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Sleeping Giant Reading Series, Best Video Film & Cultural Center, Third Thursdays, 7-9pm, 1842 Whitney Avenue, Hamden, CT (2026)

05/21/2026

TONIGHT! Come hear Rebecca Chace and Doug Hood read at 7pm at Best Video! Please join us afterward for Writers’ Happy Hour. All are welcome! Overflow parking is available at Spring Glen Church. Check out Rebecca and Doug’s inspiring bios below:

REBECCA CHACE’s “Talking to the Wolf,” has just been published. Booklist has called it “brilliant, heartbreaking, and hopeful. . . a deeply empathetic novel with friendship at its core.” Rebecca’s previous novels are “Leaving Rock Harbor”—a New York Times Editor’s Choice, New England Books Award Finalist, and Indie Notable Book—and “Capture the Flag,” the subject of an award-winning film. She’s also written two memoirs. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Yale Review, LA Review of Books, Guernica, LitHub, The Brooklyn Rail, Bookpost, and many other publications.

DOUG HOOD, a retired Lecturer in Neurology at Yale University, now does clemency work for the incarcerated at York Correctional Institute. His book, “Daughter of Song,” was featured on NPR with Colin McEnroe and in The New York Times Book Review, Connecticut Magazine, Yale Medicine, and the Phnom Penh Post. Born in Michigan, he lives in North Haven with his wife and two children.

04/15/2026

Tomorrow! Join us Thursday, April 16th at 7pm to hear Harper Ross and Heather Webb read from their novels at Best Video Film and Cultural Center in Hamden. Afterward, stay around for Writers’ Happy Hour and meet other writers and readers. All are invited! Bios below.

HARPER ROSS is a former lawyer who writes novels exploring friendship, family, forgiveness, and the quiet magic of everyday life. Her debut novel, The Unwritten Rules of Magic, was published in January 2026 with St. Martin’s Press. When she’s not writing, she’s likely singing off-key in her car, dancing in her kitchen with her family, or walking her dog, Mo.

HEATHER WEBB is the USA Today and international bestselling author of eleven historical novels, including her upcoming The Hope Keeper and her other recently published Queens of London, The Next Ship Home, and Christmas with the Queen. In 2015, Rodin’s Lover was a Goodread’s Top Pick, and in 2018, Last Christmas in Paris won the Women’s Fiction Writers Association STAR Award. Meet Me in Monaco, was selected as a finalist for the 2020 Goldsboro RNA award in the UK, as well as the 2019 Digital Book World’s Fiction prize. Three Words for Goodbye was a Prima Magazine’s 2022 Book of the Year. To date, Heather’s books have been translated to twenty languages. She lives in New England with her family and two mischievous cats.

03/13/2026

Come join us on Thursday, March 19th at 7pm for an evening of readings with Terry Bohnhorst Blackhawk and Clifford Thompson! As always, we meet at 7pm at Best Video Film & Cultural Center in Hamden. Please stay afterward for Writers' Happy Hour. All are welcome! Overflow parking is available across the street at Spring Glen Church. Bios below:

Terry Bohnhorst Blackhaawk is Founder/Director Emerita (1995-2015) of Detroit’s InsideOut Literary Arts Project. Her nine poetry collections include Escape Artist, winner of the 2002 John Ciardi Prize, One Less River, a Kirkus Reviews “Top 2019 Indie Title,” and Maumee, Maumee (2022) memorializing her late-life love Toledo artist Neil Frankenhauser. Twice named Michigan Creative Writing Teacher of the Year, she has won the Pablo Neruda Prize; grants from Michigan Council for the Arts, the NEH, and Kresge Arts in Detroit; and the 2021 Horace Mann Award for Victories for Humanity from her alma mater, Antioch College. After retiring from InsideOut, Terry moved to Hamden to be near her son, Yale Professor Ned Blackhawk, and her grandchildren. A longtime Dickinson devotee, she has read her poetry for the Emily Dickinson Museum’s “Phosphorescence” series and served as a Humanities Advisor to “The Slave is Gone – The Podcast that Talks Back to AppleTV’s Dickinson.”

