Storytellers | How to Build a Fire: Detour

How to Build a Fire: Detour | Storytellers | Livestream | Facebook Event

STORYTELLERS:

DAVID BRENSILVER:
David Brensilver is a classically trained musician and a writer whose first novel, ExecTV (ENC Press)—”the book the Vatican refused to comment on,” as the publisher’s website points out—was released in 2005. David is also the author of the animal-rights-focused blog The Daily Maul and has contributed to Scott Stein’s website When Falls the Coliseum: a journal of American culture [or lack thereof]. 

A recovering percussionist, David has degrees from the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University (BM, 1992) and The Juilliard School (MM, 1994). He studied during the summers of 1990, 1991, and 1992 at the Aspen Music Festival and School. David has performed on a freelance basis with orchestras in the United States and abroad and has worked with numerous rock, pop, jazz, and blues groups. 

After working for several years at a regional newspaper and the company’s string of community weeklies, David briefly joined the marketing-department staff at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts before becoming the editor of The Arts Paper, the monthly publication of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, in Connecticut. Recently, he joined the staff at the Yale School of Music, where he’s the communications officer. 

David’s writing has appeared in Drum Magazine, Modern Drummer, and New Music Box (an online publication of New Music USA). 

He has completed a second novel and is working on an animal-rights-focused play. He’s a vegan.

AMBER DREA:
Amber Drea is a storyteller, writer and editor whose work has been published by Akashic Books, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Hypertext Magazine, The Northville Review, Another Chicago Magazine, The2ndHand.com and The Chicago Reader. She’s been featured on storytelling shows and podcasts, including Risk!, The Soundtrack Series, TALE, How I Learned, Tell It: Brooklyn, Bare! and Sideshow Goshko. Originally from New London, Connecticut, she now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, son and cat.

XTIAN W.:
Born in Virginia, x-tian whitfield (pronounced christian) is a poet, essayist, student, & worker living in Brooklyn. Their work focuses primarily on gender, queer(ing) somatic experience, & race. x-tian received a BFA from Goddard College, & can often be found wandering, walking dogs, & practicing polishing up their nails.

ADAM WALSH:
P. Adam Walsh is a co-PTA president at P.S. 118. He is the husband to Caliopie and the father to Sadie.

HOSTS:

MATT BARBEHENN: Matthew Barbehenn’s fiction has been published in several Canadian and Australian literary magazines, but very few American ones. He has taught creative writing, literature, and composition at Temple University, The Community College of Philadelphia, and Philadelphia University. He is currently working on several projects, including a book of short fiction and something that might one day be a novel. He has been living in New York for one month and he gets lost on a daily basis.

KAREN STEVENSON: Karen Stevenson is a technologist, journalist, and media entrepreneur who has lived in Brooklyn since the turn of the century.