Elizabeth Rosner reads from her new novel Electric City with live musical accompaniment by pianist Richard Leiter Tuesday, October 21, 7:30 pm Location: Pegasus Books on Solano
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After playing herself in Happy Hour Stories' dramatization of a (sometimes painful) email correspondence with her editor, Elizabeth Rosner returns to Pegasus to share the fruits of that literary labor - a reading from her sweeping new novel Electric City - named one of The Ten Best New Books To Read by the BBC. With an intimacy that belies its scope, Electric City is a deeply American story that measures the impact of scientific progress on the lives and landscape of an Upstate New York town. Pianist Richard Leiter will provide a live score for the reading, making this a unique stop on Rosner's book tour. In addition, Rosner will read selections from her first full-length book of poetry, the newly published Gravity. Come feel the pull - and charge - of literature at its best.
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ABOUT ELIZABETH ROSNER:
Elizabeth Rosner grew up in Schenectady, New York as a daughter of Jewish holocaust survivors. Her father, who was born in Hamburg, Germany, was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp, while her mother survived the war by hiding in the Polish countryside. Much of Ms. Rosner’s writing reflects her efforts to come to terms with the impact of her parents’ experiences on her own life, the indelible imprints of their history on her language, her identity, and her imagination.She is the author of the award-winning novel The Speed of Light, and the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, Blue Nude. Rosner is a graduate of Stanford University, the MFA Program at U.C. Irvine, and the University of Queensland in Australia. Now living in Berkeley, California, she is a full-time writer, having been an instructor of creative writing and composition at the college level for thirty years.
ABOUT ELECTRIC CITY:
Upstate New York, at the confluence of the great Hudson River and its mighty tributary the Mohawk –from this stunning landscape came the creation of a new world of science. In 1887, Thomas Edison moved his Edison Machine Works here and in 1892, it became the headquarters of a major manufacturing company, giving the town its nickname: Electric City. The peak of Autumn, 1919: The pull of scientific discovery brings Charles Proteus Steinmetz, a brilliant mathematician and recent arrival from Ellis Island, to town. His ability to capture lightning in a bottle earns him the title “Wizard of Electric City.” Barely four feet tall with a deeply curving spine, Steinmetz’s physical deformity belies his great intellect. Allied with his Mohawk friend Joseph Longboat and his adopted eleven-year-old granddaughter Midget, the advancements he makes in Electric City will, quite simply, change the world. The peak of Autumn, 1965: Sophie Levine, the daughter of a company man, one of the many scientists working at The Company, whose electric logo can be seen from everywhere in town. Her family escaped Europe just before World War II, leaving behind a wake of annihilation and persecution. Ensconced in Electric City, Sophie is coming of age just as the town is gasping its last breaths. The town, and America as a whole, is on the cusp of great instability: blackouts, social unrest over Vietnam, and soon the advent of the seventies. Into her orbit drifts Henry Van Curler, the favored son of one of Electric City’s founding Dutch families, as well as Martin Longboat, grandson of Joseph Longboat. This new generation of Electric City will face both the history of their town and their own uncertain future, struggling to bridge the gap between the old world and the new. Electric City is a vital, pulsing, epic novel of America, of its great scientific ingenuity and its emotional ambition; one that frames the birth and evolution of its towns against the struggles of its indigenous tribes, the immigrant experience, a country divided, and the technological advancements that ushered in the modern world.
PRAISE FOR ELECTRIC CITY:
“With deft descriptions, Rosner sketches the bustling city, on land long cherished by aboriginal culture, which grew and flourished as whites invaded and industrialized…offers a gentle meditation on love and loss.” --Kirkus “This beautiful book joins the compression, vivid intensity, and imaginative connectivity of poetry to the deep character work of the novel. Rosner handles with effortless assurance both the small, intimate stories and the great impersonal worlds of science, nature, and history that combine to make us who we are.” -- Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Winner of the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award “At the heart of this gripping novel is the brilliant mathematician Charles Proteus Steinmetz, whose ability to capture lightning in a bottle electrifies a city and animates the lives of friends and strangers. Rosner achieves something just as powerful and thrilling in this marvelous book.” -–Ann Packer, author of The Dive From Clausen’s Pier
ABOUT RICHARD LEITER:
Richard Leiter is a singer/pianist who performs Gershwin, Jobim and the Beatles at San Francisco venues like Martuni's, the Fairmont, the Hyatt, the Mark Hopkins, and restaurants and clubs all over the Bay Area. As a keyboard performer he has provided jazz piano tracks for CBS Charlie Brown Specials, and the Met Life and Shell “Peanuts” commercials. His playing and singing have also been featured in projects for the Sheraton Hotels, Tropicana, Paramount Pictures as well as projects for NBC and CBS. As a composer and musical comedy performer he has worked with “The Groundlings”,“True Fiction Magazine” and “Bay Area TheaterSports” in San Francisco and Los Angeles. He tours with the jazz group REBOP! For the last ten years he's written the popular “Composing” column for Keyboard Magazine and is currently a contributing editor there. As a composer, Rich has created and produced music for hundreds of TV & Radio projects for clients like Honda, Citibank, FOX/TV, Mattel, Carl's Jr., Warner Bros., Disney, Tropicana, Trump's Castle, Kawasaki, ABC/TV and National Public Radio. His song for Lucky Supermarkets (“So Nice, Low Price Store”) won the First Prize in the International Broadcasting Awards.