FESTIVAL PROGRAM

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For the third annual Deep Water Festival, we've arranged a series of readings and performances, as well as panels and cabaret events across three days. This schedule is still fluid, so keep checking back to ensure times and venues have not changed. All events are free unless otherwise stated. 

FRIDAY 17 JUNE  

Festival Launch  5.00 PM  

Main Street, Narrowsburg

Join us on Main Street to enjoy themed libations with local  merchants, and a neon light installation created by Moon Sign. Throughout the  weekend, stop by 108 Main Street  from 10am to noon for a coffee on the house, courtesy of 2  Queens, a bagel courtesy of Grizzly Bagels of Callicoon, and a pastry courtesy of Beach Lake Bakery.  

Cocktails with Melissa Gilbert   

5.30 PM  

Outside, in front of DVAA, 37 Main St, Narrowsburg

Best known for playing Laura Ingalls Wilder in the wildly successful TV series, Little House on the Prairie, which ran for nine years, and nine seasons, Melissa Gilbert has written a wonderful new memoir, Back to the Prairie, a funny, charming, and inspiring account of leaving behind her Hollywood life for a dilapidated cottage in the Catskills, where she and her husband, the actor Timothy Busfield, found sanctuary during covid, and discovered an abiding love for nature. Melissa will talk with actor (and festival co-producer) Lucy Taylor about her life and times.  Join us for a short reading and signing over cocktails as we launch Deep Water Literary Fest 2022!    

American Gothic: Marlon James and Leila Taylor   
7:00 PM  
Tusten Theatre, 210 Bridge Street, Narrowsburg  
A conversation on the relationship between gothic narratives, fictional and not-so-fictional monsters, and the history of American slavery, featuring the Booker Prize-winning author Marlon James in conversation with Leila Taylor, author of  Darkly: Blackness and the America's Gothic Soul, in which she synthesizes her personal memoir with American history and cultural analysis to brilliant effect.     

Festival Cabaret featuring The Basic Bitches  
10.00 PM  
108 Main Street, Narrowsburg  
Join us for poets, comics, and punk rockers, featuring Jubi Arriola-Headley, Paul Legault, saxophonist Ben Bryden, Ryan Ward & Kenny Luck, and The Basic Bitches.  With Thomas March as your emcee, and Mike Edison on the decks.

SATURDAY  18 JUNE    

Monsters Inc.  
10.00-Noon  
108  Main Street, Narrowsburg  
Meet our resident artists for a series of workshops through the morning and afternoon:

FRANKENZINES: Festival attendees are invited to create collages (from available materials or from their own phone pictures) and assemble their own photocopied zine. A workshop run by artists Charles Wilkin and Jorge Colombo  
MONSTERMASKS: Use your imagination - and some aluminum foil - to create a mask with artist Rodney Harder.  DAEMON DUDS: Artist Dasha Ziborova has designed a series of outfits destined to mark anyone out in the crowd. Dare you try one on and play Frankenstein’s creature for the day?     

William Wegman in conversation with Andrew Lampert  
11.00  
Krause Recital Hall, Delaware Valley Arts Alliance, 37 Main St., Narrowsburg  William Wegman may be best known for his Weimaraners—which have flexed their manicured paws from art galleries to the set of Saturday Night Live and Sesame Street–but dogs are only part of the artist’s oeuvre. In Writing by Artist, his latest book–and accompanying show–we get a glimpse into his playful and often impish texts, including imagined restaurant reviews, musings on ancient footwear, reworked greeting cards, and fictional advertisements for real life products, among other things. For this appearance at Deep Water Literary Fest, Wegman talks about his life and work with Andrew Lambert, editor of Writing by Artist.  FREE ADMISSION

Frankenstein Rising  
12.30  
Narrowsburg Union, 7 Erie Ave,  Narrowsburg  

Dramatic staged readings from Frankenstein, featuring Thomas Cambridge, Luke Forbes, Kimmie Leff, Susan Mendoza, Luke Forbes, and Shawn Parsons, with special effects by Manon Manavit. Directed by Conor Kelly O’Brien.  FREE ADMISSION

The Bells of Mont Blanc  
1.30  
Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church, 31 Erie Ave, Narrowsburg  
Back by popular demand, a star of Deep Water Festival 2018 and 2019, the performance artist and pastry chef Kristin Worrall presents a world premiere that finds inspiration in the Alps where Frankenstein confronted his creation. Note: Food will be served as part of this performance.  FREE ADMISSION.

The Equus Effect: Courtney Maum and Halimah Marcus  
2.00  
Krause Recital Hall, Delaware Valley Arts Alliance, 37 Main St., Narrowsburg  Courtney Maum, author of the memoir, The Year of the Horses (“Wry and tender,” Publisher's Weekly), a chronicle of healing, joins us for a conversation with Halimah Marcus, Executive Director of Electric Literature, a nonprofit digital publisher, and the editor of Horse Girls (Harper Perennial, 2021), an anthology that reclaims and recasts the horse girl stereotype. Moderated by Melisse Gelula.  FREE ADMISSION

Frankisstein: A.M.Homes and Andrew Ondrejcak  
3.15  
Krause Recital Hall, Delaware Valley Arts Alliance, 37 Main St., Narrowsburg  
A.M. Homes reads from Jeanette Winterson’s modern retelling of Frankenstein, with accompaniment by artist and performer Andrew Ondrejcak.    