Clifford Thompson ’s new book of essays, Jazz June, is a finalist for the 2026 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. As the Times Literary Supplement says, “rather than recount dramatic turning points” the book “lingers in the ‘in-between times’: unrequited crushes, reflections on ageing, insomnia, quiet Sundays and trips to the cinema.” Cliff received a Whiting Writers’ Award and has written novels—including a graphic novel—as well as books of nonfiction and, currently, a comic strip serialized in Cleaver magazine, “Connecticus Diggs, Cultural Detective.” He’s also a painter and has a show coming up at Blue Mountain Gallery in New York.

02/02/2026

Join us on Thursday, February 19th at 7pm to hear Richard Deming and Jill McCorkle read their compelling writing at Best Video Film and Cultural Center in Hamden! As always, please stay for Writers’ Happy Hour and meet other writers and readers. All are invited! Overflow parking is available across the street at Spring Glen Church. Author bios below.

RICHARD DEMING, an award-winning poet, essayist, and critic, is the author of six books including "Day for Night" which Frank Bidart called an “exhilarating ride,” "Art of the Ordinary"—a “trailblazing” look at the everyday through literature, film, art, and philosophy—and his most recent, "This Exquisite Loneliness" which Publishers Weekly found “profound” and “achingly beautiful.” He teaches at Yale University.

About JILL MCCORKLE’s recent collection of stories, "Old Crimes," Lily King wrote, “With her wry humor, deep understanding of human connection and disconnection, and a tremendous sense of fun, Jill McCorkle has given us another dazzling collection of stories.” It’s Jill’s fifth book of short stories; she’s also the author of seven novels, many of them New York Times Notable Books. Jill has won all sorts of prizes and was recently inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. She has taught at Harvard, Brandeis, North Carolina State and the Bennington Writing Seminars.

01/08/2026

Come hear poet JAMES BERGER and novelist WALLY LAMB on Thursday, January 15th at 7pm at Best Video Film and Cultural Center in Hamden! Afterward, stay around for Writers’ Happy Hour and meet other writers and readers. All are invited! We’re expecting a full house, so please come early if you want a seat. Overflow parking is available across the street at Spring Glen Church. Bios below.

“Subversive and disarming, JAMES BERGER charts his development as a poet with humor and panache. It makes for one hell of a ride,” said Patrick Pritchett about Jim 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.

12/08/2025

Come hear Connecticut Poet Laureate Antoinette Brim-Bell and National Book Award finalist Leslie Connor on Thursday, December 18th at 7pm at Best Video Film and Cultural Center in Hamden! As always, join us afterward for Writers' Happy Hour. All are welcome! Overflow parking is available across the street at Spring Glen Church. Bios below:

“I just love lots and lots of language,” ANTOINETTE BRIM-BELL said in an interview by Sandy Carlson. This charismatic writer of rich, deeply felt poetry is Connecticut’s 8th State Poet Laureate and the author of three collections, most recently These Women You Gave Me. She’s also written critical essays about literature, and is a printmaker and collage artist. Antoinette is a Cave Canem Foundation Fellow and a past President of the Creative Arts Workshop Board of Directors in New Haven. A sought-after speaker, editor, educator, and consultant, she is a Professor of English at CT State Community College, Capital.

LESLIE CONNOR has always been a daydreamer with a headful of stories waiting to be told. (It took her a while to figure that out.) She holds a BFA in visual art from the University of Connecticut and is happily surprised to be a writer. She’s the author of (mostly) middle grade novels for young readers. Her fans include plenty of septuagenarians and octogenarians, who find her books through their grandchildren. She’s a two-time winner of the CT Book Award, a two-time winner of the ALA Schneider Family Book Award for her depictions of the disability experience, and a National Book Award finalist. Leslie’s titles include Waiting for Normal, All Rise for the Honorable Perry T. Cook (an E.B White Read Aloud finalist), The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle, A Home for Goddesses and Dogs, and most recently, Anybody Her Seen Frenchie?. Leslie lives with her husband and three rescue dogs in a little house in the Connecticut woods.

11/11/2025

Mark your calendars! Come hear the compelling writing of Randall Beach and Jason Koo at Best Video Film and Cultural Center on Thursday, November 20th at 7pm. Afterward, please stay for Writers’ Happy Hour. All are welcome! Overflow parking is available across the street at Spring Glen Church. Bios below:

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.

