Monday, January 25, 2010

Sue Shapiro's Launch Party For Jackson Taylor's The Blue Orchard



On Friday, Sue Shapiro opened her magnificent apartment up for friends and colleagues of downtown literary royalty Jackson Taylor. Taylor, one of the founders of the Graduate Writing Program at The New School, just released his debut novel The Blue Orchard. The crowd was thick with members of the PEN American Center, New York writers and literary agents. It is the true story of Jackson's grandmother, Verna Krone, who was a nurse for an African American abortionist. The story is as much a work of academic history (Taylor conducted hundreds of interviews and read Harrisburg newspapers from 1890 through mid century) as it is a work of art. "This is a solid, true, achievement that will stand the test of time," Sapphire has written. "If Jackson Taylor never writes another word he has made his mark with Blue Orchard.”

Among the crowd former Law & Order: Criminal Intent writer/producer Charlie Rubin and The New Yorker's Ian Frasier.

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