Ancram Opera House Presents Virtual Edition of CRYSTAL RADIO SESSIONS UPSTATE

Ancram Opera House will present a virtual edition of CRYSTAL RADIO SESSIONS UPSTATE, the Hudson Valley outpost of the popular downtown NYC reading series, on Saturday, December 5 at 3pm. This event is free, but reservations are required. RSVP at https://www.ancramoperahouse.org/crystal-radio-sessions

Featured will be "The Family Hour, from Jo Ann Beard's widely praised collection of autobiographical essays The Boys of My Youth. "The Family Hour" weaves together warm, tragic, and funny episodes from Beard's childhood, culminating in the night her alcoholic father nearly died crashing the family car into a lake.

Jo Ann Beard is the author of the groundbreaking collection of autobiographical essays The Boys of My Youth, and the novel, In Zanesville. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Best American Essays, and other magazines and anthologies. She has received a Whiting Foundation Award and nonfiction fellowships from John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Her new collection of prose pieces, Festival Days, will be published in March 2021.

Reading "The Family Hour" will be regional actor MaConnia Chesser, a company member at Shakespeare & Co. Her regional theater credits include Actors' Shakespeare Project, WAM Theatre, Chester Theatre, Kennedy Center, NJ Rep (company member), Theater Alliance (INSURRECTION: HOLDING HISTORY, Helen Hayes nomination), Ensemble Studio Theatre, & Folger Theatre. Her film and TV credits include The Shape of Destiny (Official Selection, 2018 Women in Comedy Festival), and HBO's The Wire.

CRYSTAL RADIO SESSIONS showcases fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction and personal essays of established and emerging writers and is curated by the Millerton-based writer Ashley Mayne, whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fence, Post Road, Juked, Peripheries, Blight podcast, Metambesen, and elsewhere. She is one of the founders of Crystal Radio, and a fiction editor at Fence.

The Ancram Opera House, located in southern Columbia County, is an award-winning intimate rural performance hall showcasing contemporary theatre and alternative cabaret by visionary theater and musical artists. For more information visit www.ancramoperahouse.org.