Queens Noir Author Talk – December 29, 2011

Join us for a literary celebration featuring noir writers Denis Hamill, Shailly Agnihotri and Ken Wishnia as they discuss their craft and writing about Queens!

Crimes occur every day behind the purview of newspapers and the internet in the most diverse county in America and the melting pot of the world, and they need writers to bring them to the forefront.  Denis Hamill takes us to a seemingly upstanding doctor’s riverfront home in Bayside, Ken Wishnia to a farmacia in Corona dealing dangerous bath products, and Shailly Agnihotri introduces us to an Indian matrimonial investigator in Jackson Heights torn between his crush on a model and a nagging assignment from a powerful patriarch.

This event is a collaboration between the biweekly Writer’s Workshop at the Bayside Community Library and Neighborhood Word, an Asian-American Writers Workshop programming series that brings Asian American writers and artists to Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx-the boroughs most Asian-American New Yorkers call home.

Copies of Queens Noir are available at the library for checkout with QL library card. Refreshments will be served, and admission is free and open to everyone.

Author Bios:

Denis Hamill was born and raised in Brooklyn. He attended public high schools and CUNY. He has written for The Village Voice, NY Newsday, and currently writes a column twice a week for the NY Daily News. He has appeared on Conan O’Brien, The O’Reilly Factor, Good Day New York, Sam Roberts, The Early Show, The History Chanel, and Leonard Lopate. He is the author of ten novels, most recently “Sins of Two Fathers”, “Empty Stockings” and “Ten Spot.” An original screenplay he wrote, “Under New Management”, is currently airing on Showtime. He lives in Queens.

Shailly Agnihotri is an award-winning independent filmmaker living and working in New York. Her feature length documentary examining the suicide rate amongst US soldiers deployed in Iraq, Three Soldiers, was fancast movie of the week and played in festivals throughout the United States. Ms.Agnihotri is a practicing public defense attorney. Her newest project is full length play about her experiences in the criminal justice system entitled American Tune.

Kenneth Wishnia’s novels include 23 Shades of Black, an Edgar Allan Poe Award and Anthony Award finalist; Soft Money, a Library Journal Best Mystery of the Year; Red House, a Washington Post Book World “Rave” Book of the Year; and The Fifth Servant, an Indie Notable selection, winner of a Premio Letterario ADEI-WIZO, and a finalist for the Sue Feder Memorial Historical Mystery Award (Macavity Awards). His short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock, Queens Noir, Long Island Noir, Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail, and elsewhere. He teaches writing, literature and other deviant forms of thought at Suffolk Community College on Long Island.

@ Bayside Community Library
214-20 Northern Boulevard (corner of Northern & Bell)
Bayside, NY 11361
718-229-1834

Travel directions:

The Bayside Library street address is 214-20 Northern Blvd, Bayside, NY 11361 (on corner of Northern Blvd and 214th Place, but right next to the big intersection of Northern and Bell Blvd).

By car from Manhattan, Brooklyn or Eastern Queens, you can take the LIE E to Exit 27/Clearview Expwy N toward Throgs Neck Bridge, get off at Exit. 5 Northern Blvd., take the first right and drive down Northern Boulevard for a few blocks until you pass Bell Blvd. and you will see the library on your right next to a gas station.

From Long Island, you can take the LIE W to Exit 31 N, the Cross Island Parkway N and get off Exit 31W onto NY 25A Northern Boulevard W, then drive 10 blocks down Northern and you’ll see it on your left.

There’s only residential street parking.  I recommend parking on the side of the library, 215th Place or higher streets (there’s a police station right next to the library, so avoid the street adjacent to it, and on Northern Blvd. generally as you will need to use a muni-meter).

Alternatively, you can take the LIRR to Bayside.  The stop is on Bell Blvd and 41st Ave, only 3 blocks from the library.  After you get off, just walk down Bell Blvd. as the avenues get higher (toward 42nd Ave, 43rd Ave) and when you get to Northern Boulevard, you’ll see the library on your left next to a gas station.  Just cross the street and head left.

The Q12, 13 and 31 buses also stop here, and the Q27 is close by.