'Creators, Conversations and Cocktails' Series Launches at Bay Street with NOVEL IDEAS Tonight

Bay Street Theater & Sag Harbor Center for the Arts is pleased to announce CREATORS, COCKTAILS, & CONVERSATIONS series, presented by Bay Street Theater and Hamptons magazine. The series begins with "Novel Ideas" today, June 5. Enjoy a glass of wine and join six authors as they dish on their latest books.

The second event will be "Style Setters," featuring fashion veterans on July 10, and on August 21, the conversation will be "Design in Mind," with interior design experts. These are the first ever discussions by both organizations.

The series is sponsored by Harbor's Edge Condominiums. The events will be moderated by Samantha Yanks, Editor-in-Chief, Hamptons magazine. All three events start at 5 pm. Tickets are $20 each and are available by visiting www.baystreet.org or by calling the Box Office at 631-725-9500.

Six novelists will take to the stage to share their novels with the audience. The writers of the evening are Aliza Licht (Leave Your Mark), Suzanne Corso (Hello Hollywood), Kate Betts (My Paris Dream), Colleen Saidman (Yoga For Life) and co-writers Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza (The Knockoff). This conversation with the writers includes a free glass of wine.

The Authors:

Kate Betts is an award-winning magazine editor and author who has held top positions at two of the world's most successful fashion magazines, Harper's Bazaar and Vogue. My Paris Dream chronicles her rise through the ranks of the fashion business working as a Paris reporter and later the associate bureau chief for the daily trade newspaper Women's Wear Daily. In 2003 she was named editor at large at Time magazine where she created the first globally published style supplement. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book on the First Lady's style, Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style and was the subject of the Lifetime documentary, Putting Baby to Bed: Wife, Mother, and Editor in Chief, about her experience as the youngest editor ever to take over a national fashion magazine. Betts was named editor in chief of Harper's Bazaar in June 1999. Betts, a graduate of Princeton University, has written for over 25 different national magazines and newspapers and has appeared regularly on CNN, Good Morning America, The Today Show, and The Charlie Rose Show. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children.

Suzanne Corso is the author of three novels. Brooklyn Story (2011), The Suite Life (2013) & Hello Hollywood, the last part of the trilogy; release (Simon& Schuster 2015). She has also penned the screenplay to Brooklyn Story. Corso has produced for the New York and London stages; Roman Nights. She has also produced two documentaries; Indonesia, A Personal Journey and Hear Them Roar, shot entirely at the Endangered Animal Rescue Sanctuary in Citra, Florida. This documentary was the foundation that inspired her children's book Sammy & Sue Go Green Too! (2009) an eco-friendly, environmentally educational book. Corso is currently developing several shows for television and is a contributing TV Film Correspondent to NBC - The Today Show as well as a columnist for Downtown Magazine.

Aliza Licht is the fashion PR executive and Twitter phenom, DKNY PR GIRL. Featured on the front page of the New York Times style section as one of "America's Next Top Mentors," dubbed the "Reigning Queen of Social Media" by Women's Wear Daily, and called one of "Six Women Who Rule the Fashion World" by TIME Style & Design, she is a TEDx speaker and five-time Fashion 2.0 award winner for DKNY PR GIRL. She lives in New York City with her husband and their two children.

Jo Piazza is the managing editor of Yahoo Travel and a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, New York, Glamour, Gotham, The Daily Beast, and Slate. She is the author of Celebrity, Inc.: How Famous People Make Money, If Nuns Ruled the World: Ten Sisters on a Mission, and a novel, Love Rehab: A Novel in Twelve Steps. She lives in New York City with her giant dog.

Lucy Sykes Rellie has worked in the fashion world as a stylist, fashion editor, and fashion director. For six years she was the fashion director at Marie Claire magazine, and was most recently fashion director for Rent the Runway. Her own children's clothing line, Lucy Sykes New York, was sold in more than one hundred department stores worldwide, including Saks Fifth Avenue, Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman, and Nordstrom. Together with her twin sister Plum, she moved from London to New York City in 1997, where she now lives with her husband and two children.

Colleen Saidman Yee's first book, Yoga for Life: A Journey to Inner Peace and Freedom, was released by Atria/ Simon and Schuster on June 2nd, 2015. Colleen has been teaching yoga since 1998 and has been a globetrotting fashion model since 1979. She has been featured in dozens of Gaiam yoga videos. Articles about her have appeared in The New York Times (they named her the First Lady of Yoga), New York magazine, Vanity Fair, and O, The Oprah Magazine. Colleen has also appeared on 2 covers of Yoga Journal. She is director and owner of Yoga Shanti in Sag Harbor, New York, and co-owns Yoga Shanti in Westhampton Beach and New York City. With Donna Karan and Rodney Yee, Colleen created and runs the Urban Zen Integrative Therapy Program, utilized in healthcare facilities around the country. Colleen resides in Sag Harbor with her husband, Rodney Yee. Their 4 kids continue to be their most humbling teachers.

