Pen + Bush: P+B reads

P+B Reads is back with an event that will feature an evening of author readings and a special performance for the Pen + Brush community.

Please join us at Pen + Brush on October 6th from 6 to 8 p.m. for readings by Afua Kafi-Akua, Jesse Paris Smith, Kerri Schlottman, and Nora Lange and a performance by Meagan Woods. RSVP for free on Eventbrite.

This event, which is part of our P+B Reads series, gives our authors a chance to interact with readers and the larger Pen + Brush community by sharing live readings of selected passages from their works. During the performance, Meagan Woods will bring Kerri Schlottman’s new book, Daytime Moon, to life with a series of reflective movements, overlapped and interspersed with readings, that come together in a stunning improvisational dance inspired by the book.

About the Authors

Afua Kafi-Akua has worked at many media and arts organizations including Women Make Movies, Cinema Guild, Metropolitan Museum of Art, International Center of Photography and Third World Newsreel. She is currently a media and communication professor at the New York City College of Technology/CUNY. Afua is an arts educator, photographer, poet, musician and mixed-media artist. She is a founding member of the all-female funk/rock band IBIS. Her interviews with music legends Betty Carter & Nona Hendryx were published in the arts anthology Encyclopedia. She also co-produced an award-winning documentary about violence against lesbians, JUST BECAUSE OF WHO WE ARE that was screened at film festivals and aired on PBS. She is currently creating photographs and mixed-media installations about personal and socially relevant topics including being the grandchild of immigrants, LGBTQ+ issues, muses, women musicians and gender. She recently co-curated the VR gallery exhibition ANCESTRAL FUTURISM: UNAPOLOGETICALLY MELANATED in collaboration Oculus and The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture.

Jesse Paris Smith is a writer, GRAMMY nominated composer and musician, event producer, and Founding Ambassador of the NY International Antiquarian Book Fair, launching the program in 2024 during the 75th Anniversary of the ABAA. As part of the fair’s annual programming, Jesse’s events have included ‘Sharing the World Of Rare Books,’ a heartwarming group discussion exploring the timeless threads and connections innate within the book world, and a presentation of poetry and music celebrating Walt Whitman, Charlotte Brontë, Flaco the Owl, and others. Jesse serves on the Board of Directors of Elizabeth Street Garden in Little Italy, the Advisory Board of Pen & Brush Gallery in the Flatiron District, and is co-founder of climate action organization Pathway to Paris.

Kerri Schlottman is a writer of literary fiction novels, most recently Daytime Moon (May 2026, Unnamed Press). Her novel Tell Me One Thing was named a 2025 Storytrade Literary Fiction Finalist, a two-time 2024 PenCraft Fiction Award Winner, a 2023 American Book Fest Best Literary Fiction Book Finalist, and a Shelf Awareness Best Book This Week. Kerri works to support artists, performers, and writers in creating new projects and is a part-time graduate professor at NYU in arts administration.

Nora Lange’s debut novel Us Fools was awarded the The Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, was named a best book of 2024 byThe Boston Globe and NPR, a Los Angeles Times bestseller, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Nora’s short writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The Believer , BOMB, Hazlitt, Joyland, American Short Fiction, Denver Quarterly, HTMLGIANT. She has received fellowships from Brown University and is a fellow at USC’s Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities.

About the Performer

Meagan Woods is an interdisciplinary artist who works in dance, theatre, and costume design. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Simon Fraser University and a BFA in Dance from Rutgers University. Meagan has been a guest lecturer at both her alma maters, as well as The New School, Pratt University, Montclair State, and Halifax University. Her work has been shown at Bryant Park, Lincoln Center, the TEDx Stage, and at venues across the US, Canada, Portugal, France, Taiwan, Norway, Greece and The Philippines. She is part of the transdisciplinary team behind Moving Matter: Organic Encounters, an ongoing SSHRC Insight-funded research project that centers natural materials as guiding collaborative forces in the development of groundbreaking choreography, wearables, and material/object designs.