CRYSTAL RADIO SESSIONS UPSTATE

Join us this summer for a LIVE, in-person reading of Dave King’s O. Henry Prize winning short story, “The Stamp Collector,” about a phone call, a hospital patient, an alluring fifth of scotch and a pensione in Venice. Its themes are kindness, longing and the galling inequities of love. Reading “The Stamp Collector” is actor Thomas L. Rothaker.

Dave King grew up in Cleveland and earned a BFA in Painting and Film from Cooper Union. For ten years, he painted and participated in the brief East Village art scene of the 1980’s. During that time, he worked as a florist, a bartender, a travel agent and a mechanicals artist, and drove a cab for four years before co-founding a small painting firm specializing in murals and residential trompe-l’oeil.

At forty, Dave King returned to school and earned an MFA in Writing from Columbia University, where he wrote both fiction and poetry. While completing his first novel, he taught Basic Comp, Writing and the Literature of War at Baruch College and Cultural Studies at the School of Visual Arts. He is now at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

Of his debut novel, the New York Times Book Review wrote, “The Ha-Ha is full of emotional truth and establishes King as a writer of consequence.” The Ha-Ha was a national bestseller and a finalist for Book of the Month Club’s Best Literary Fiction Award and the Quill Foundation’s award for Best Debut Fiction. It was named one of the best books of 2005 by the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Amazon.com. Several foreign language editions are in print, and a film version, for which Nick Paley and he wrote the screenplay, is in development. In addition, The Ha-Ha earned the 2006-07 John Guare Writers Fund Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

His poems, stories and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, The Village Voice and Fence and in the Italian literary journal Nuovi Argomenti, among other venues; his story “The Stamp Collector” was included in the 2018 edition of The O. Henry Prize Stories. (An interestingly unorthodox interpretation can be found here.)  He has been writer-in-residence at Hamilton College, The College of Saint Rose and the Vermont Studio Center, as well as other conferences and institutions, and served on juries for the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Lexi Rudnitzky Prize, the Ferro-Grumley Prize and other awards. 

A new novel, The Beast and Beauty, is in the bag, as is a memoir, Bad Dog. His current project is a pair of novellas tentatively titled Childhood / Maturity.

He is married to the painter Franklin Tartaglione and they make their home in the Hudson Valley.

Thomas L. Rothacker is an Actor, Director, Dramaturg and Playwright and has worked extensively Off and Off-Off Broadway. Tom has acted, directed and produced at theatres such as The Tank, Theatre for the New City, Theatre Row, The Kraine, American Theatre of Actors and the Looking Glass.  Tom is also an Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts at CUNY Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, NY.  He teaches courses such as Theatre History, Intro to Theatre, Play Analysis and Acting I.  Research and pedagogical interests included movement-based and generated training for the beginning actor, many aspects of theatre history, and the Dramaturg as a voice in the rehearsal room.  Tom serves as a Regional Co-Chair for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF), Region 1.  MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College, MA in Educational Theatre from New York University, BFA in Acting from Long Island University, C.W. Post.