The Novels:

Hello Hollywood from the critically acclaimed author of Brooklyn Story-praised by The New York Times for its "true female voice"-comes the conclusion to a whirlwind Cinderella story traveling from the gritty streets of Brooklyn to the glitzy scenes of Hollywood. Samantha Bonti came from a humble background in Brooklyn and listened to her beloved grandmother's advice: she wrote herself out of her story as a poor girl and into an affluent one as the wife of a Wall Street banker. Her glitzy life took a turn, though, when her husband spent the money faster than it came in and grew abusive and angry. After his sudden and unexpected heart attack, it turns out fate has dealt Sam another hand in her husband's $15 million life insurance policy. Now independent, Sam moves to Hollywood with her daughter to oversee the film production of her bestselling novel, based on her childhood. She thinks she has it all, but life has a lot more in store for her. The producer of her film (and her now-boyfriend) reveals a dark underside to all this Hollywood glamour-and soon, people from her past in Brooklyn that she thought long gone start showing up where they are very unwelcome. Amidst it all, a mysterious man named John has designs on Sam-and she's not sure if this could be a new romance or another romantic misstep. Now she must ask herself: Is her turn in the spotlight worth all the real-life drama?

The Knockoff is an outrageously stylish, wickedly funny novel of fashion in the digital age by Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza, is the story of Imogen Tate, editor in chief of Glossy magazine, who discovers her twenty-something former assistant Eve Morton plotting to knock her off her pedestal, take over her job, and reduce the magazine to an app. Wildly out of her depth, Imogen faces a choice - pack up her Smythson notebooks and quit, or channel her inner geek and take on Eve to save both the magazine and her career. A glittering, uproarious, sharply drawn story of style innovators and cheap imitators, The Knockoff is an insider's look at the ever-changing world of fashion and a fabulous romp for our Internet-addicted age.

Leave Your Mark isn't an advice book--it's a mentorship in 288 pages. Aliza Licht -- global fashion communications executive and Twitter phenom @DKNY PR GIRL -- is here to tell her story, complete with The Devil Wears Prada-like moments and insider secrets. Drawing invaluable lessons from her experience, Licht shares advice, inspiration, and a healthy dose of real talk in LEAVE YOUR MARK. She delivers personal and professional guidance for people just starting their careers and for people who are well on their way. With a particular emphasis on communicating and building your personal brand, something she knows a thing or two about, Aliza is your sassy, knowledgeable guide to the contemporary working world, where personal and professional lines are blurred and the most important thing you can have is a strong sense of self.

My Paris Dream gives readers a view of what life looked like to a young American woman, finding herself, falling in love, and learning how to navigate this seductive city, where she would always feel like an outsider, but would come to understand the value of belonging. Kate Betts brings the enchantment of France to life--from the nightclubs of Paris where she learned to dance Le Rock, to the lavender fields of Provence --and shares insider information about restaurants, shopping, style, and food, in this honest and immensely appealing memoir.

Yoga for Life, written by Colleen Saidman Yee with the help of Susan K. Reed, offers techniques to bring awareness to every part of your physical and spiritual being, allowing you to feel truly alive and to embody the peace of the present moment. She shares for the first time the dramatic story of her life, as well as yoga sequences she has designed to accompany each chapter, which address issues from fear, trauma, and addiction, to confidence, forgiveness, and love.

About Hamptons magazine: Hamptons magazine, celebrating 36 years, is the Hamptons' leading luxury lifestyle publication featuring the latest in the worlds of art, culture, dining, entertainment, society, fashion, philanthropy, politics, real estate and nightlife on Long Island's "East End". Hamptons magazine, published by Niche Media Holdings, LLC, was the first publication to etch the luxury, regional publishing category. Niche Media's city-specific publications also include: Aspen Peak, Austin Way, Boston Common, Capitol File, Gotham, Los Angeles Confidential, Michigan Avenue, Ocean Drive, Philadelphia Style and Vegas magazines. Its custom publishing titles include Art Basel, Wynn, Maison&Objet Miami Beach and The Mall at Short Hills. Through our strategic distribution model and significant investment in verified data from Nielsen Claritas, Niche Media is the only regional, lifestyle publishing company that is guaranteed to reach the sophisticated and affluent audience in each of our cities. Niche Media titles exceed 14,000 pages with a combined annual distribution of 4.6 million copies nationally.

Bay Street Theater & Sag Harbor Center for the Arts is a year-round, not-for-profit professional theater and community cultural center which endeavors to innovate, educate, and entertain a diverse community through the practice of the performing arts. We serve as a social and cultural gathering place, an educational resource, and a home for a community of artists.

Pictured: Kate Betts. Photo by Noa Griffel.

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