For those of you who filled the Book Cafe in August for the first Vaunt Showcase of music, poetry and storytelling, you will be thrilled to know that Vaunt returns in October. 

For those who missed it, mark the date of the 2nd VAUNT!

Watch this space for the revelation of performer names!

Looking forward to seeing you.

As with our last event, there will be a limited 'pick out of the hat' Open Mic at the evening's end.

Relax, Sit back and just Listen. 5 authors read their Short Stories.

Rocio Uchofen is a dear friend of the ETG Book Cafe. She brings her poet and writer friends from local New York spaces and those from far away lands to share their works. On this special Fall Saturday afternoon, 5 authors will read their own short stories.

Sit back, relax and be read to while sipping tea, coffee or a cold drink!

We connect with our projects. Some folks knit, others crochet. Some craft assorted creations.

We all enjoy sharing stories, chatting and listening! We would love you to join us with yours!!

Suggested Donation $5

WE invite YOU to express yourself on our Living Stage!

• Bring a song, poem, story, dance, artwork pantomime, short play, dream or favorite ETG Book Cafe memory.

• Express your joy, gratitude, observation, concerns, wishes about your neighborhood or our larger world

• Choose what you most urgently want to express

• Keep it to about four minutes.

You can sign up ahead of time by dropping by the Book Cafe during open hours during the whole month of September and the first week of October.  Go to ETG BookCafe Celebration of 20 years for more details.

Beth Gorrie will lead a Staten Island OutLOUD event, featuring Allen Ginsberg's "HOWL”.

Read aloud with friends and neighbors in our charming backyard garden!

WE invite YOU to express yourself on our Living Stage!

• Bring a song, poem, story, dance, artwork pantomime, short play, dream or favorite ETG Book Cafe memory.

• Express your joy, gratitude, observation, concerns, wishes about your neighborhood or our larger world

• Choose what you most urgently want to express

• Keep it to about four minutes.

You can sign up ahead of time by dropping by the Book Cafe during open hours during the whole month of September and the first week of October.  Go to ETG BookCafe Celebration of 20 years for more details.

WE invite YOU to express yourself on our Living Stage!

Bring a song, poem, story, dance, artwork pantomime, short play, dream or favorite ETG Book Cafe memory.

• Express your joy, gratitude, observation, concerns, wishes about your neighborhood or our larger world

• Choose what you most urgently want to express

• Keep it to about four minutes.

You can sign up ahead of time by dropping by the Book Cafe during open hours during the whole month of September and the first week of October.  Go to ETG BookCafe Celebration of 20 years for more details.

What is your favorite memory (or memories) of ETG Book Cafe from the last 20 years? Please come and join us for a DAY DE DADA mail art* workshop, led by Mary Campbell. You create a postcard that will be sent to another participant,  and you will receive a postcard from someone else!

Supplies will be available, just bring yourself and your memories.

{*Note:  Mail Art is art created specifically to be sent through the mail.}

WE invite YOU to express yourself on our Living Stage!

4 Nights! Wednesday October 8 to Saturday October 11
(see other evenings below)

Bring a song, poem, story, dance, artwork, pantomime, short play, dream or favorite ETG Book Cafe memory.

• Express your joy, gratitude, observation, concerns, wishes about your neighborhood or our larger world

• Choose what you most urgently want to express

• Keep it to about four minutes.

You can sign up ahead of time by dropping by the Book Cafe during open hours during the whole month of September and the first week of October.  Go to ETG BookCafe Celebration of 20 years for more details.

Visitors welcome!        

Meeting for Worship, children’s story, worship sharing

More Info: StatenIslandQuakers.org

Visitors welcome!        

Meeting for Worship, children’s story, worship sharing

More Info: StatenIslandQuakers.org

Join us as we VAUNT for three featured performers telling their Staten Island stories. Vaunt, by definition is to boast or praise excessively. Enjoy an evening of oration and mixed media performance. 

There will be a limited, raffle style, open mic. 

Featured StoryTellers:
Ri Tornello
Rocio Uchofen
M.A. Dennis

Spotlight: Kia Phay
Cohosted by Matt Figgz
Curated by Cynthia (Cyn) Rodriguez

VAUNT is made possible by a DCLA Premier Grant from Staten Island Arts, with public funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

We connect with our projects. Some folks knit, others crochet. Some craft assorted creations.

We all enjoy sharing stories, chatting and listening! We would love you to join us with yours!!

Suggested Donation $5

What can we learn from each other’s feelings and responses to the current state of the world?

How have artist and writers throughout history made sense of chaos, change and instability? 

We look forward to you joining us in a multigenerational group.

We explore and listen to ourselves and consider writers, poets and visual artists‘ stimuli!! 

Join two zines makers to design and write your own.

Jenno Snyder and Kwynn Hogan will enthuse and support you to share your passion!

$5 contribution for all workshop events at ETG is appreciated.

And no one turned away!

Liberation Open Mic invites you to sense liberation — 

• To express yourself richly 

• To be heard by fellow humans 

• Sound off about the state of the world,  

• Imagine a better one.  

Bring a poem, a song, your guitar or ukelele, an artwork or anything at all that you wish to share with us, your local community. 

$5 suggested donation. No one turned away.

What can we learn from each other’s feelings and responses to the current state of the world?

How have artist and writers throughout history made sense of chaos, change and instability? 

We look forward to you joining us in a multigenerational group.

We explore and listen to ourselves and consider writers, poets and visual artists‘ stimuli!! 

Visitors welcome!        

Meeting for Worship, children’s story, worship sharing

More Info: StatenIslandQuakers.org

A unique chance to experience a poetical and musical Abolition teach-in with Spirit and friends. Supporting the freeing of political prisoner Kamau Sadiki.

