Liberty Free hosts ‘Northern Gothic’

LIBERTY, NY — The Liberty Free Theatre at 109 South Main Street will present “Northern Gothic: Readings From the North Country” for one performance only on Saturday, August 9 at 2:00 p.m. Rilla Askew, Mermer Blakeslee, Patricia Eakins and Jessica Treat, award-winning writers from the Catskills, Connecticut and New York, read their work. Performances are free but seating is limited and reservations are recommended. The audience is invited to gather after the performance for food, drink and music.

Askew, Blakeslee, Eakins and Treat are out to subvert and extend Southern Gothic tropes, relocating them to the Catskill Mountains, Manhattan and a strangely idyllic small town in Connecticut. They use their stylistic virtuosity and up-country sensibility to transmogrify the pastoral dream. Their work has been described as surreal, disturbing, dreamlike, plucky, erotic, revelatory of the magic of imagination and the joys of extreme emotion, set in landscapes at once awful, fantastic and darkly familiar.

Askew is the author of a book of stories, “Strange Business,” and three novels, “The Mercy Seat,” “Fire in Beulah,” and “Harpsong.” She has received the American Book Award, the Myers Book Award, the Western Heritage Award, the Oklahoma Book Award, and an O. Henry Award.

Blakeslee is the author of “Same Blood” and “In Dark Water,” novels, and the non-fiction “In the Yikes! Zone: A Conversation with Fear,” nonfiction.” “In Dark Water” was selected for Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writer Award. She is a two-time recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation of the Arts in Fiction, and received the Narrative Prize from Narrative Magazine for an excerpt from her novel-in-progress.

Eakins is the author of “The Hungry Girls and Other Stories” and “The Marvelous Adventures of Pierre Batiste.” She has twice received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and is the recipient of the NYU Press Prize for Fiction, the Capricorn Fiction Award from Writer’s Voice, the Aga Khan Prize from Paris Review, and the John Gardner Fellowship from Breadloaf.

Treat is the author of the story collections “A Robber in the House,” “Not A Chance” and “Hidden Drive.” She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and has received the Dominion Review Fiction Award, as well as fellowships from Fundacion Valparaiso and Civitella Ranieri.

For more information call 845/292-3788.