CROWN HEIGHTS — Another free reading series is coming to the neighborhood this month, joining a growing list of literary events hosted in Crown Heights.
Beginning Feb. 11, the Franklin Electric Reading Series will bring local authors and writers, along with free beer, to a new co-working space that opened for business on Franklin Avenue last month, its organizers said.
The event is set to take place in a 40-seat community space at Franklin Electric, a new office space at 650 Franklin Ave., said co-host Victoria Kornick.
A writer herself, Kornick is launching the new reading series with three college friends who, like her, moved from Virginia to New York to pursue careers in writing and all wound up living in Crown Heights — a magnet, it seems, for literary types.
“There are a lot of people here who are emerging writers, current graduate students, recent graduate students, people working in publishing … walking the street, I’ll see writers I really admire,” she said.
Kornick hopes to bring as many Crown Heights and Brooklyn-based writers to the reading series as she can. At the first Franklin Electric event, author Joseph Alexiou will present from his recently published book, Gowanus: Brooklyn's Curious Canal, and attendees will hear from three other New York-based writers, Priscilla Becker, Ama Codjoe and Kate Doyle.
Though Kornick and her three co-hosts chose the readers for the first event, they hope to extend that choice to a wider circle next time to get a bigger mix of people involved.
“In the future, we’re going to be contacting specific readers that we’re really interested in and see who they want to read with, who their communities are” to “have readings that feel more organic and autonomous," she said.
The Feb. 11 event is sponsored by the Long Island-based brewery Blue Point Brewing Company, which will provide free drinks, she said.
The reading is free and open to the public at 650 Franklin Ave. at 7:30 p.m. Writers interested in submitting work to read at future events are welcome to email a sample and bio to reading@workheights.com.