Of Monsters, Mothers, and Fathers: Joyce Carol Oates, Laurie Shreck, Susan Wolfson. Featuring Edison Studios original 1910 movie of Frankenstein, with an original piano score by Grammy-wining Kevin Hays  4.00  
Tusten Theater, 210 Bridge Street, Narrowsburg  
The celebrated author Joyce Carol Oates is joined by poet Laurie Sheck, author of A Monster’s Notes, and Susan Wolfson, ​​Professor of English at Princeton University and author of The Annotated Frankenstein for a discussion on their love of Mary Shelley’s classic, and the ways in which it has shaped and influenced their own work. This panel will be preceded by a special screening of the short film, Frankenstein (1910), with an original score and live piano accompaniment by Kevin Hays.    

Frankenstein in Art: A Conversation  with Sibyl Kempson, Oceana James and Nancy Princenthal  
5.45  
Krause Recital Hall, Delaware Valley Arts Alliance, 37 Main St., Narrowsburg  
Originally conceived  as a live performance set to premiere in New York in January 2021 before the  global pandemic saw the company ingeniously transform the work into digital form,  Maery S (screening at the Narrowsburg Union) is part animation featuring intricate hand cut collages, part radio play, and song cycle stitched from performances created entirely in isolation.  The creator Sibyl Kempson and artist Oceana James talk with art writer and critic Nancy Princenthal. Wine will be served.    

Olaf and His Girlfriend: A dance theater world premiere  
7.00  
Tusten Theater, 210 Bridge Street, Narrowsburg  
A special-commission for the festival,  based on a short story by the pioneering Black American writer Ann Petry, best known for her novel, The Street. This neglected short story about star-crossed lovers appears in Petry’s short story collection, Miss Muriel and Other Stories. The Fête Arts is a production company based in Barryville, NY founded in 2020 by Broadway performers Colin Cunliffe and Ron Todorowski. Note: this is a ticketed performance. The performance will be followed by a short conversation between director Sarah Parker and  Emmy Award-winning journalist, author, and historian Janus Adams, host of The Janus Adams Show on WJFF Radio Catskill.

 $20. Reserve here.   

Festival Party  
8.30  
The Darby Hotel, 9 Manor Drive, Beach Lake (just across the bridge)  
Join us for a dance party to celebrate Deep Water Literary Fest and the publication of the summer issue of Grand Journal. General Jerk will be on hand to provide jerk chicken and vegetarian alternative.  Music by Wiggleroom.

SUNDAY 19 JUNE    

Bloody Mary Shelley Brunch  
10.45
Narrowsburg Union, 7 Erie Ave,  Narrowsburg   
Join us for a morning libation and explore a new generation of Mary Shelleys. For Deep Water Literary Festival the young adult writer Alison Green Myers (A Bird Will Soar) has led workshops with students from area high schools in creating short stories, graphic art, and Frankenstein fanfic.    

Frankenstein Falling  
11.30
Narrowsburg Union, 7 Erie Ave,  Narrowsburg     
Frankenstein Falling juxtaposes excerpts from Mary Shelley's text with biosonification: the process of turning biological data from organic plant material into sounds and music. Eco-Artists Manon Manavit & Willow Gatewood link Shelley's abject horror to our monstrous relationship with nature. Special thanks The Vintage House in Jeffersonville who provided décor for this performance.

Joyce Carol Oates in conversation with A.M.Homes + reading

12.15

Krause Recital Hall, Delaware Valley Arts Alliance, 37 Main St., Narrowsburg 

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize for Lifetime Achievement, and has been nominated several times for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national best sellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde; and the New York Times best seller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. For Deep Water Literary Fest she reads from her work, and discussed the art of horror with A.M.Homes, the author of the novels, This Book Will Save Your Life, which won the 2013 Orange/Women’s Prize for Fiction, Music For Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as the short-story collections, Things You Should Know, The Safety of Objects, and Days of Awe. 

The Art of Memoir  
1.30  
Tusten Theater, 210 Bridge Street, Narrowsburg  
The memoir has rarely been as popular as it is today, perhaps because it gives visibility to experiences that have so often been shut out of the literary space. For this panel, three memoirists with recent or upcoming memoirs discuss how they turned their own lives into art, and why our confessional culture shows no sign of slowing down. Featured writers: Joyce Maynard, Maud Newton, Hafizah Augustus Geter, Diana Goetsh. Moderated by Ilya Marritz, co-host and producer of Will Be Wild.    

Joyce Maynard: Turning Life into Fiction
3.00  
Krause Recital Hall, Delaware Valley Arts Alliance, 37 Main St., Narrowsburg  Joyce Maynard has written ten novels, including To Die For and Labor Day (both turned into acclaimed movies) and, most recently, Count the Ways, an epic portrait of an American family over four decades as it navigates a devastating accident against the backdrop of historical events and shifting  social attitudes. At Home in the World, in which she wrote about her teenage relationship with J.D. Salinger. A.M. Homes most recent book is Days of Awe, a collection of short stories.  She is the author of the novels, This Book Will Save Your Life, which won the 2013 Orange/Women’s Prize for Fiction, Music For Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as the short-story collections, Things You Should Know and The Safety of Objects, the best selling memoir, The Mistress's Daughter along with a travel memoir, Los Angeles: People, Places and The Castle on the Hill, and the artist's book Appendix A:   

A War Vocabulary  
4.00  
Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church, 31 Erie Ave, Narrowsburg  
A talented cast of actors and readers (including  remote readings by Tilda Swinton and Alan Cumming) present a world premiere of these moving fragmentary stories based on the first-hand accounts of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine, gathered by Ostap Slyvynsky and directed by Greg Triggs. Includes a special performance by Swedish-born soprano Dominque Hellsten with Craig Ketter on the keyboard.