The Sleeping Giant Reading Series brings writers and book lovers together on the third Thursday of the month. In the long shadow of Hamden’s Sleeping Giant, writers of every kind gather to hear professional readings, raise a glass, network, and support one another’s work. All are welcome, whether you’re a scribbler who hasn’t yet dared to call yourself a “writer” or an experienced published author.
Curated by local writers Alice Mattison, Sandi Shelton (aka Maddie Dawson), Kathy Czepiel, and Heather Jessen, the Sleeping Giant Reading Series happens every third Thursday from 7 to 9 p.m. at Best Video Film and Cultural Center in Hamden, Connecticut. The Sleeping Giant Reading Series is free to attend. Donations at the door for our guest readers are always appreciated.
For November’s Installment, we have writers Jason Koo and Randall Beach.
Jason Koo is a second-generation Korean American poet. He is the author of four full-length collections of poetry, including, most recently, No Rest, winner of the Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize and the Diode Editions Book Contest and a finalist for AWP's Donald Hall Prize for Poetry; and More Than Mere Light, America's Favorite Poem and Man on Extremely Small Island. His work has been published in the American Scholar, Best American Poetry, Missouri Review, Village Voice and Yale Review, among other places, and won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center and New York State Writers Institute. He is an associate teaching professor of English and the director of creative writing at Quinnipiac University and the founder of Brooklyn Poets. He lives in Beacon, New York.
Randall Beach is a former columnist, reporter and music reviewer for the New Haven Register. More recently he wrote columns for Connecticut magazine. He co-wrote with Brian Phelps "The Legendary Toad's Place: Stories From New Haven's Famed Music Venue." Globe Pequot Press also published "Connecticut Characters: Profiles of Rascals and Renegades," a collection of his favorite Register columns. He writes weekly essays for Substack and is working on a memoir about his experiences at the New Haven Register from 1977 to 2020.
