member of Writers Guild, Dramatist Guild, Authors Guild, Poets & Writers and represented by the William Morris Agency. He is a born and raised New Yorker.

Paula Uruburu

Paula Uruburu is an Associate Professor and former chair of the English Department at Hofstra University. Her new book AMERICAN EVE: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the "It" Girl, and the Crime of the Century, has received great praise. She received a BA and a PhD from SUNY Stony Brook, in English Literature and a minor in Art History. She is a specialist in American Literature, women's studies, film history and 19th and 20th Century American popular culture. Acknowledged as the expert on Evelyn Nesbit, she has been widely published and has acted as a consultant to A&E, PBS, and the History Channel. Her fist book was The Gruesome Doorway, a study of Hawthorne, Poe, Nathanael West, and Flannery O'Connor. A native New Yorker, she currently lives in Lindenhurst, NY.

Denis Gray

Denis Gray is a great friend of our series. A frequent member of our audience, Denis was our final reader last year--reading his wonderful works by flashlight and headlights as the sun set on us last August. He is a novelist/playwright who lives in Woodmere, Long Island. He is the author of 28 books, three novellas, thirteen plays, and over fifty short stories. His novella Benny's Last Blast!!, was published in 2002. He expects the release of his first audio short story CD, "Black Love Notes," later this summer.

Over the years, Denis' work has been featured at many poetry venues within the tri-state area. He thanks the "Summer Gazebo Reading Series" for this opportunity for his work to be heard. This is an event, he feels, which promotes the cultural richness of the vast community of great contemporary writers.

Harriet Slaughter

Harriet Slaughter is bi-coastal, with one foot in Manhattan, the other in Long Beach. Having grown up as a struggling artist she has plied her trade in more vocations than you can shake a stick at: actress, singer, dancer, choreographer, model, photographer, teacher, adjunct professor, union executive, music producer, press agent, jazz presenter, TV producer. Her longest running gig was for 28 years as Director of Labor Relations for the League of American Theatres and Producers (now the Broadway League) where she got to strong arm a lot of union leaders into collective bargaining agreements.During her tenure with the League, she wrote a humorous column "Slaughter on Broadway" for their trade publication. She is currently associate editor and photo editor of RoundUp, a publication of the League of Professional Theatre Women.

Her activities include co-producing a one-half hour television program WOMEN IN THEATRE, hosted by Newsday theatre critic, Linda Winer which currently airs on Channel 75 in New York City. She is currently serving as Project Director for "A Century of Women in Stage Design" which opens at the NY Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center in November 2008 through May 2009.

Her love of poetry and performance began with "Hickory Dickery Dock" which she recited from her high chair at age two. Her poetry can be found on the back of napkins, corners of books, scraps of paper and other flat surfaces. Recently retired, she divides her time between painting, writing and traveling. She is pleased to have the opportunity of sharing some of her musings with you.

The Readings start at 7pm at Schoolhouse Green, located on Foxhurst Road, just east of Long Beach Road.

The Summer Gazebo Readings are sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside, in support of the Oceanside Education Foundation. The Gazebo Readings will be held each Monday evening in June, July and August, and will feature 4 readers each evening. Scheduled readers include some of Long Island's most prestigious poets, published authors, comedians, fiction and non-fiction writers, and local community members sharing some of their favorite literature. The Summer Gazebo Readings will be held outdoors; seating is limited, so bring a lawn chair, a blanket, a picnic table. The grounds are open, and the public is encouraged to come early and have a quiet summer's picnic on the grounds. Admission is free.

Sponsors include:
Home & Hearth Realty
Tower's Funeral Home
Oceanville Mason Supply
Westron's Light Bulb Warehouse
NY Municipal Credit Union
Childs Murphy Kuehn & Cesiro, Inc. Insurance
Dr. Aaron Rappaport, DDS & Dr. David Rappaport, DMD
Marsh Hawk Press
LI Pulse Magazine
Councilman Anthony J. Santino
M. Schamroth & Sons
E. Fine
C. Scarlata & Family
Kaufman Family
Doc's Mechanical Piping & Heating Corp.
Bondi & Iovino, Attorneys at Law

For more information:

Tony Iovino
68 Yorktown Street
Rockville Centre, NY 11570
H 516 763-1667
C 516 459-3262
W 516 741-8585
www.schoolhousegreen.org
http://summergazeboreadings.blogspot.com/

Week One

As the first Readings of our second season approached, I was nervous-- last year went so close to perfect, could we repeat ourselves? Would we be able to capture the same friendly, carefree summer feel we had last year--or would we have lost our magic over the Winter? Last year our smallest crowds were in June (though we were ecstatic at the turnout then!)-- would our audience re-start at last year's beginning? Or would we build on the growing crowds we ended last season with?

I needn't have worried. Over 65 people came out to enjoy a beautiful Spring evening. Sun, a light breeze. Perfect.

Steve Kriss, our designated good luck charm, started us off as he did last year, this time reading from the great Civil War novel "Red Badge of Courage". His dramatic reading kicked off the season with a bang! Paula Curci followed with a unique blend of poetry and song-- sweet and strong and imaginative. Lara Tupper read from her engaging novel " A Thousand and One Nights", taking us behind the scenes of a cruise ship through the eyes of a lounge singer--warm and funny. And then Max Wheat thrilled the audience with his love of Long Island's natural beauty--and brought the house down with his scathing "Trump on the Ocean"--which was interrupted several times by enthusiastic applause!

An enjoyable evening all the way around!

