In the latest season of Revisionist History, the podcast host Malcolm Gladwell talks about his theory about autobiographies and memoirs. He says that the books written by very famous people are usually incredibly boring, as they need to play it safe in order to avoid mass media scrutiny. Gladwell continues, saying, “But the memoir of the person under the general, or the president, or the CEO, the person you’ve never heard of? That person has a lot less to lose. And their memoirs are where the gold lies.” With that in mind, you may have never heard of Victor Corona before, but that makes Night Class: A Downtown Memoir all the more exciting. The book has already generated some buzz as one of Barnes & Noble’s “12 Must-Read Indie Books Coming This Summer,” and its likely to be one of the most captivating books of the summer.

The story follows Corona’s adventures in downtown New York when he was younger, taking part in the nightclub and art scene. Corona is now a sociology professor at NYU, making him an astute observer who can turn his personal story into a grander view of the history of New York. His CV also includes other notable entries that make this book so captivating, like his time spent as an assistant to Michael Alig, a notorious club promoter who spent 17 years in prison for manslaughter.

As noted in the New Yorker, Corona is launching his book at Rizzoli Bookstore on Thursday, July 13 at 6 p.m. If you happen to live in East Hampton, you can also attend the 2017 East Hampton Library’s Authors Night featuring a number of personalities including Alec Baldwin, Robert Caro, and Dick Cavett.

Victor Corona isn’t teaching any courses at CALA this fall (though keep an eye out for possible classes in the future). If you’re interested in writing your own memoir, though you may want to check out Jumpstart Your Memoir being offered this summer, or Writing Your Memoir which will take place in the fall.

Living in New York City, the beauty of the night sky seems to be entirely replaced by a dull glow emitted by the signs of Times Square and all the other sources of light pollution. That’s what makes it all the more spectacular when you get out of the city and witness a sky filled with thousands of stars. It is this theme that inspired NightVisions, a photography exhibit in Flagstaff, Arizona, focusing on views of the galaxy taken from earth. CALA instructor Kay Kenny is one of the many talented photographers featured in the exhibit. You can see her photo at the top of this article.

Flagstaff is the first International Dark Skies City, having established itself as such in 1958, which means measures have been taken to ensure that the effects of light pollution are reduced as much as possible. New York City might seem like the exact opposite of that. Still, the city has its own kind of beauty as the night falls. To celebrate this, Kay Kenny is teaching a course this fall along with Lynn Saville called New York at Twilight: A Two-Day Photography Workshop. The course will teach techniques on how to capture the lights and colors of the city as the sun starts to disappear. The results will certainly be different than those exhibited in Flagstaff right now, but it will show the extremes of the world at night, each beautiful in their own way.

There’s a joke about the publishing industry that everyone who works in it has an unpublished manuscript of their own sitting in a drawer. This is often meant as an insult, as though everyone who works with books is just someone who hasn’t been able to write one. That presumption is, of course, nonsense, because in reality it is just that people who like working on books also like working with books.

A misconception, however, is that working in publishing would make writing a book any easier. Often, it’s exactly the opposite. CALA instructor Kate McKean, a literary agent, talked about her own struggle to write a book on Catapult in an essay called “Deal or No Deal: Why Being a Literary Agent Doesn’t Make It Easier to Write a Book.” McKean talks about a range of issues she has, from not having enough time to write to focusing too much on how great it would be to have a book deal. She uses the essay as a how-to for writers. Or, not exactly:

As it is my job to assist and support writers, I thought it might be helpful to provide a kind of reverse how-to guide—a how-not-to guide, if you will—so you can see that even literary agents make mistakes (and so you can try to avoid mine). Here, then, is an honest accounting of all the things I’m currently doing wrong.

If you find this essay helpful but want even more help from Kate McKean, you can get advice from her in person this summer with the two classes she’s teaching:

• Social Media for Authors
• How to Find a Literary Agent

The loss of a loved one is both tragic and virtually inevitable, and so it is easy to see why so many people have used writing as a way to process their emotions in times of grieving. It is an experience both tragic and personal, making each essay about it different from every other. In a recent piece in the New York Times, CALA instructor Sara Lukinson reflects on the passing of her sister. She writes about how her grieving is not a process of moving on and forgetting, but is an attempt to come to terms with the death.

As the weeks went by, my sorrow took the form of a solitary retreat with no idea where to go or why. A year passed and early one winter morning, I was in bed staring at the white walls of the sky. We had been a family of two, so the answer to letting go of my sister was still no.

In the end, she finds the love of her friends is able to draw her out of isolation.

Sara Lukinson will begin teaching at the Center for Applied Liberal Arts in Spring 2018 with a course called Autobiography: Inside the Heart and Soul of Another. The course will teach aspiring writers how to reflect on their experiences to create unique and engaging work on their own lives, the same way Lukinson has in writing this piece.

CALA instructor John Hart hosted a staged reading of his comedy FOTO-PLAY at the Dramatists Guild on June 2. The play starred Memory Contento, Joyce Lynn, Ruth Haiblum, Daniel Stravino, Debra McNulty, and David Contento. From the pictures, kindly taken by JoAnne  Lindsley, it looks like it was a lot of fun.

Patrick Hart is teaching the Digital Filmmaking Intensive this summer, which has already started. Most of our theater and acting courses for the semester have begun, but keep an eye on our Theatre, Music, and Acting page for classes starting this fall.

In-depth reporting on poverty in the United States feels more urgent than ever, and so CALA adjunct instructor Gladys Bensimon’s new documentary, A Way Out, feels incredibly timely. The film follows three young men from New Jersey who have managed to avoid the school-to-prison pipeline. The movie is set to premiere on June 10 at the 2017 New Jersey International Film Festival.

Before the premiere, Bensimon was interviewed by New Jersey Stage. She talks about her inspiration for the documentary and her goals in making it. On talking about the most memorable stories from her filming process, she mentions the children she met:

The stories that had the most impact on me were actually during my inspiration and discovery period – stories of the middle school students whom I was teaching as a volunteer in Newark. Their dramatic exposure to violence, and death were the last push for me to pursue the production of this documentary. They weren’t thinking about their homework; they were thinking about if their parents would be shot when they go home. Opportunity is hard to come by in urban America.

If you’re in the Newark area, you can get tickets on a first-come, first-serve basis on the day of at Voorhees Hall. More information about that can be found here.

If you need further convincing, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker endorsed the film, calling it an “urgently important document showing that success an opportunity go hand in hand.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_WyoIGHEWs

This summer, you also have the opportunity to learn about documentaries from Gladys Bensimon herself, who is teaching Independent Digital Documentary Filmmaking: From Researching and Writing to Producing and Directing.