Deep Carnivale 2009
- When
-
10am to 5pm
Saturday and Sunday,
Sept. 12-13, 2009 - Where
-
The Performing Arts Building
Hillsborough Community College, Ybor Campus Tampa Florida
- What
- Readings by authors and poets, songs sung by songwriters, child-friendly performances, games, activites, food and non-alcoholic beverages
- Who
- Children and families, teens, adults and tribal elders
- Admission
- Free and open to the public
- More Information
- Contact Festival Director David Audet at daudet@hccfl.edu or 813-253-7000 x5179
James Reese
James Reese was born on eastern Long Island. He attended the University of Notre Dame and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he received an MA in Theatre. As an undergraduate, he had a play staged off-Broadway at the Actors Repertory Theatre.
While living in New York, New Orleans and Key West, Reese held various jobs in the non-profit sector, working on behalf of the arts and the environment. He has also lived and traveled extensively in France. Presently, James Reese splits his time between Paris, France, and Tampa, Florida, where he is pursuing a graduate degree in Linguistics and working on a fifth novel.
James' newest book, Dracula Dossier, will be published October 7, 2008.
"In Reese’s scrupulously imagined thriller, told largely through entries from a lost journal kept by the author of Dracula in 1888, Bram Stoker attends an indoctrination ceremony of the Order of the Golden Dawn, at the behest of Oscar Wilde’s mum and a young William Butler Yeats.
"The ceremony goes horribly awry, resulting in one participant — Francis Tumblety, a patent medicine salesman newly arrived from America — becoming a vessel for the evil Egyptian god Set and applying his surgical skills to the slaughter of Whitechapel prostitutes in order to draw Stoker out for a supernatural showdown.
"Bestseller Reese (The Witchery") so perfectly pastiches the journal format that initially his story reads as dry and
boringly as most private diaries. With Tumblety’s malignant conversion, though, the novel turns into a rip-roaring penny dreadful
that compels reading to the end. Dracula fans will appreciate the nods to well-known works that Stoker wrote supposedly following
this confrontation."
-- Publishers Weekly
"The Dracula Dossier is as powerful in its imagination as it is in its dedication to historical detail and social reflection.
But what's more is that it’s a damn good thriller. James Reese creates a world here that had me mesmerized from chapter one. With
Bram Stoker and Jack the Ripper along for the ride, you can't go wrong with this book."
-- Michael Connelly
Intelligence Respected
Editor David Warner of Creative Loafing said some kind and encouraging words on page 26 of the August 26, 2009, issue. Partial quote, "At a moment when ignorance is being aggressively defended, Deep Carnivale still respects our intelligence. Imagine that."
A Different Sort of Ybor Celebration
Esther Martinez, in a story at The Florida Book Review" says she knows "Deep Carnivale will be 'A Celebration of Words' and not a Bourbon Street bacchanal."
"But logophile that I am, I reason I’ll get drunk on language. With over 70 writers and artists scheduled [for the 2008 Carnivale] to perform or read from their works, my beaded necklaces will be strung with verse. I imagine haiku shooters..."
"It is just before 10am when I arrive at the corner of Palm Avenue and 14th Street—Deep Carnivale ground zero. About a dozen vendor tables are lined up around the Hillsborough Community College courtyard where a band of teenagers [Next Exit] are setting up their instruments.
"The vendor tables sell books by local writers, HCC publications and baked goods. I grab a Cuban favorite, papa rellena, a potato stuffed with savory ground beef. Belly satisfied, I cross the street and enter the historic Circulo Cubano. A nearly 100 year old neo-classical building of ionic columns and marble staircases, it served as the Cuban Social Club and remains the oldest building of its kind in the country."Comments From Our Fans
"When I look back over 2008, my visit to the second edition of Deep Carnivale was a
highlight. You and your staff did a great job and I loved being part of it, again.
I am sure there will be bigger festivals to come. But maybe not better!!!"
– Darrell House,
children's book author and 2008 Deep Carnivale presenter.