Join us for social connection after the teach-in!

The event is jointly hosted by 

• Maroon Party for Liberation

• The Legacy Eric Garner Left Behind

• International Campaign to free Kamau Sadiki

• SI4P

Cyn's Poetic Drip Open Mic is a rich experience for both performers and audience. And deepening each month as we grow our experience of returning poets. Join us with your offering or your presence as an audience member.

Featured this month — Poets Destiny Padilla and Matt Figgz

Destiny Padilla is a spoken word artist and multi genre creative, from the Bronx, New York. Spirituality, NYC, Womxn, Boriken, and the Diaspora experience are driving forces behind her work. In 2020, she was recognized as a premier artist of her borough. Destiny is the previous host and curator of Word Masters Poetry Showcase, MiCasa Writers Group at the Bronx Art Space, and Women Orators Wednesdays at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. In 2021, she founded The Healing Vida, through which she organizes her annual healing arts gathering — The Summer Ceremony. Destiny is also an actress, with lead roles in indie short films such as Apocalyptic Hearts (2020) and Sweet Boys (2024).

Matt Figgz is a math & creative writing educator who loves reading, anime, and cold leftovers. He is also the co-founder of "Poetry in the Park" (@official_poetryinthepark), a free outdoor open mic series. Matt's poetry collection, "Adolescence", is available on Amazon.

grand pepper of reality is a Psychedelic/Alternative Rock band that sometimes gets Proggy or Folky. It features the music of Doug Principato and his band. For this event at ETG, he will be joined by band members Shoshana Vogel and Josh Manashowitz. Based in NYC, songs resonate from the heart for the heart.  They have released two albums, Songs That Saved My Life and Calling The Air (available as CD and/or download). See https://www.grandpepper.com/. 

$5 suggested donation. No one turned away.

ETG is thrilled to host a bilingual event celebrating poetry and poets. 

Roxana Crisólogo, a Peruvian-born activist-poet, now lives in Finland. Crisólogo’s poetry presents power relations in everyday life in the post capitalist era. She includes traditionally silenced voices to decolonize poetry, constructing new epic with new heroes.

2 Manhattan poets will accompany Roxana: Joaquin Badajoz, from Cuba and Lea Diaz from Spain

Cyn's Poetic Drip Open Mics monthly at the Book Cafe are growing a following — both with performers and an audience. Join us with your offering or your presence as an audience member.

Featured this month — Rezt Les and Yetvart (Ed) S. Majian.

Rezt Les is the goth pop alter ego of Staten Island rapper and musician Joey Patches. He hopes to capture the darkness and danciness latent in all of us with a synthy, sardonic, and snappy set of new songs and unlikely covers.

Yetvart (Ed) S. Majian is a first-generation Armenian-American poet / performer, a Sifu in Chinese Kung Fu tradition, a facilitator experienced in healing modalities tied to inter-generational trauma and the current Poet in Residence for Washington Park Association in Hudson County, New Jersey. He has two collections of poetry. In “Survival Witness,” dedicated to the Armenians of Artsakh and Palestinians of Gaza, he focuses on subtleties of human intersubjectivity, drawing from his Armenian legacy of genocide and diaspora, themes of social justice, memory and political witness.  | IG: @emajian

$5 Suggested donation. No one turned away. 

Do you love to read but never have enough time? Join us at ETG’s Read-in Cafe. Where we read, share book ideas, and meet kindred spirits! Relax with your own book or one you find in our Book Cafe while enjoying refreshments.

Enjoy the vibes. Bring yourself or friends and have some fun!!

Questions? Call us at 718-447-8256.

We'll be listening to recordings of poetry on vinyl! Selections by poets T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, and Robert Penn Warren, reading their own works.

This is the second in a series, highlighting overlooked LP's for sale in our "record room".

Get seedy with us at our annual SEED SWAP!

We will celebrate EARTH DAY all month with our seed swap which will commence today!

Bring seeds you'd like to give to other folks- seeds you collected/saved as well as seeds you purchased but didn't use.

Take home seeds that others have brought. 

Our SEED SWAP continues all month.

{You don't need to bring seeds in order to take seeds.}

We'll be listening to recordings of Irish music and Irish authors on vinyl! Selected readings by Sean O'Casey and W.B. Yeats of their own works. Also some foot-tapping Irish music, some 78s and some 33s!

This is the first in a series, highlighting overlooked LPs for sale in our "record room".

Do you love to read but never have enough time? Join us at ETG’s Read-in Cafe. Where we read, share book ideas, and meet kindred spirits! Relax with your own book or one you find in our Book Cafe while enjoying refreshments.

Enjoy the vibes. Bring yourself or friends and have some fun!!

Questions? Call us at 718-447-8256.

ETG partners with the Staten Island Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc by hosting their 6th annual book drive! Throughout February, bring in children's books in good condition from home, and/or you may like to purchase our second-hand books and donate them to the book drive. Simply add the books – from home or bought here – to the collection box at the Book Cafe.

If you would like support in choosing appropriate books or would appreciate connection with the volunteers involved, drop by on Sunday, February 23, from 12-3PM, when the collected books will be sorted. The vibe last year in the Book Cafe as people prepared the stash for the children was so energizing!!

For more information please visit the website at dstsialumnae.org.

Come find yourself the writer — it's inside us all.

Use the ink of a whole pen at a wild writer’s workshop obstacle course led by Renaps. 

Open your mind to new ways of putting yourself on the page 

And most importantly, have a blast getting deep with creativity

All are welcome!!

$5,00 suggested donation, no-one turned away!