Press Releases

May 16, 2000
"Wicked Women" Writers Debut June Lecture Series

Contact:
Darren Johnson
(631) 287 8313
Fax: (631) 283 4081

A new June writers series focuses on strong, independent females who won't play by the rules. The "Wicked Women & Wayward Girls" lectures at Southampton College host noted novelists, playwrights and poets who have written about defiance against the male-dominated status quo.

The series runs Thursdays next month starting with novelist Carole Maso on June 1 at 7 p.m. She will be followed by event organizer, novelist and Southampton College professor Indira Ganesan on June 8 at 7 p.m.; performance artist and playwright Alina Troyano on June 15 at 7 p.m.; poet Lee Briccetti on June 22 at 7 p.m., and novelist Louise DeSalvo on June 29 at 5 p.m. Sponsored by Southampton College's MFA in Writing program, all events will be held in Duke Lecture Hall and are free and open to the public. For further information, contact (631) 287-8107.

Ganesan says that the "Wicked Women & Wayward Girls" title is meant to be ironic. "These are not women who are subversive. They have not broken any laws," she said, "but they do defy the notion that women can't be smart and tough. They won't be victims. Being "wicked" or "wayward" in this sense means you?re not a puppet to a man."

Ganesan hopes that this series becomes an annual tradition, held during a month when literary events are few in the Hamptons. During this inaugural series, she has lined up some writers with impressive credentials. Maso is well known for her lyrical style and inventive characters and plots. She's the author eight books including "Defiance" (Penguin, 1998), the story of a Death Row celebrity sentenced to die in the electric chair for the shocking sexual murder of two of her most promising male students.

Ganesan was born in Srirangam, India, and received an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. She is on the faculty of the English Department at Southampton College and was a 1997-98 Bunting Fellow at Radcliffe College. Her novels are "The Journey" and "Inheritance," and she was a Granta Best Young American Novelist Award finalist. Last year, she ran a multicultural reading series called "Fridays at Four" and believes the "Wicked Women" series will be an expansion of that. "I strongly believe in the necessity for diverse voices," Genesan said, "and these readings are a way to introduce students and the general public to writers they may not have encountered before."

Troyano is author of "I, Carmelita Tropicana," which is a collection of plays and performance poems based on Troyano's stage act. Carmelita Tropicana is her stage name. The Library Journal hailed the book: "Carmelita Tropicana, according to writer and performer Troyano, liberates the Cuban-feminist-lesbian-performance artist from thoughts that she is otherwise too self-conscious to speak. The book [is] well-developed, insightful and humorous."

Briccetti is a poet who has worked to bring verse into New York City public schools. In her role as executive director of Poets House in New York City, Briccetti has helped lesser-known poets of diverse backgrounds get their books published. She helped organize last year's People's Poetry Gathering, which brought together hundreds of poets from all over the country.

DeSalvo resides in Sag Harbor. Her novel "Adultery" examined the positive and negative aspects of infidelity during the height of the Monica Lewisnsky scandal. Publisher's Weekly wrote: "[DeSalvo] provides an intelligent and thought-provoking inquiry into why sexual infidelity will always fascinate us." She has also written "Writing as a Way of Healing" and an introduction to Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer."