July 24, Monday, 8:30 pm, Fiesta Deck

Zidane, the Arabian Frenchman, who tried to make that idea sound less contradictory than "environmentally friendly SUV," was redcarded off ten minutes from the end of his career. On the one hand, his spontaneous headbutt of the Italian made him appear to be the brutish dark-skinned terrorist that the soccer hooligans called him. Did it, the media wondered, destroy the image he triumphed of a Europe that wasn't still a tribal backwater of us versus them? The truth was, however, Zidane had simply had too much abuse. The endless racial slurs on the pitch have been talked about and now even Zidane's mother has asked for Materazzi's manhood on a platter (and she didn't use the word "manhood"). That is news fit for the front pages of the sport section, but less mentioned--relegated to a sidebar in the international news--is that after the match swastikas were smeared on Jewish graveyards by ecstatic Italian football supporters. How does World Cup triumph, French-Arabs relations, or even Italian national pride turn into rehashing of Nazism, which was supposedly not even Italian? And what would have happend in Paris had France won? These are the kinds of question I am left to wonder about because on TV all I see is that famous bald head smacking over and over into the chest of Materazzi. TV, as usual, reminds me what is important.

But enough of my madness. The important thing is July's Writer's Working at the Drama Book Shop, 250 West 40th Street July 24th 8:30pm!

One of these readers is not like the others. One of these readers is not the same:
Hall Powell
Tina Lee
Micaela Blei
Jen Nails
David Silverman

Tina Lee is a writer and actress living in New York. Her comic one-person shows have been featured at the NuYorican Poets Café, HERE Theater, BBC Radio, WNET-PBS, the Kitchen Theatre, and The Korea Society, and her fiction in the River City Journal. She got her BA from Yale and her MFA in Fiction Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. With any luck, she will finish her screenplay so Fluid Motion Theater & Film Company can get started producing. She is currently obsessed with Grey's Anatomy, 24, and tiny fake food.


Hall Powell is a screenwriter who has written for film and TV, including Law & Order and Criminal Intent. He studied philosophy with utopian Marxist Ernst Bloch at the University of Tubingen in Germany, and began his career in theater and film as an assistant director, working for Alan Schneider and Roman Polanski. His most screenplay Rocco was written and produced in Italy.




Micaela BleiMicaela Blei has been a teacher of smaller kids for 6 years. She lives in Brooklyn, in a small apartment with a really cool Murphy bed, just like a private detective. She wrote and performed a solo show for kids, "City of Islands," directed by Jen Nails, at the PIT and Tank theaters. Micaela will be reading something that she wrote and it will feature either librarians or the Caribbean. She hasn't decided yet.



Jen Nails (the much beloved) is originally from Las Vegas, NV. She teaches writing and performance classes at the Peoples Improv Theater (www.thepit-nyc.com) and has written for the Oxygen Network and SELF Magazine. She will be reading from her young adult book in progress, Beside Mexico, which is based on her award winning solo play, Lylice, which she's performed at theater festivals around the world.


David Silverman as the author of the forthcoming book from Softskull PressTypo: How I Made and Lost Millions is busy trying to hire a PR firm. He hasn't had this much trouble getting someone to take his money since he tried to get a tire changed in Iowa. (Real men, you see, don't need to pay someone else to do something they should know how to do. As for New York PR firms, they just don't find David's cash green enough. Now if he were Paris Hilton--with 6 minute ABs--and a reality TV show contestant who didn't get voted off--well then...)