Author Talk: St. Marks Is Dead

Monday, November 2, 2015, 6 - 8pm

Add to Calendar

Image
Ada Calhoun. Photo by Allison Michael Orenstein

Ada Calhoun. Photo by Allison Michael Orenstein

St. Marks Is Dead jacketAuthor and journalist Ada Calhoun discusses her new book St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America’s Hippest Street (November 2; W.W. Norton & Co.). In it she recounts the history of St. Marks Place, the famed Manhattan strip between 3rd Avenue and Avenue A. It has spawned countless artistic and political movements, providing a backdrop for social and cultural revolutionaries from Leon Trotsky to Andy Warhol, the Ramones to the Beastie Boys, W.H. Auden to Keith Haring, Allen Ginsberg to the skaters of the movie Kids. Every group has maintained that their era, and no other, marked the street’s apex as the epicenter of American cool, and that after they left—whether "they" were the Beats, the hippies, the punks, or the hardcore kids—the street was dead. Calhoun shows how the street continues to provide each new generation of rebels with a place to call home. A St. Marks Place native herself, Calhoun will trace the 400-year history of the area from its origins as a Dutch farm to its current incarnation as a hipster playground. She will also show rare photos from the street's past.

Ada Calhoun has reported on crime and culture for The New York Times, Time, New York, The Los Angeles Times and more. She has also worked as a reporter on the New York Post’s city desk, an ASME-nominated editor-in-chief, and a ghostwriter of seven books for major publishers, including four New York Times bestsellers. Her many awards and fellowships include, a 2015 USC-Annenberg National Health Journalism Fellowship, a 2014 Alicia Patterson Foundation fellowship, and the 2013 Council on Contemporary Families Media Award for Print Coverage of Family Issues. She is now working on an essay collection for W.W. Norton (tentatively scheduled for 2017) based on her viral 2015 Modern Love essay, “The Wedding Toast I’ll Never Give.”

 

Located in The Great Hall, in the Foundation Building, 7 East 7th Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.