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Admired and best-selling authors offer advice and discuss their latest books.
Writers Read
Kathy Curto, Hunter Klein, Beth Kwon, Steven Lewis, David Masello, Cari Pattison, Sarah Bracey White, Rhonda Zangwill
Hosted by Writers Read founder Ed McCann
Kathy Curto teaches at Sarah Lawrence College/The Writing Institute and Montclair State University as well as several nonprofit organizations and writing centers in the metropolitan area. She is the author of Not for Nothing - Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood. Kathy’s column Words on the Street, Revisited is featured biweekly in Write or Die Magazine. Her piece, “Still Cooking Side by Side” considered a “Modern Love in miniature” by The New York Times, was included in The Best of Tiny Love Stories in August 2021. Kathy lives in the Hudson Valley with her family and can be found in her front yard, on most mornings, replenishing her Little Free Library with donated books. This practice has become one of her daily delights.
Hunter Klein is a Brooklyn-based writer, producer, teacher, improviser, former little league umpire, and hopelessly romantic New York Jets supporter. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in economics, Hunter realized he knew virtually nothing about economics, so he pursued his other passions -- teaching, writing, and comedy. With compatriots at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and the People’s Improv Theater, he’s performed throughout New York City and recently wrote, directed, and acted in a musical fiction podcast series entitled “The Story of Heidelberg,” which earned him a Silver Award at the National Audio Theater Festival.
Beth Kwon is a writer and editor based in New York City; she has served as a communications director at Columbia University and Barnard College and is currently a speechwriter at NYU. A former journalist, she was an editor and writer at Women’s Wear Daily and Newsweek, and her work has appeared in Allure, Time Out New York, The Village Voice, and Fortune, among other outlets. Beth also publishes a personal zine, called BKNY.
Steve Lewis is a husband-father-grandfather first, then, in short order, writer, mentor, editor, swinger of birches. His work has been published widely, from the notable to the beyond obscure … The New York Times to the Road Apple Review, which includes a biblically long list of parenting publications (7 kids, 17 grandkids). His recent books include a novel, The Lights Around the Shore, and a poetry collection titled Fire in Paradise, co-authored with his daughter Elizabeth Bayou-Funk. Steve and his wife Patti live under the shadow of Bonticou Crag in New Paltz, NY.
David Masello moved here from Evanston, Illinois, and has made his living as a writer and editor for more than thirty-five years, beginning his career as a nonfiction book editor at Simon and Schuster. He then held senior editorial positions at many magazines, including Travel & Leisure, Art and Antiques, and Town and Country. He’s currently executive editor of Milieu, a magazine about design and architecture. He’s a widely published essayist, poet, and playwright, with work appearing in The New York Times, Best American Essays, numerous literary and art magazines and small theatre companies. He has written three books about art and architecture, yet still wonders when he will write that book he was meant to. To get off his feet after his long city walks, David happily takes a seat at Lincoln Center to enjoy classical music.
Cari Pattison, a native of Kansas City, has been the Pastor of The Woodstock Reformed Church in Woodstock, New York for the past four years. Prior to that, she served for a year as Clergy in Residence at the Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, New York, and 12 years as Associate Pastor at The Reformed Church of Bronxville in southern Westchester. Along the way, she’s backpacked 1800 miles of the Appalachian Trail, worked two years in Nairobi, Kenya, and adopted a rescue dog named Ollie. When not hiking or teaching yoga, she’s working on a memoir about thru-hiking the A.T., breaking a few bones, and discovering more about life’s falls, fractures, and unlikely friendships.
Sarah Bracey White and her husband live in Ossining NY, but in her heart and through her pen she is a southern storyteller. She mines her life for poems, essays, and stories. In 2021 her memoir Primary Lessons, transformed into an immersive, dramatic musical, debuted live at the Paramount Theater in Peekskill with Sarah in a starring role. Other literary work includes The Wanderlust: A South Carolina Folk Tale, and Feelings Brought to Surface, a poetry collection. Her work has been collected in several anthologies and has also appeared in The New York Times, The Baltimore Afro American Newspaper, the Scarsdale Inquirer, and the Journal News.
Rhonda Zangwill has long flirted with the literary life, writing, editing, teaching and rabble-rousing for New York Writers Coalition, Writers Read, PEN Prison Program and The Moth. She now runs writing workshops for the Educational Alliance and Sirovich Senior Center. Her published work, both print and online, can be found in Calyx, Natural Bridge, Hoi Polloi, the Boston Globe and, most recently, the 2024 National and International Goddess Anthology. Last year she was honored to have been nominated for a PushCart Prize. She reads around town, including at the National Arts Club, the NYC Poetry Festival, East Village Wordsmiths, and thanks to Fahrenheit Open Mic, in some of the East Village’s most charming community gardens.
Edward McCann, an award-winning writer and producer, is the founder of Writers Read, which creates performance opportunities for writers and celebrates the spoken word five minutes at a time. For a decade, Ed and a team of dedicated volunteers have worked to present hundreds of stories at dozens of carefully curated, high-quality events in association with partners like Vassar College, the National Arts Club and The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Today, Writers Read engages audiences with regular live shows here at City Winery’s flagship location in New York, and with the regular half hour podcast he launched in association with Carnegie Hall. Ed’s own writing has appeared in many journals and magazines, including Country Living, Better Homes & Gardens, Good Housekeeping, The Irish Echo, and The Sun, and he’s a regular contributor to Milieu, a magazine about design.