Urban slice-of-life in this live reading from my novel, No Man’s Brooklyn, at last November’s Prose Month event.
NO MAN’S BROOKLYN:
From the valentine boneyards of working-class Brooklyn, comes a tale of first love, lost innocence, tragedy, and forgiveness.
Daniel Trovato, having left his native Bensonhurst years ago to start a new life in L.A., is recently sober and enjoying cult success through his Sworn Witness series of graphic novels. When he receives word that his childhood love, Anya, the girl to whose absence he has remained faithful, has died from an overdose, he is compelled to return home. It is there that he will walk through the ghostly twilight of an unfinished past, and revisit both the romantic lore and shadow-life of his childhood. The enduring torch he’s carried for Anya, “the girl from nowhere,” who was found in a trashcan and adopted by a Russian family; the hazy circumstances of his mother’s suicide when he was fourteen; glacial estrangement from his father; the street-and-concrete joys, follies and rawness of an urban boyhood. Ultimately, No Man’s Brooklyn is about the mythic journey we take to meet our core self, and a lyrical testament to the words of Dylan Thomas: “The memories of childhood have no order, and no end.”
Originally from Brooklyn, NY, novelist, poet, performer, playwright and filmmaker, John Biscello, has lived in the high-desert grunge-wonderland of Taos, New Mexico since 2001.
He is the author of six novels, Broken Land, a Brooklyn Tale, Raking the Dust, Nocturne Variations, No Man’s Brooklyn, The Last Furies, and No One Dreams in Color; a collection of stories, Freeze Tag, two poetry collections, Arclight and Moonglow on Mercy Street; and a fable, The Jackdaw and the Doll, illustrated by Izumi Yokoyama. He also adapted classic fables, which were paired with the vintage illustrations of artist, Paul Bransom, for the collection: Once Upon a Time, Classic Fables Reimagined. His plays have been staged and performed both nationally and internationally.
