FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Ruth Weiner
ruth@sevenstories.com | 212-226-8760
Nelson Algren Live:
The 100th Birthday Celebration
An evening of dramatic readings at the
historic Steppenwolf Theatre,
including never-before-seen works by the famed Chicago
novelist
February 19, 2009, New York and Chicago—The
Seven Stories Institute in partnership with Steppenwolf
Theatre Company is pleased to announce a one-night
only celebration of Chicago’s Nelson Algren
on the centenary of his birth. “Nelson Algren
Live: The 100th Birthday Celebration” will feature
dramatic readings of previously unpublished Algren
stories by novelists Russell Banks, Barry Gifford
and Don DeLillo, actors Estelle Parsons and Matt Dillon,
Steppenwolf’s Martha Lavey, and Algren’s
last editor Dan Simon.
The performance on April 6th will be directed by
David New, based on a script written for the event
by Barry Gifford and Dan Simon. A special slide projection
will be created by Chicago photographer and Algren
friend, Art Shay. Director Hugo Perez /M30A Films
will film the event for eventual distribution to schools
interested in teaching the works of Nelson Algren.
This performance and other Algren centennial events
and outreach have been made possible with the support
of the Lannan Foundation and the National Book Foundation.
Born in 1909 in Chicago, Nelson Algren is best known
as the author of The Man with the Golden Arm,
which won the first National Book Award in 1950 and
was praised by Carl Sandburg for its “strange
midnight dignity.” That book chronicled the
dissolution of a card-dealing WWII veteran named Frankie
Machine. Algren’s powerful voice rose out of
the urban wilderness of postwar Chicago, to which
he returned over and over in books such as the story
collection, The Neon Wilderness, the prose
poem Chicago: City on the Make, and the novels
A Walk on the Wild Side and Never Come
Morning. Lauded by Hemingway as “one of
the two best authors in America,” Algren, who
died in 1981, remains one of our most defiant and
enduring novelists.
Seven Stories Institute was founded in 2004 as a
response to the realization that many good books posing
alternatives to current governmental policies and
attitudes circulate largely within academic circles
but never reach those most adversely affected by those
policies. SSI brings seminal books such as the works
of Howard Zinn and the Spanish-language edition of
Our Bodies, Ourselves to communities that
do not otherwise have access to them through such
programs as author forums, collaborations with local
media, and distribution of books at deeply subsidized
prices, to stimulate discussion of important policy
issues within those communities who have the most
to lose in the current political and economic crises
but have the least access to the terms of the debate.
SSI seeks ultimately to promote literacy and the active
exchange of ideas, imagination and the written word.
Committed to the principle of ensemble performance
through the collaboration of a company of actors,
directors and playwrights, Steppenwolf Theatre Company's
mission is to advance the vitality and diversity of
American theater by nurturing artists, encouraging
repeatable creative relationships and contributing
new works to the national canon. The company, formed
in 1976 by a collective of actors, is dedicated to
perpetuating an ethic of mutual respect and the development
of artists through on-going group work. Steppenwolf
has grown into an internationally renowned company
of 42 artists whose talents include acting, directing,
playwriting, filmmaking and textual adaptation. For
additional information, visit www.steppenwolf.org.
EVENT:
April 6th, 2009
7:00 pm
1650 N. Halsted St.
Chicago, IL 60614
Tickets $20.00 via Steppenwolf box office, 312-335-1650
or www.steppenwolf.org.
Entrapment and Other Writings, a new collection
of never-before-published works by Nelson Algren,
edited by Brooke Horvath and Dan Simon, will be published
by Seven Stories Press on April 6th. For futher information
or to buy the book, please visit www.sevenstories.com.
For further information, please contact Ruth Weiner,
ruth@sevenstories.com, 212-226-8760.