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.

10/15/2025

Join us TOMORROW, Thursday, October 16th at 7pm at Best Video Film and Cultural Center in Hamden to hear Amy Bloom and Joan Wickersham! Afterward, stay around for Writers’ Happy Hour. All are invited! Drinks and snacks will be available from the café, and overflow parking is available across the street at Spring Glen Church. Check out the authors’ bios below:

AMY BLOOM’s new, bestselling fifth novel is I’ll Be Right Here. Her short story collections include Come to Me, a finalist for the National Book Award, and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her New York Times bestselling memoir is In Love. Amy’s work has been translated into seventeen languages. She created, wrote and ran the TV series State of Mind. She recently retired as Wesleyan University’s Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing, but she keeps working as a psychotherapist and a novelist.

JOAN WICKERSHAM’s memoir, The Su***de Index, described by the LA Times as “an extraordinary magical mystery tour of a book,” was a finalist for the National Book Award. She is also the author of The News from Spain, a suite of asymmetrical love stories; and a new book, No Ship Sets Out To Be A Shipwreck, sparked by the wreck of the 17th century Swedish warship Vasa. Her writing has appeared in many publications, including The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading.

09/11/2025

We’re thrilled that Sheila Dietz and Nalini Jones will be kicking off our second year of readings on Thursday, September 18th at 7pm at Best Video Film and Cultural Center in Hamden! Please join us and stay for Writers’ Happy Hour afterward. Overflow parking is available across the street at Spring Glen Church. Check out Sheila and Nalini’s amazing bios:

SHEILA DIETZ’s The Berry and the Bee won the 2023 Gerald Cable First Book Award from Silverfish Review Press. David Wojahn has said that her poems offer “a glimpse of divinity at one moment, and a reckoning with dread in the next.” Sheila grew up in the Netherlands, attended a Dutch school and began conceiving of the world in literary terms at an early age. She has been a Bread Loaf Scholar and won an Individual Artist Grant from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. Sheila was a librarian at the New Haven Free Public Library for many years. She’s the co-founder of New Haven’s Salt and Pepper Gospel singers.

The Kirkus review of NALINI JONE’s new novel, The Unbroken Coast, notes that she “writes with extraordinary empathy for her characters…peppering her prose with sharply observed aphorisms: ‘This was what the world did: press in on you with its bad-news this and so-sad that, sn**ch away what little time you had to see to your own affairs, fill your head with pictures you wished you’d never seen.’” She’s also published a story collection, What You Call Winter, and nonfiction about politics, jazz, folk music, travel, etc. She’s won O. Henry and Pushcart prizes, and an NEA fellowship. Nalini teaches at Fairfield University.

08/30/2025

We are getting more and more excited about our upcoming readers, especially after a recent change and addition to our schedule. Nalini Jones will now be reading in September, and Wally Lamb will read in January! Here's the fall line-up:

September 18th – Sheila Dietz & Nalini Jones

October 16th – Amy Bloom & Joan Wickersham

November 20th – Jason Koo & Clifford Thompson

December 18, 2026 – Antoinette Brim-Bell & Jill McCorkle

Please join us at 7pm on the third Thursday of each month at the cozy and welcoming Best Video Film and Cultural Center in Hamden. As always, the readings are followed by a Writers' Happy Hour! All are invited!

Until then, we hope you are enjoying the greenery of summer and some compelling books!

08/18/2025

We’re excited to announce our lineup of fabulous readers for this fall!:

September 18th – Sheila Dietz & Wally Lamb

October 16th – Amy Bloom & Joan Wickersham

November 20th – Jason Koo & Clifford Thompson

December 18, 2026 – Antoinette Brim-Bell & Jill McCorkle

Please join us at 7pm on the third Thursday of each month at the cozy and welcoming Best Video Film and Cultural Center in Hamden. As always, the readings are followed by a Writers' Happy Hour! All are invited!

Until then, we hope you are enjoying the greenery of summer and some compelling books!

Sleeping Giant Reading Series

05/21/2026

04/15/2026

03/13/2026

02/02/2026

01/08/2026

12/08/2025

11/11/2025

10/15/2025

09/11/2025

08/30/2025

08/18/2025

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