Since 1991, IAWA has given voice to writers through its literary series every second Saturday of the month.  IAWA East is held even months at Sidewalk Café (Oct, Dec) and IAWA West continues at Cornelia Street Café on odd months (Sept, Nov.)

Marie-Helene Bertino will read from her debut novel, 2 A.M. AT THE CAT’S PAJAMAS (Crown; August 5, 2014.) Her stories have appeared in The Pushcart Prize Anthology XXXIII, North American Review, Gigantic, Gulf Coast, Mississippi Review, Inkwell, Indiana Review, American Short Fiction, Five Chapters, Storyville and The Common, among others.

She teaches at NYU, the Center for Fiction, the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, and the One Story Workshop for Writers, and has been invited to read and teach at bookstores and universities in America and abroad, including the Brooklyn Book Festival, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the University of Pennsylvania and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Festival in Cork, Ireland.  She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Hedgebrook. A Philadelphia native, she lives in Brooklyn.

Joanna Clapps Herman’s new collection of short stories, No Longer and Not Yet, was published by SUNY Press. She is currently working on a new book whose working title is Ieri, Oggi e Domani: Food and Family from Sun Press.  Her memoir, The Anarchist Bastard (SUNY Press, 2011) begins, “I often say that I was born in 1944 but raised in the 15th Century because although I was born in Waterbury, CT, in a New England factory town, in post-WWII, I grew up in a large southern Italian family where the rules were absolute, and customs antiquated.”

She is co-editor of two anthologies: Wild Dreams: The Best of Italian Americana (Fordham University Press, 2008), and of Our Roots Are Deep with Passion (Other Press, 2007.) She loves teaching and considers it an art form as central to her life as reading and writing.http://www.joannaclappsherman.com/

Event kicks off with Open Mic readings of five minutes.

COVER: $8 includes complimentary beverage.

Oct. 11: John Domini and Joe Tirella, author of Tomorrowland @Sidewalk Café

Nov. 8:  Suzanne Petito and Michael Trocchia @Cornelia Street Café

Contacts: www.iawa.net , www.corneliastreetcafe.com