GAMERS launch readings in New York City!

UPDATE: Both readings were smashing! Thanks to everyone for coming out, and to all the readers and contributors who came and entertained or otherwise showed their support. We sold out both nights! More events coming soon.

In case you missed us, check out this reading report on the Bowery Poetry Club party, by musical guest Gene Cawley!

Tuesday, November 30 at 8:15 PM*
KGB Bar
85 W. 4th Street (between 2nd & 3rd Aves.)
Manhattan
FREE

Featuring contributors Nic Kelman, Roland Kelts & Whitney Pastorek with editor Shanna Compton.
Hosted by Felicia C. Sullivan.

*Note: Start time is different from usual KGB start of 7:00 p.m.


Saturday, December 4 at 9:00 p.m.
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (at Bleecker, across from CBGBs)
Manhattan
$7

Featuring contributors Daniel Nester, Luis Jaramillo, Shannon Holman, Maureen Thorson, K. Thor Jensen, Mark Lamoureux & Katie Degentesh, plus original video-game sound-effect music by Drew Gardner and video-game themed cover tunes by Daniel Nester & Gene Cawley. Trivia contest for signed copies, art print by Charlie Orr, and an Atari 2600 console with games! Limited edition video-game themed art on display by GAMERS cover artist Charles Orr. Hosted by editor Shanna Compton.

About the book:

"Novelist Salman Rushdie once remarked to eXistenZ director David Cronenberg, that while he didn't consider current video games to have attained the status of art quite yet, we should '[n]ever say never. Somebody could turn up who would be a genius. But if one thinks about noncomputer games, there are many which people say have the beauty of an art form. People say that about cricket, people say it about every game.'

Never say never. The writers, poets, programmers, visual artists, cartoonists, game testers, and championship gamers who have contributed to this anthology aren't ready to. Video games have provided each of us with reasons to love them, whether as nostalgic links to childhood, imaginative escapes from the workaday world, competitive challenges to be met and conquered, or as vibrant steps toward a promising new art form. From the creation of Spacewar! in 1962, through the golden age of the video game arcade in America, to the console-in-every household proliferation today, games have provided us with something books, music, the plastic arts, and even film have not. We get to act as well as react. We get to play."

--From the introduction

No longer just for kids and hardcore geeks, video games have grown in sophistication and popularity with each passing year, and their cultural reach is expanding too--spawning blockbuster movies, university courses and degree programs, international conferences, magazines, and even a recent awards show on Spike TV. In GAMERS, editor Shanna Compton and twenty-three contributors talk about what gaming means to them and discuss the intersections between video games and visual art, film, fiction, even life itself in two dozen essays that cover an animated mix of topics from the esoteric to the purely entertaining. In the process, they offer not only witty, widescreen views of how video games have become part of the cultural landscape, but also insight into where they may be headed next.

Coming soon: GAMERS tees

Back caption reads: GAMERS / Your console, or mine? / www.softskull.com