Happy Ending Music and Reading Series featuring Paul Rudnick, Lauren Grodstein, Victor Lodato and musical guest Kaiser Cartel

Show Description

"Crisis and Suburbia" 

 The consistently sold out, Happy Ending Music and Reading Series, chosen by New York Magazine and NY Press as the best reading series in NYC, and singled out by the New York Times Magazine for helping to "Keep downtown alive," features the most interesting storytellers, writers, musicians, raconteurs and personalities, and requires the readers to take one public risk, while the musicians, who perform two short sets with their original, lyric-driven music, are required to play one cover song and try to get the audience to sing along. Called the “most vital authors’ series in the city,” by Time Out NY, and known for its consistently good taste, Happy Ending has launched careers and proudly, ended none.

Paul Rudnick's plays have been produced both on and off broadway and around the world; they include "I Hate Hamlet", "The New Century", "The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told" and "Jeffrey."  His articles and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Vogue and the NewYork Times; he's also rumored to be quite close to Premiere magazine's film critic Libby Gelman-Waxner.  His screenplays include "In & Out" and "Addams Family Values." His new collection, "I Shuddder, and  Other Reactions to Life, Death and New Jersey" was published this Fall by HarperCollins.

Victor Lodato is a playwright and poet. He is the recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, and has won numerous awards for his plays, including one from the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays. Mathilda Savitch is his first novel. He lives in Tucson and New York City.

Lauren Grodstein’s books include the novels A Friend of the Family and Reproduction is the Flaw of Love, and The Best of Animals, a story collection. Her pseudonymous Girls Dinner Club was a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. Her work has been translated into German, Italian, French, Turkish, and other languages, and her essays and stories have been widely anthologized.  Lauren teaches creative writing at Rutgers-Camden, where she helps administer the college's MFA program. She lives with her husband and son in New Jersey.

Kaiser Cartel is a low-fi, song-driven, harmony-heavy Brooklyn-based duo. Their first full-length album, March Forth, produced by Matt Hales (aka aqualung) and mixed by Matt & Ken Thomas (Sigur Ros) was released in the US on bluhammock music in June 2008 and in the UK on Continental Record Services in June 2009. Courtney Kaiser and Benjamin Cartel have been touring the country in their Prius ever since they quit their teaching jobs last June, stopping at festivals across the country. KC has had music in the MTV show Exiled, Discovery Channel’s Alter-Eco and on Starbucks’ Have You Heard? Compilation. Two of their songs played on a couple episodes the new hit HBO series Bored To Death. Their charming and intimate live show is not to be missed. The duo just released an ep, Rock Island, recorded at Daytrotter and their new album, Secret Transit, is scheduled to be released in early 2010.