Yaddo Live!

Yaddo, Happy Ending Series Partner for December Show

New York, NY (November 25, 2011) – Authors Jesse Browner, Walter Kirn, and Helen Schulman will headline a December 7 program, alongside musical guest Mark Eitzel, in Amanda Stern’s acclaimed Happy Ending Music and Reading Series presented in partnership with The Corporation of Yaddo.

Helen Schulman

The night’s theme is “Reality & Scandal”; doors open at 6 p.m., with a 7 p.m. showtime. Stern and Yaddo are producing this series at New York City’s Joe’s Pub featuring both established and emerging artists currently associated with Yaddo, from across the disciplines, and highlighting Yaddo’s history as one of this country’s most distinguished artist’s retreats.

Kirn’s books Thumbsucker and Up in the Air were made into popular feature films, starring, respectively, Vincent D’Onofrio and George Clooney. His other titles include Mission to America and his latest, Lost in Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever. Browner’s Everything Happens Today, published in September, has been featured on NPR. He also wrote The Duchess Who Wouldn’t Sit Down and The Uncertain Hour. Schulman is the author of A Day at the Beach, The Revisionist, and P.S., which was also made into a feature film with Laura Linney. She will read from her latest – This Beautiful Life, which is both a New York Times Bestseller and a New York Times 2011 Notable. Rolling Stone magazine named Eitzel “Songwriter of the Year” for his masterpiece album “Everclear.” Eitzel fronted the hugely popular band American Music Club, which earned him a devoted cult following that sells his intimate shows out in a matter of hours. The archival artist for Joe’s Pub (and occasional New Yorker cartoonist) Michael Arthur will draw the show – in ink – as it happens, projecting his work on a screen, like a live cartoon.

Each program in the series is curated by Stern, the novelist and Yaddo alumna who founded the Happy Ending series in 2003. Since then it has welcomed over 600 creative individuals, including finalists and winners of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Academy Award, Grammy, Tony, Obie and Guggenheim. Time Out New York’s 2011 choice as the “best reading series in NYC,” and singled out by The New York Times Magazine for helping to "keep downtown alive," Happy Ending presents the most interesting storytellers, writers, musicians, raconteurs, and personalities. Each program challenges the readers to take one public risk, while the musicians, who perform two short sets with original, lyric-driven music, are asked to play one cover song to get the audience to sing along with them.

Tickets for the performance are $20 each and can be purchased online or by calling 212-967-7555.