Leigh Stein’s “Dispatch from the Future”
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August 28, 2012

“Have you ever been in love? Have you ever dreamed of revenge? Have you ever felt like no one knows who or where you are, and so your body may never be discovered? Have you ever wanted for a night to never end? Have you ever wanted to run away? Have you ever gone outside and seen the sky?” In an interview with girlslikegiants.wordpress.com, Leigh… [Read More]

Gone Local: Larson Publications
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November 29, 2011

Our blog’s “Gone Local” series aims to explore who and what the Ithaca area’s literary community has to offer. Be it bookstores, publishers, or local authors, each contributes invaluably to the bookish zeitgeist. Recently, Swenson Book Development contacted Larson Publications (of Burdett, NY) to get an independent publisher’s views on the literary business, the craft, and the community. Larson Publications started in 1982 as a… [Read More]

Featured Local Bookstores: The Bookery
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November 8, 2011

This is the second “Featured Local Bookstores” post that has focused on a bookstore located in downtown Ithaca’s Dewitt Mall. Until 2006, The Bookery and Buffalo Street Books used to be known as Bookery I and Bookery II. Now, however, it is the only bookery in town that offers “an extensive selection of used and rare books, available in our store and online at thebookery.com…. [Read More]

“Almost Everything Takes Forever”: Poems by Kirsten Wasson
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November 3, 2011

“A novel, biography, and memoir, all/three going at once.” This is how Kirsten Wasson describes her mother’s voracious literary appetite in the poem “One Way to Read.” The two lines, however, could well have been written to describe the author’s new collection of poems, Almost Everything Takes Forever, published by Antrim House Books. It is a lush, lithe, witty, emotionally frank series of postcards from… [Read More]

Foyles: For the Love of Books, Across the Pond
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October 18, 2011

Even the toughest cosmopolitans have a soft spot when it comes to their city’s most beloved bookstore. New York City has the Strand, Paris has Shakespeare and Company, and London (my favorite city of them all) has Foyles. In the last few years’ cinematic odes to NYC and Paris – New York, I Love You (2009) and Paris, Je T’aime (2006) – I was disappointed… [Read More]

Featured Local Bookstores: Autumn Leaves
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October 11, 2011

Autumn Leaves, Ithaca’s beloved source for used books, boasts “60,000 books, 10,000 records and a café, all under one roof.” In the heart of the Commons (115 E. State Street), the basement of the bookstore contains Angry Mom Records, the ground floor contains the main bookstore, and the second floor doubles as the Owl Café (fair trade coffee, of course) and a space for the… [Read More]

Featured Local Bookstores: Buffalo Street Books
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September 22, 2011

For The Love of Books: Buffalo Street Books Ithaca, NY Buffalo Street Books is one of my favorite haunts in Ithaca. Located in DeWitt Mall between Cayuga and Tioga Street, the bookstore seems designed to curve around visitors and readers like a comfortable armchair – just enough nooks and crannies to make you feel somewhat hidden, and entirely cozy. It even has a “reading room,”… [Read More]

Gone Local
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September 21, 2011

Publishing Gone Local: Part 1 Ithaca is a town where ‘going’ local has been all the rage for decades. In fact,  Ithaca has gone local, and it’s easy to feel a sense of self-reliance in this community. Whether you find it at The Piggery, or the Finger Lakes Wine Center, or the “Local Authors” series at Buffalo Street Books, appreciation abounds for all things Ithaca made…. [Read More]

A Writing Group’s Writer
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September 8, 2011

A Writing Group’s Writer On August 3rd at 6pm, Buffalo Street Books hosted Leslie Daniels for a discussion of her critically acclaimed novel/fictional memoir, Cleaning Nabokov’s House. (For a review of the book on our blog, follow this link. Or, watch the book trailer here.)The discussion was open to the public, and followed suit with the bookstore’s ongoing commitment to Ithaca’s literary community with their… [Read More]

The Spur & The Sash: Love and Displacement in the Civil War
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August 3, 2011

Robert Grede’s first novel has all the makings of a rollicking good story. Based on the life of Sergeant George Van Norman, Grede’s great-great-grandfather, The Spur & The Sash seamlessly combines fiction and fact. The facts, Grede tells us, are these: “Sergeant George Van Norman, a Yankee, was wounded in one of the last battles of the American Civil War, at Nashville(December 15th and 16th,… [Read More]