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 January’s Installment, we have writers James Bergen and Wally Lamb.

“Subversive and disarming, Berger charts his development as a poet with humor and panache. It makes for one hell of a ride,” said Patrick Pritchett about James Berger’s collection, The Meaning of Poems: Selected Poems (as) Poetics. Jim has written six books of poems, two academic books, and is co-author of a book of poems for children. He lives in New Haven and plays euphonium in the Southern CT State U. Concert Band and trombone in the "This Land Walking (for justice) Band," which plays old protest songs at political rallies. Until recently he taught American Studies and English at Yale.

Wally Lamb is the author of six New York Times bestselling novels: I’ll Take You There, We Are Water, Wishin’ and Hopin’, The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much Is True, and She’s Come Undone. Lamb also edited Couldn’t Keep It to Myself and I’ll Fly Away, two volumes of essays from students in his writing workshop at York Correctional Institution, a women’s prison in Connecticut, where he was a volunteer facilitator for twenty years. Lamb lives in Connecticut with his wife,Christine, and they have three sons.