New Literary Series Showcases Greater New Haven Authors

First Local Lit @ LOTTA Event Features Works from Charles Rafferty, Annita Sawyer, Robert Beech

Local Lit @ LOTTA, a bi-monthly literary reading and talk-back series, has announced their first event to be held “on The Range” at LOTTA Studios in Westville, on Tuesday April 3, 7:00 – 9:00 pm. The series aims to highlight the work of local authors and build a constructive community for and about writing.

The event on April 3rd will feature pieces from the following authors:

Charles Rafferty’s poems and stories have appeared in The New Yorker, O, Oprah Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, The Southern Review and Per Contra. He won the 2016 NANO Fiction prize, and had a story collection published in 2013 called Saturday Night at Magellan’s. Currently, he directs the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College and teaches at the Westport Writers’ Workshop. His twelfth collection of poems, entitled The Smoke of Horses, was published in 2017.

Annita Sawyer is a clinical psychologist who has practiced in the New Haven area for almost forty years. Her memoir, Smoking Cigarettes, Eating Glass, won the 2013 Santa Fe Writers Project grand prize. The narrative essay to be featured at Local Lit @ LOTTA, adapted from the memoir, was published in the Southern Humanities Review in 2014.

Robert Beech, a psychiatrist at Connecticut Mental Health Center and as-yet unpublished author, has lived in New Haven for the past 20 years. Beech will share a work of short fiction.

Local Lit @ LOTTA will continue hosting literary readings on the first Tuesday of every other month. There is a suggested donation of $5, which includes beverages and light snacks. Each event features two or more local authors and includes time for the audience, guided by a moderator, to discuss the presented pieces. While audience members are not required to participate in the discussion, organizer Rebekah Fraser sees the opportunity as a benefit to authors, who often write “in a vacuum” with little or no feedback from people outside their social sphere. “My intention is for Local Lit to become a community-building event for Greater New Haven area writers, where we can connect with other writers and people who enjoy lit.”

The next Local Lit @ LOTTA reading, on June 5th, is now open for submissions. Submission guidelines and other info at http://LocalLitNH.wordpress.com and on Facebook.