Story Collider January 19 at 8 pm.

Whether we want to or not, at some point we all get sick, and we have to figure out why. Was that a paper cut or a cat scratch? Heart attack or panic attack? Temporary glitch in the global financial structure, or the imminent collapse of civilization? Only one thing is for sure: chicken soup isn't going to help.

Join The Story Collider for six stories of Pathology. January 19th, 8pm at Pacific Standard in Brooklyn.

Stories by:

Naomi Azar, Clinical Psychology PhD Candidate and yoga instructor
Erin Barker, Writer and editor
Johanna Clearfield, Moth storyteller and wildlife rehabilitator
Jefferson, Pseudonymous NYC-based writer
Seth Lind, host of TOLD
Steve Zimmer, Programmer

The Story Collider brings together consultants, researchers, musicians, and other disreputable types to tell us personal stories about the times when, for good or ill, science happened.

Hosted by Ben Lillie and Brian Wecht

http://storycollider.org/

Details on Standard Issues storytelling tomorrow at 8 pm.

After you have run away from your family, come join us and drink off that holiday hangover with our cadre of amazing storytellers.

Including!

Greg (Creepy Uncle) Leitman
Luke (Still At The Kids Table) Davin
Jen (What Drinking Problem, Mom?) Demerrit
Jeff (My Old Room Is Now An Office) Simmermon
Cory (It Is A Real Job, Dad) Petit
Alithea (Who Is Sleeping In My Room?) Howes
&
Brad (So Fine, I Shot My F@%*ing Eye Out) Lawrence

with your host

Cyndi (The Reason We Can't Have Anything Nice) Freeman

and our mystery guest, You, if your name gets pulled out of our hat.

Sports reading January 6 at 7:30 pm!

Gelf's Varsity Letters sports reading series returns on Thursday, January 6, at 7:30 p.m., with an all-NFL night, just before the playoffs begin. At this free monthly event, hosted by Gelf, N. Jeremi Duru, Anthony L. Gargano, and Chad Millman will read from and talk about their work. Duru will explain how the NFL opened up its hiring process for coaches. Gargano will provide an unvarnished look at life in the league. And Millman will trace the rise of the Steelers, even as Pittsburgh was crumbling around them.

Please spread the word to sports fans and book lovers.

More on this month's authors:

•N. Jeremi Duru, an associate professor at Temple University’s law school and author of Advancing the Ball: Race, Reformation, and the Quest for Equal Coaching Opportunity in the NFL

•Anthony L. Gargano, sports broadcaster and author of NFL Unplugged: The Brutal, Brilliant World of Professional Football

•Chad Millman, ESPN writer and co-author of The Ones Who Hit the Hardest: The Steelers, the Cowboys, the '70s, and the Fight for America's Soul

Chin Music poetry December 9 at 7 pm.

Please join us for a very special Chin Music benefit reading for the Pirogue Collective featuring three fine poets: Breyten Breytenbach, David Hinton, and Emna Zghal. Series curated by Bryan Patrick Miller. Special thanks to Archipelago Books.

Pirogue Collective is a not-for-profit organization supporting artists living and working in Africa through the Imagine Africa publications and the Taalifkat Tudunya Writing Workshops, hosted by the Gorée Institute in Gorée, Senegal.

Sierra Celebration will be $1 off, with half the sales of that beer going toward the cost for one African artist to attend the Taalifkat Tudunya Workshop in January 2011. Donations encouraged.

FEATURED POETS

Breyten Breytenbach is a poet, painter, novelist, memoirist, essayist, and activist. Born in South Africa, he immigrated to Paris in the late '60s and became deeply involved in teh anti-Apartheid movement. Breytenbach's works include All One Horse, Mouroir, Notes from the Middle World, A Season in Paradise, The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist, Dog Heart, The Memory of Birds in Times of Revolution, Lady One, and Voice Over: A Nomadic Conversation with Mahmoud Darwish. His many honors include the Alan Paton Award, the Hertzog Prize, the Max Jacob Prize, and the Mahmoud Darwish Award. Breytenbach is the Executive Director of the Gorée Institute in Senegal.

David Hinton's many translations of classical Chinese poetry have earned wide acclaim for creating compelling contemporary poems that convey the actual texture and density of the originals. He edited and translated Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology and translated The Mountain Poems of Meng Hao-jan. He is also the first translator in over a century to translate the four seminal masterworks of Chinese philosophy: Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, Analects, Mencius. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, numerous fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and both of the major awards given for poetry translation in the United States: the Landon Translation Award, from the Academy of American Poets, and the PEN Translation Award. He is currently a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers in New York City. He lives in Vermont.

Emna Zghal is a Tunisian-born U.S. based visual artist. Besides her work in painting and printmaking, Zghal works with text using poetry and prose in various languages. Her paintings and artist's books are represented in public collections like the New York Public Library, Yale University, and The Museum for African Art in New York. Zghal has received fellowships and done projects with the Women's Studio Workshop, the Newark Art Museum, the MacDowell Colony, the Weir Farm Trust, and the Cité Internationale Des Arts in Paris. In 2008 she was awarded a Creative Capital grant for a public art project, Dark Turquoise, in collaboration with Michael Rakowitz.

Iron Santa Challenge 2010/2011.

It's a Pacific Standard tradition that, during the months of December and January, we stage an Iron Santa Challenge to encourage people to try our excellent selection of dark and winter seasonal beers. The challenge: drink a 16-ounce pint (or 12- or 8-ounce pour, depending on how we're serving a given beer) of six different winter beers in one day/night, and win:

--A free Pacific Standard t-shirt!
--OR a Pacific Standard growler, patch, cozy, and pint glass! (Yes, all four! We have a bunch of different varieties of pint glasses, including the new Sixpoint/Pacific Standard mashup pint glass.)
--AND everlasting glory!

The actual beers will change with our rotating tap selections, but will generally include quaffs like the Sierra Nevada Celebration, Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, North Coast Old Rasputin Imperial Stout, and so on. Starting today, December 1, ask your bartender if you're interested in taking the challenge, and they'll provide you with a checklist of beers to drink over the course of an evening. Oh, and pace yourself. We don't want any messes.