Well Said, Well Read: A Writers Read Live Performance

Join us for a special live performance celebrating Well Said, Well Read, the new anthology from Writers Read.

Contributing writers will take the stage to share their 5-minute true personal stories, captivating, funny, and deeply moving moments drawn from a decade of storytelling. The anthology gathers 62 unforgettable essays that have inspired, challenged, and connected audiences over the years. Come be part of this celebration of voices, community, and the power of story.

Enjoy wine and cheese before the event, then settle in to be part of this celebration of voices, community, and the power of story.

Two-time O. Henry and Pushcart Prize winner Jai Chakrabarti is the author of the novel A Play for the End of the World (Knopf ’21), awarded the National Jewish Book Award for debut fiction and long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Chakrabarti is also the author of the story collection A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness (Knopf), which was among The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2023. His short fiction has been featured in Best American Short Stories, Ploughshares, One Story, and performed for Selected Shorts at Symphony Space in New York City. Also published in The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Writer’s Digest, Berfrois, and LitHub, he holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College. Born in Kolkata, India, he currently lives in New York with his family.

Kathy Curto teaches at Sarah Lawrence College/The Writing Institute and Montclair State University as well as several nonprofit organizations and writing centers in the metropolitan area. She is the author of Not for Nothing-Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood. Kathy’s column Words on the Street, Revisited is featured biweekly in Write or Die Magazine. Her piece, “Still Cooking Side by Side” considered a “Modern Love in miniature” by the New York Times, was included in The Best of Tiny Love Stories in August 2021. Kathy lives in the Hudson Valley with her family and can be found in her front yard, on most mornings, replenishing her Little Free Library with donated books. This practice has become one of her daily delights.

Steve Lewis is a former Mentor at SUNY-Empire State College, longtime member of the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute faculty, freelancer and editor. Over the past 50 years his work has been published widely, from the notable to the beyond obscure, from The New York Times and Washington Post to The Rosicrucian Digest and the Road Apple Review.  His recent books include a novel, The Lights Around the Shore, and a poetry collection titled Fire in Paradise, co-authored with his daughter Elizabeth Bayou-Funk.

Anthony C Murphy grew up in Lancashire, England. He has worked as a postman, toured Europe as a roadie, and been an associate producer of live poetry nights and open mic events. He’s performed at spoken word events in the UK, and here in the US for 15 years, including several Writers Read shows. A member of Irish American Writers and Artists, he’s a regular contributor at their salons in Manhattan and elsewhere. Anthony has three kids and two dogs who, he says, are all lovely, in their own way. At home in North Westchester, Anthony brews nourishing ales, enjoys walking the dogs and watching the birds, and volunteers at his daughter’s school, where he shares his love of nonsense poetry with the kids. He’s published a novel, Shiftless, and several poetry chapbooks.

Irene O’Garden has won or been nominated for prizes in nearly every writing category from stage to e-screen, hardcovers, as well as literary magazines and anthologies. Her critically-acclaimed play Women On Fire, (Samuel French) played sold-out houses at Off-Broadway’s Cherry Lane Theatre. O’Garden won a Pushcart Prize for her lyric essay “Glad To Be Human,” featured in her new book of her essays by that name published by Mango (May 2020.) Mango also published her memoir Risking the Rapids: How My Wilderness Journey Healed My Childhood. O’Garden’s poems and essays have been featured in dozens of literary journals and anthologies.

John Pielmeier began his career with the internationally-acclaimed play and movie Agnes of God. Since then he’s had three more plays mounted on Broadway and over twenty-five film, television movies and miniseries produced. Scribner published his first novel, Hook’s Tale, to wonderful reviews and his theatrical adaptation of it premiered in Houston in October 2021. His adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist toured the U.K. after its acclaimed West End run, and is on its way to New York. He’s received the Humanitas Award (plus two nominations), five Writers’ Guild Award nominations, a Gemini nomination, an Edgar Award, Camie Award, Christopher Award, and his projects have won a Gemini Award and been nominated for the Emmy Award and the Golden Globe.

Angela Derecas Taylor was born and raised in 1960’s Greenwich Village. She had a twenty-year career as chef, caterer and event planner. Her next career, as Executive Assistant to the mayor of New Rochelle, lasted seventeen years.  Now, in addition to writing creative non-fiction, Angela is an award-winning live storyteller, with performances on The Moth mainstage and on NPR on her resume. She is a certified Yoga Instructor and Co-founder of Key to the Castle Workshop. Angela has been married for almost three decades to her husband, Tom. They are the proud parents of two adult sons and a rescue cat named Mario Plomo.

Sarah Bracey White and her husband live in Ossining New York, but in her heart and through her pen she is a southern storyteller, mining her life for poems, essays, and stories. In 2021 her memoir Primary Lessons, transformed into an immersive, dramatic musical, debuted live at the Paramount Theater in Peekskill with Sarah in a starring role. Other literary work includes The Wanderlust: A South Carolina Folk Tale, and Feelings Brought to Surface, a poetry collection. Her work has been collected in several anthologies and has also appeared in The New York Times, The Baltimore Afro American Newspaper, The Scarsdale Inquirer, and the Journal News.