Back Pages Books

Join us for an evening of spoken-word and memoir with authors Judah Leblang and Andrew Szanton. Judah Leblang is the author of two spoken-word CD's and has been featured on over 160 NPR and CBS stations. Andrew Szanton is a world-renowned memoir collaborator and has written several books with leading ... (more)world scientists and civil rights leaders. Both have written and read widely throughout Massachusetts and the United States. This event is free. Clips of Leblang's hilarious and heartwarming CD's will be forthcoming on this website.

Join us for an evening of celebration for one our favorite presses with two of their best authors. Elizabeth Crane is the author of the story collection "You Must Be This Happy To Enter" and has been featured in The Believer magazine, as well as McSweeney's Future Dictionary of America and The Best Underground ... (more)Fiction. Paul Fattaruso is the author of "Bicycle", a prose-poem novel that Akashic Books describe as "doing what Richard Brautigan did for trout- elevating them to the status of an idol". This event is free.

John Hodgen was an inspiration to all who came to his reading last year. This year we welcome Hodgen back to kick off a month of poetry readings and festivities in celebration of National Poetry Month. Hodgen is the winner of numerous awards including the Donald Hall Prize for his collection "Grace" ... (more)as well as the Grolier Prize. He teaches at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts. This event is free.

Amy Dockser Marcus won the Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the Middle East as the Jerusalem Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal. "Jerusalem 1913" is a rare book--one that sits above the fray of polemics and politics by telling the extraordinary story of the prominent families of pre-Mandate Jerusalem. ... (more)What began as inter-personal misunderstandings has ballooned into a world we are all too familiar with. Join us for this unique and wonderful talk about the history of Israel and it's place in the world. This event is free.

Two years ago, we were priveliged to host the national book release of Robert Pinsky's "First Things to Hand", a book of eleven poems published by Sarabande Books. Now we welcome the distinguished poet and translator for a reading from his new collection "Gulf Music", of which "First Things to Hand" ... (more)is one of three major sections. "Gulf Music" is perhaps Pinsky's most openly political collection of poems, ranging heartbreakingly from major wars to personal history and beyond. This event is free and open to the public.

25 million Kurds comprise the largest unrecognized nation in the world, spanning the borders of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria. Join us for an evening with Quil Lawrence, as he discusses the Kurdish fight for a state of their own in the midst of an uncertain war in an uncertain time. Lawrence is a reporter ... (more)for the BBC's "The World" and has traveled widely, reporting for the Christian Science Monitor, The Los Angeles Times, and NPR. This event is free and open to the public.

Join us for a Holocaust Remembrance reading at the BU CDIA located across the street from Back Pages at 274 Moody Street. Featuring anthology editor Charles Adés Fishman and contributors Wendy Drexler, Rachel Goldstein, Richard Michelson, Mark Pawlak, Jennifer Rose and Kirtland Snyder will read from ... (more)their own and others' work.

Samantha Power has become one of the most prominent human rights activists in the world through years of reportage, scholarly work, activism. Her previous book "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide" won a number of major awards including the Pulitzer Prize. In "Chasing the Flame", Power ... (more)tracks the life and work of Sergio Vieira De Mello, the popular United Nations humanitarian aid worker who was killed in Iraq's first major suicide attack in 2003. Power is a contributor to The New Yorker and Time and has been active in the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. She currently serves as the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. This event is free.

Henri Cole is a singular poet in America today. The former head of the Academy of American Poets, Cole's writing is intimate and emotionally riveting as it rolls across the landscapes of love, life, death, and war. Join us as he reads from his new collection of poems "Blackbird and Wolf".

Side Effects tracks the thrilling story of everyday people who brought the makers of Paxil, a widely-used anti-depressant, to trial for consumer fraud. Bass lays bare the unhealthy ties between the medical establishment, big pharmaceutical companies, and the FDA that put children and adults in grave ... (more)danger. Bass, a longtime medicine and science reporter has written for The Boston Globe, Miami Herald, and Psychology Today. She has received many awards for her investigative reporting and was shotlisted for the Pulitzer Prize. She has taught journalism at Boston Universtiy and Brandeis University.