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.
Marlon James was born in Jamaica in 1970, and is the author of the New York Times-bestseller Black Leopard, Red Wolf, a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction in 2019, as well as the novel A Brief History of Seven Killings, which won the 2015 Man Booker Prize and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for fiction. He is also the author of The Book of Night Women, which won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Minnesota Book Award, and most recently, Moon Tiger, Spider Witch.
Leila Taylor is a writer and designer whose work explores the gothic in Black culture and horror. Her work has been published in The Journal of Horror Studies, The New Urban Gothic: Global Gothic in the Age of the Anthropocene, The Repeater Book of the Occult, and the graphic novel Bitter Root. She has given talks for the International Gothic Association in Mexico and the U.K. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, where she is Creative Director for Brooklyn Public Library. Darkly: Black History and America’s Gothic Soul is her first book.
Kristin Worrall is a pastry artist, performer, sound designer, and musician. She is a founding member of Nature Theater of Oklahoma and has performed in over 20 festivals around the world with them since 2003. Kristin provided the entire text (in the form of her life story) for NTO's magnum opus "Life and Times" - an almost 24 hour performance experience. She has also designed for Andrew Ondrejcak, Hotel Savant, Peter Campbell, and Bedlam, amongst many other artists. Her sound work has been seen and heard at BAM, The Public Theater, The Kitchen, Classic Stage Company, PS 122, The Wexner Center, New Ohio Theater, Incubator Arts, HERE, La Mama, 3LD, The Knitting Factory, The Conan O’Brien Show, the Food Network, and many others.
Emmy Award-winning journalist, historian, author, entrepreneur, and keynote speaker, Dr. Janus Adams, is the host of public radio’s “The Janus Adams Show” and podcast, heard Saturdays at 12 noon on WJFF Radio Catskill.
As a performance-maker, Ondrejcak’s works have been presented at Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans; New York's The Kitchen; BAM Harvey Theater; Holland Festival, Amsterdam; and the Guggenheim Museum’s Works in Process, curated by Robert Wilson.
A star of stage and screen, Baker was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for The Good Wife, and played British prime minister John Major on Broadway opposite Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II in The Audience. He has also had recurring roles in Homeland, and The Americans. For DWF he reads the letters of Captain Robert Walton to his sister that opens Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, part of an immersive video and audio installation at the Narrowsburg Union.
A member of renowned theater company Elevator Repair Service, with whom she appeared in the acclaimed production of Gatz, Taylor starred in Dance Nation by Claire Barron, and Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Marys Seacole at Lincoln Center Theater. In 2019 Lucy created an interactive installation called The Impossible Task for the Deep Water Literary Festival featuring a sound design by Gareth Hobbs and the voice of Tilda Swinton. For DWF 2022, she has stepped into the shoes of co-producer, pulling together the various elements that make up this year's ambitious program.
Laurie Sheck is the author of two hybrid works, A Monster’s Notes, and Island of the Mad, as well as five books of poems. A Monsters Notes was long listed for the Dublin Impac International Fiction Prize and was chosen by Entertainment Weekly as one of the ten best fictions of the year. The Willow Grove ( poems) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and. Guggenheim Fellow. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including the New Yorker, The Nation, The New York Times, and the Paris Review.
Wayne Heller (Frankenstein-inspired-neon installation in window of DVAA) is an artist and designer working with graphics, lighting, and sculptural elements and operates a small business called MoonSign that specializes in unique sign and graphic applications
Jubi Arriola-Headley (he/they) is a Blacqueer poet, a storyteller, a first-generation United Statesian, and author of the poetry collection original kink (Sibling Rivalry Press), recipient of the 2021 Housatonic Book Award. He’s a 2018 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, holds an MFA from the University of Miami, and has received support for his work from Yaddo, Millay Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center, the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Lambda Literary, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Jubi lives with his husband in South Florida, on Tequesta and Seminole lands, and his work explores themes of masculinity, vulnerability, rage, tenderness & joy.
Familiar to millions as Laura Ingalls Wilder from the long-running NBC series, Little House on the Prairie, Melissa Gilbert has also served as the President of the Screen Actors Guild, and been active in Democratic politics. She is the author of a short story collection for children, Daisy and Josephine. For this year's festival she will read form her new memoir, Back to the Prairie. Signed copies will be available.
Becky Ann Baker is best known as Jean Weir on NBC’s Freaks and Geeks, and Loreen Horvath on HBO’s Girls, but her illustrious stage career has included credits in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, the Roundabout Theater Company's production of Suddenly Last Summer, and All My Sons, among others. For DWF he reads the letters of Captain Robert Walton to his sister that opens Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, part of an immersive video and audio installation.
Oceana James is a St. Croix-born interdisciplinary artist. Her work is an examination/a re-telling/ a re-imagining of her Caribbean indigeneity and has been presented in Germany, Denmark, NYC and St. Croix and the USVI. Right now, her research is centered on epigenetics, trees, (the biology and mythology), the intersection of science, spirituality, agriculture; and the use of the body to embody and then exorcise the traumas of colonialism.
Nancy Princenthal's book Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art (Thames and Hudson, 2015) received the 2016 PEN America award for biography. A former Senior Editor of Art in America, she has also contributed to Artforum, Parkett, The Village Voice, and The New York Times. Princenthal is the author of Hannah Wilke (Prestel, 2010), and the author of Unspeakable Acts: Women, Art, and Sexual Violence in the 1970s, named by The New York Times, as one of the Best Art Books of 2019.
Paul Legault is a poet. His books include The Tower from Coach House Books, Lunch Poems 2 from Spork, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror 2 from Fence, The Emily Dickinson Reader: An English to English Translation of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson from McSweeney's, The Other Poems: a series of 14-line Plays also from Fence, and The Madeleine Poems from Omnidawn.
