Roger Rosenblatt's LIVES IN THE BASEMENT, DOES NOTHING: A WRITING LIFE At Bay Street Theater

Bay Street Theater & Sag Harbor Center for the Arts is pleased to announce a new show by and starring Roger Rosenblatt entitled Lives in the Basement, Does Nothing: A Writing Life on Friday, April 26 and Saturday, April 27 at 8 pm. The show will also have "almost surprise appearances" by Amy Hempel (Friday 4/26) and Alice McDermott (Saturday 4/27). The production consultant for the show is Scott Schwartz, Bay Street Theater's Artistic Director.

The New York Times says, "Rosenblatt writes the way a great jazz musician plays, moving from one emotion to another, seeking only to surprise himself."

Writing makes justice desirable, evil intelligible, grief endurable and love possible. Talking, singing and playing the piano, Roger Rosenblatt performs his seriocomic one-person show on the rewards, humiliations and sheer madness of being a writer.

Roger Rosenblatt's work has been published in 14 languages. He is the author of five New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and three Times bestsellers, including the memoirs, Kayak Morning, The Boy Detective, and Making Toast, originally an essay in The New Yorker. He has also written six Off Broadway plays, notably Free Speech in America, a one-person play that he performed at New York's American Place Theater, and was one of the Times Ten Best Plays of 1991, as well as the screenplay for his bestselling novel, Lapham Rising, shooting scheduled to begin this summer, and starring Frank Langella and Candace Bergin.

The Distinguished Professor of English and Writing at Stony Brook, he formerly held the Briggs-Copeland appointment in the teaching of writing at Harvard, where he earned his Ph.D. Among his honors are two George Polk awards, the Peabody and the Emmy for his work as an essayist at Time magazine and on PBS; the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize; a Fulbright Scholarship; seven honorary doctorates; the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement; and the President's Medal of the Chautauqua Institution for his body of work.

Amy Hempel is the author of The Dog of the Marriage, Tumble Home, At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, Reasons to Live, the coeditor of Unleashed, and a recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Ambassador Book Award for Fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and numerous grants from Yaddo. Her stories have appeared in Harper's, Vanity Fair, GQ, Tin House, The Harvard Review, The Quarterly, and have been widely anthologized, included Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She teaches in the Graduate Writing Program at Bennington College, and at Stony Brook Southampton.

Alice McDermott's critically acclaimed eighth novel, The Ninth Hour, was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award and The 2017 Kirkus Prize for Fiction. Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and others named The Ninth Hour among the top works of fiction in 2017. In 2018, The Ninth Hour was awarded France's Prix Femina. Her seventh novel, Someone, 2013, was a New York Times bestseller, a finalist for the Dublin IMPAC Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Patterson Prize for Fiction, and The Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Someone was also long-listed for the National Book Award. Three of her previous novels, After This, At Weddings and Wakes and That Night, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Charming Billy won the National Book Award for fiction in 1998 and was a finalist for the Dublin IMPAC Award. That Night was also a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her stories, essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Harpers, Commonweal and elsewhere. She has received the Whiting Writers Award, the Corrington Award for Literary Excellence, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for American Literature, and The Mary McCarthy Award from Bard College. In 2013, she was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. She is the Richard A. Macksey Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University.

Tickets are $30 in advance and $40 when purchased the day of the event and are on sale now at baystreet.org or by calling the Box Office at 631-725-9500. The Box Office is open Tuesday- Saturday 11 am - 5 pm or until show time.

Bay Street Theater and 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.