Next week promises to be just as special (weather permitting!) We have back with us three of our favorites from last year--and one "new-to-us" Reader who faithfully attended our series last summer.

The Readings start at 7pm at Schoolhouse Green, located on Foxhurst Road, just east of Long Beach Road, Oceanside NY. For more information, www.schoolhousegreen.org. or our new blog site http://summergazeboreadings.blogspot.com/

Next week, June 9, we feature:

Peter V. Dugan

Peter V. Dugan is a resident of East Rockaway, a graduate of The New School in New York City and a member of the Rockville Centre Poets. Peter was one of our first published Readers--his participation helped open the doors for our program throughout the literary community. He, through Poets in Nassau, is hosting a series of poetry readings at the Oceanside Library--the first of which was extremely well attended. Wysteria Ltd. published his first book length collection titled Medusa’s Overbite in 2001. He has taught poetry workshops and classes on form and style. Mr. Dugan has won local and national awards for his poetry. Some notables are an Honorable Mention by The American Academy of Poets, a 2^nd place for Farmingdale State College Raynor Wallace poetry contest, 2^nd place and two Honorable mentions in the Barnes and Noble Poetry awards and a 2^nd place for the Dowling College Poetry Slam. His pieces have been published individually in recent years in Long Island Sounds anthology 2007, Aitia, a magazine of philosophy and art 1995, Road Poet, Perpetual Toxins, Good Liar, The Poet’s Art, The Five Town Forum, The Nassau Herald, and every year from 1997-2007 Long Island PPA Literary Review.

Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan

Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan is the founder and president of The North Sea Poetry Scene. http://groups.msn.com/TheNorthSeaPoetryScene , she was a 2005 nominee for Poet Laureate of Suffolk County, New York, and nominated in 2006 for Pulitzer Prize for poetry book, Let Me Tell You Something. Her books & CD include: Between Willow and Cedars (2003), The Bitter The Sweet (Street Press 2004), One Woman's Voice (The North Sea Poetry Scene Press2005), Let Me Tell You Something (Street Press, 2006), and For Michael, (to be released Summer, 2007). She is working on a new manuscript, Howling the Moon (to be released Spring, 2007). Nuzzo-Morgan is the Editor of Long Island Sounds Anthology. She is creating an archival center for Long Island poetry that will be a gathering place for poets, whose Web site can be found at http://www.lipoetryarchivalcenter.com .

Tammy was also instrumental in opening doors for us,and is one of the Gazebo's best friends.

Robert Savino

Robert Savino is a native Long Island poet and practicing retiree. His poems have been published widely, in print, from the Long Island Quarterly to The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, as well as in The Light of City and Sea: an Anthology of Suffolk County Poetry, 2006 (Street Press) and primal sanities!: a Tribute to Walt Whitman Anthology, 2007 (Allbook Books); and online in PoetrySuperHighway, Combat and http://poetry.about.com.:Winter Poems anthology.
Robert is the winner of the 2008 Oberon Foundation Poetry Competition.

Herb Siegel

HERB SIEGEL has assembled two collections of poems over a span of fifty years. One of them is “Poems For The Universe”, and the other is “Poems From My Drawer.”

Herb was a CEO of major public companies, and served on numerous corporate and bank boards. He is a Certified Professional Consultant, a Chartered Consultant, and a Diplomate of the American Academy of Certified Consultants and Legal Experts. He holds a Ph.D. in International Law from Columbia, and authored over twenty-five publications on multi-national commerce and Privatization. He was a delegate to The College of Law of England and Wales, lectured at Yale, Harvard, and NYU business schools, the New York Board of Realtors, and other economic and business forums. He also was a thesis examiner for the Rutgers University Graduate School of Banking and Finance. He is Chairman of the Whitestone Consulting Group, Ltd., since 1989.

Subjects of universal interest inspire him to embrace poetry that promises to educate, challenge, and entertain, and then add his own touch of sardonic humor and hope. Earlier poems appeared in the NY Times and other anthologies, and he is regularly featured, and contributes to the open mic forums of Poets in Nassau.

The Readings start at 7pm at Schoolhouse Green, located on Foxhurst Road, just east of Long Beach Road.

The Summer Gazebo Readings are sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside, in support of the Oceanside Education Foundation. The Gazebo Readings will be held each Monday evening in June, July and August, and will feature 4 readers each evening. Scheduled readers include some of Long Island's most prestigious poets, published authors, comedians, fiction and non-fiction writers, and local community members sharing some of their favorite literature. The Summer Gazebo Readings will be held outdoors; seating is limited, so bring a lawn chair, a blanket, a picnic table. The grounds are open, and the public is encouraged to come early and have a quiet summer's picnic on the grounds. Admission is free.

Sponsors include:
Home & Hearth Realty
Tower's Funeral Home
Oceanville Mason Supply
Westron's Light Bulb Warehouse
NY Municipal Credit Union
Childs Murphy Kuehn & Cesiro, Inc. Insurance
Dr. Aaron Rappaport, DDS & Dr. David Rappaport, DMD
Marsh Hawk Press
LI Pulse Magazine
Councilman Anthony J. Santino
M. Schamroth & Sons
E. Fine
C. Scarlata & Family
Kaufman Family
Doc's Mechanical Piping & Heating Corp.
Bondi & Iovino, Attorneys at Law

For more information:

Tony Iovino
68 Yorktown Street
Rockville Centre, NY 11570
H 516 763-1667
C 516 459-3262
W 516 741-8585
www.schoolhousegreen.org
http://summergazeboreadings.blogspot.com/