Greg Triggs (A War Lexicon) is a show director and writer whose client roster includes Disney, Disney Cruise Line, Slack, Tableau, the Tribeca Film Festival and the World Science Festival. As an improviser he has worked with some of the premiere sketch comedy troupes in the country including the Brave New Workshop in Minneapolis and the Who, What and Warehouse Players at Disney’s Comedy Warehouse where he did over 9,000 shows as a member of the ensemble. His first novel, The Next Happiest Place on Earth, was released in 2016. His latest novel, That Which Makes Us Stronger, has just been released by Redhawk Publications.
A.M. Homes 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, The Safety of Objects, and Days of Awe. She has also written the best selling memoir, The Mistress's Daughter, the travel memoir, Los Angeles: People, Places and The Castle on the Hill, and the artist's book Appendix A: Her new novel, The Unfolding, will be published in September.
Maud Newton has written for The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review, and Oxford American. She grew up in Miami and graduated from the University of Florida with degrees in English and law.
Born in Zaria, Nigeria, Hafizah Augustus Geter‘s poetry and prose have appeared, or is forthcoming, in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Narrative Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Longreads, among others. Her memoir, The Black Period, will be published this fall.
Diana Goetsch is an American poet and essayist. Her poems have appeared widely, in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and in the collections Nameless Boy, In America and others. She also wrote the “Life in Transition” blog at The American Scholar. Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and The New School, where she served as the Grace Paley Teaching Fellow. For twenty-one years Goetsch was a New York City public school teacher, at Stuyvesant High School and at Passages Academy in the Bronx, where she ran a creative writing program for incarcerated teens.
Joyce Maynard first came to national attention with the publication of her New York Times cover story, “An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back on Life”, in 1972, when she was a freshman at Yale. Since then she has published eighteen books, including the New York Times bestselling novel, Labor Day and To Die For (both adapted for film), Under the Influence and the memoirs, At Home in the World and The Best of Us. Her latest novel, Count the Ways —the story of a marriage and a divorce, and the children who survived it— was published in July, 2021. She is currently at work on a book about her return to Yale University two and a half years ago as an undergraduate, forty-eight years after dropping out at age 18.
Author of five books, including the publishing guide Before and After the Book Deal, and the memoir The Year of the Horses (chosen by The Today Show as the best read for mental health awareness), Courtney is a writer and book coach hellbent on preserving the joy of art-making in a culture obsessed with turning artists into brands. A nominee for the Joyce Carol Oates prize and the host of the monthly “Beyond Fiction” conversation series at Edith Wharton’s The Mount, Courtney’s essays and articles on creativity have been widely published in outlets like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian, and her short story “This is Not Your Fault” was recently turned into an Audible Original.
Halimah Marcus is the Executive Director of Electric Literature, a nonprofit digital publisher, and the editor of its weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading. She is also the editor of Horse Girls (Harper Perennial, 2021), an anthology that reclaims and recasts the horse girl stereotype, which was a New York Times “New and Noteworthy” pick. Her short stories have appeared in Indiana Review, Gulf Coast, One Story, BOMB, The Literary Review, and The Southampton Review. Halimah has an MFA from Brooklyn College, and lives in the Catskill region of New York.
Grammy Award-winning jazz pianist/composer Kevin Hays is one of the most original and compelling musicians of his generation. His many recordings have received critical acclaim from The New York Times, Downbeat Magazine and Jazz Times, as well as the “Coup de Coeur” award from the Académie Charles Cros (France).
Hays has appeared on numerous albums as a guest artist, recording with Chris Potter, Bill Stewart, Joshua Redman, Jeff Ballard, Nicholas Payton, and Al Foster, among many others. Notable collaborations include a piano duo project with Brad Mehldau (Modern Music), and world tours with James Taylor, Sonny Rollins, John Scofield, Joe Henderson, and Roy Haynes. In 2015 Hays released the widely lauded recording New Day (Sunnyside), on which he performed his own songs and a cover of the Jimmy Webb classic ‘Highwayman’. Hope, a 2019 collaboration with Beninese guitarist Lionel Loueke, was released on Edition Records.
Conor (dir. Frankenstein Rising) is an actor, theatre-maker, and arts advocate. Conor has performed Off-Broadway (59e59 Theatres, The Cell, Actors Company Theatre) as well as a few small TV and film roles. Conor has performed or seen his original works performed on stages across the USA and Great Britain. He is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Scranton Fringe Festival as well as a proud member of the New Vintage Ensemble and the Dramatist Guild of America. Conor firmly believes in the power the performing arts have to transform and inspire not only the individual but entire communities and he is thrilled to be working with Deep Water Literary Fest for the first time!
Elise is a research-based artist working with lens-based media. She has exhibited, performed and screened her work internationally including venues such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Queens Museum, Pioneer Works (New York), Night Gallery, JOAN (Los Angeles), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Belvedere 21 (Vienna), Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), Dazibao (Montreal), Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton), the Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto and Gallery 44 (Toronto). Born in Edmonton, Canada, Elise received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and currently lives in Los Angeles.
Sibyl Kempson began making her own performances at Little Theater and Dixon Place at the turn of the millennium. Her plays have been presented in the United States, Germany, and Norway. She launched the 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co. in 2015 and 2 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens, a 3-year cycle of rituals for the Whitney Museum of American Art, began on the Vernal Equinox in March 2016, and recurred on every Solstice and Equinox through December 2018. Sibyl is the recipient of the 2018 PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for American Playwright at Mid-Career. She teaches experimental performance at Sarah Lawrence College
Most of the events at the festival are free or donation-only, so your contributions help enable us to meet our goals and grow.
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