Fireside hosts Chris Brandt & John Hildebidle

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 7:30pm

CHRIS BRANDT is a writer and activist. Also a translator, carpenter, furniture designer, and theatre worker. He teaches poetry at Fordham University. He is proud to have been found guilty on May 29, 2008, of exercising free speech (sic) at the U.S. Supreme Court, and sentenced to ten days (suspended) and a year's probation. His poems and essays have been published in magazines, journals, and anthologies, including Off the Cuffs: Poetry by and About the Police (Soft Skull, edited by Jackie Sheeler); Lateral (Barcelona); El signo del gorrion (Valladolid); La Jornada (Mexico); Phatitude, Appearances; The Unbearables; National Poetry Magazine of the Lower East Side; Liqueur 44 (Paris) and Crimes of the Beats. His translations of Cuban fiction have been published in The New Yorker and many other places. Translations of contemporary Cuban poetry will be included in a Univ. of CA Berkeley anthology to be published in 2009. Web links: www.poetz.com/2001/brandt.htm,  www.witnesstorture.org/5.30.brandt

JOHN HILDEBIDLE survived a peripatetic childhood, a Harvard education, and eight years as a teacher in a public junior high. He has finally surfaced on the faculty of MIT (teaching English -- a true adventure), happily lives a (literal) stone's throw from Cambridge Cohousing and co-founded the Fireside Reading Series with Jenise Aminoff in the spring of 2000. His newest book is Signs, Translations due any instant from Salmon Publishing in County Clare, Ireland. His publications include a study of Henry David Thoreau and another of 20th century Irish fiction, Five Irish Writers: The Errand of Keeping Alive plus several books of poetry and Stubbornness: A Field Guide a work of fiction. web.mit.edu/lit/www/dutchiamb/

The Fireside Reading is supported by sweat equity and financial contributions of attendees. (We spend an average $3 per attendee.) Come at 7 to help set up, sign up for open mike, nosh & schmooze. We invite you to stay for the reception following the reading. The Fireside Committee: Molly Lynn Watt, curator, Jenise Aminoff & Dan Lynn Watt, webmagicians, Julie Rochlin, Lolita Paiwonsky and many volunteers on logistics.

 The reading is held at Cambridge Co-Housing at 175 Richdale Ave, Cambridge, MA 02140, 3 blocks from the Red Line stop at Porter Square. A parking consideration request to the City of Cambridge allows out-of-towners attending to park on Richdale Avenue between 6:30-10:30 PM. Contact Molly Lynn Watt, 617-354-8242, mollywatt@comcast.net or Jenise Aminoff, 617-576-2004, jenise@alum.mit.edu, or www.cambridgecohousing.org/fireside/index.html