Join us for an evening with Paul Morris and Danielle Molden of the House of Speakeasy, a New York-based non-profit organization dedicated to bringing writers and books to the public in innovative and accessible ways. Paul and Danielle will discuss the evolution of the House of Speakeasy (founded in 2013) and the development of their distinct educational programs, particularly the Speakeasy Bookmobile, which delivers books and authors to neighborhoods where few or no bookstores exist. Learn about the joys and challenges of driving their pop-up mobile book truck through New York City streets– and through the COVID crisis.
Paul W. Morris is Executive Director of House of SpeakEasy. Formerly the Director of Literary Programs at PEN America and Vice President of The Authors Guild. He has held editorial positions at multiple publishers and magazines. From 2004 to 2011, he oversaw digital strategy and cultural programming at BOMB Magazine, where he was General Manager. His writing has appeared in several anthologies, and his essay on Hermann Hesse was included as the introduction to a translation of Siddhartha. He sits on advisory councils for the National Book Foundation, the Brooklyn Book Festival, and Lit Crawl NYC. He lives in New York City.
Danielle Molden is an artist and writer who has a decade of experience in nonprofit administration, including as Driving Logistics Specialist for BioBus and Art Director at Camp Lohikan. She is a graduate of Bowling Green State University, holding degrees in both Creative Writing and Fine Arts. An avid reader, she currently resides in downtown Brooklyn. She devotes her free time and energy to improving the lives of others by helping to increase access to education and the arts.
Karen Karbiener, president and founding member of the Walt Whitman Initiative, is a Whitman scholar and teaches at New York University. Winner of the Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress and a Fulbright recipient, she has published widely on Whitman (most recently working with Brian Selznick on Live Oak, with Moss, a new illustrated edition of Whitman’s secret same-sex love poems). As a cultural activist in her hometown, Karen has been working on the campaign to preserve 99 Ryerson Street since 2017, and gave testimony at the hearing to landmark 227 Duffield Place, Brooklyn, last year. In 2019, Karen participated in the Canadian Whitmanites’ marathon reading of “Song of Myself” in Bon Echo Provincial Park, Canada.