AWAKE! A Reader for the Sleepless
Steven Lee Beeber 

Boston-based author and Atlanta expatriate Steven Lee Beeber returned in March to A Cappella Books to read from his new anthology on insomnia (edited by Beeber), titled AWAKE! A Reader for the Sleepless (Soft Skull Press), and to celebrate the paperback release of his book The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk.

AWAKE! is the book to read when you can’t sleep. Stories (including previously unpublished pieces by Aimee Bender and Arthur Bradford); probably true fictions (like Jonathan Ames’s masturbation solution to insomnia); essays (from Yale neurobiologists to Priscilla Becker); commix (Howard Cruse, Shannon Wheeler); poems (Charles Simic, Rebecca Wolff), even found texts from Davy Rothbart of FOUND magazine, drawings from Louise Bourgeois, and a photographic insomnia diary from one of the Suicide Girls… all combine to offer a nighttime companion for the sleepless. As varied as the genres are, each contributor’s approach to the seemingly endless night is very much his or her own. Humorist Steve Brykman decides to enter a sleep study at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston; writer Steve Almond depicts Lincoln as a man who listens to his nightmares. Priscilla Becker takes the trash out in her sleep, while Matt Zapruder writes a novel called The Pajamaist in his. Jonathan Messinger’s girl born with small wings on her back dreams only of falling and Bob Hicok’s man should have stuck with the red wine.

Other contributors include Margaret Atwood, Gary Lucas, Lydia Lunch, Joyce Carol Oates, Neal Pollack, Davy Rothbart, John Sayles and many more.

Beeber’s study of the New York Jewish origins of punk rock, The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s: A Secret History of Jewish Punk, recently appeared from A Cappella Books. A freelance writer of fiction and non-fiction, he has written for The Paris Review, Fiction, Conduit, The New York Times, Mojo, Spin, and elsewhere. His website is www.jewpunk.com.

Local actors will also be on hand to read selections from both books, accompanied by the ambient junkyard sounds of Hubcap City.

If you couldn't attend the reading but would like to reserve a signed copy of Awake! or The Heebie-Jeebie at CBGB's, you can do so with these shopping carts.

AWAKE! A Reader for the Sleepless ($15.95).