CRYSTAL RADIO SESSIONS UPSTATE
Saturday, December 5 at 3pm

MaConnia Chesser reads “The Family Hour,” an autobiographical essay
by Jo Ann Beard

Crystal Radio Sessions Upstate is the new, local outpost of the NYC reading series, committed to showcasing the work of both established and emerging writers from our region. Come hear short stories read by AOH audience favorite actors. Crystal Radio believes in the power of the spoken word and is devoted to transmitting compelling literary expression through the ether.

UP NEXT: From Jo Ann Beard's widely praised collection of autobiographical essays The Boys of My Youth, "The Family Hour" weaves together warm, tragic, and funny episodes in Beard's childhood, culminating in the night her alcoholic father almost dies by crashing the family car into a lake.

Jo Ann Beard is the author of the groundbreaking collection of autobiographical essays The Boys Of My Youth, and the novel, In Zanesville. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Best American Essays, and other magazines and anthologies. She has received a Whiting Foundation Award and nonfiction fellowships from John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Her new book is called Festival Days and is a collection of prose pieces, due out in March of 2021.

Reading “The Family Hour” is MaConnia Chesser who is a company member at Shakespeare & Co. and whose regional theater credits include Actors’ Shakespeare Project, WAM Theatre, Chester Theatre, Kennedy Center, NJ Rep (company member), Theater Alliance (INSURRECTION: HOLDING HISTORY, Helen Hayes nomination), Ensemble Studio Theatre & Folger Theatre. Her film and TV credits include The Shape of Destiny (Official Selection, 2018 Women in Comedy Festival), and HBO’s The Wire.

CRYSTAL RADIO SESSIONS is curated by the Millerton-based writer Ashley Mayne, whose work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Fence, Post Road, Juked, Metambesen and elsewhere.