Our Spring Events Calendars are now available. Check our listings to clear your schedule for an array of great readings, performances and talks from W&B coming up in the months of May, and June.

Jack London.

Jack London, that is. 2008 marks the 100th anniversary of London’s futuristic novel The Iron Heel. London (1876-1916) remains one of the most-read American novelists. In his short life he managed to write such classic novels as The Call of the Wild, John Barleycorn, The Sea Wolf, and The Road (which had a major influence on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road), as well as countless short stories, newspaper articles, and plays. Raised by a spiritualist mother, with whom he later became estranged, London was always an unconventional thinker. An avowed socialist until shortly before his death, he was also a rugged individualist, who tried to combine the philosophies of Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche. London’s views on women, racial matters and politics remain controversial. Tim Madigan will discuss the continuing relevance of London’s life and work, with particular emphasis upon The Iron Heel, a dystopian novel that influenced George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is the story of a society in which an Oligarchy (or “Iron Heel”) arises in the United States through manipulating the public by encouraging class warfare, deliberately bankrupting the middle class, and fomenting a war on terror which never ends.

Visiting Writers Series

Wednesday, May 21
$4 W&B members, $6 general public
7 p.m., W&B

Anne Panning Anne Panning is the author of Super America, (U. Georgia Press, 2007) Winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. She is an associate professor of English at the State University of New York-Brockport, where she also co-directs the Writers Forum. She is the author of a previous collection of stories, The Price of Eggs. Her creative nonfiction and short stories have appeared in such publications as the Beloit Fiction Journal, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, Black Warrior Review and elsewhere.

Wide Open Mic

Hosted by: Norm Davis
Monday May 19 7:30 pm
In the Verb Café at W&B
Free to W&B members, $3 general public

W&B is proud to sponsor Rochester's largest running open mike, hosted by Norm Davis, poet and editor of HazMat Review. Known for its eclectic mix. Wide Open Mike welcomes poets, performers, and writers of all kinds.

25 & Under: Rochester's Young Writers Read

Hosted by Sally Bittner Bonn
Tuesday May 27 at 7:00 pm
In the Verb Café at W&B
Free toW&B members and students/ $3 general public

Twenty-five years ago W&B first opened its doors. To celebrate this milestone anniversary we present a new monthly reading series featuring writers who are 25 and younger. Join us as we discover a new generation of writers for the next quarter century.