Please note: Due to inclement weather, Local Literati has been POSTPONED until Saturday, February 4 at 7PM.

A Celebration of Hudson Valley Talent

The Ritz Theater is pleased to present local authors, Terry Sandler and Susan Schoenberger, *rescheduled from Saturday, January 21 to FEBRUARY 4 at 7 PM in the Ritz Theater Lobby at 107 Broadway in Newburgh. Each author will be reading excerpts from recent works and speaking to the audience, sharing insights and reflections on their writing.

Terry Sandler, a Newburgh teacher and accomplished Hudson Valley playwright will read from his one act dramatic play The Mommy and Me Fishing Trip. Terry Sandler is also a working actor, award-winning director, award-winning playwright, award-winning filmmaker, and visual artist. His plays have received staged readings and productions throughout New York City, upstate New York, and Cleveland, Ohio. Sandler has worked professionally as an actor for over fifteen years, performing roles on stage and screen. As a director, he is known for his avant-garde style, and has won awards and honorable mentions for his work. In 2000, Sandler wrote, directed, and produced the award-winning short film, Corey. Corey aired nationally on the Independent Film Channel Bravo, and Women’s Entertainment Channel. The film received wide-spread recognition at film festivals, screenings, and on websites; and won Best Narrative Short at the Putnam Film Festival, NY. As an educator, Sandler has taught theatre at numerous colleges, universities, and currently teaches dramatic arts at The Newburgh Free Academy. He holds a Master’s degree in Educational Theatre from New York University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Performing Arts from the State University of New York at New Paltz. He lives with his wife and two daughters here in the Hudson Valley. You may visit his website at www.terrysandler.com.

Susan Schoenberger, a Newburgh native, will talk about her debut novel, A Watershed Year, which was published on March 1, 2011. The novel, at its heart, is a love story, and a story about all the ways that we interconnect in this world of both too much and too little communication. Schoenberger’s novel won the gold medal for novel in the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition in 2006 and was short-listed that year for the Peter Taylor Prize. Susan Schoenberger graduated with honors from Dartmouth College in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. Since college, Susan has been a writer, editor and copy editor at various newspapers, including The News and Observer, The Baltimore Sun and The Hartford Courant, and she now works as an editor for Patch.com. Her articles and essays have appeared in many publications, including the Courant’s Northeast magazine and Reader’s Digest, and one of her essays was included in the anthology: Stories for a Woman’s Heart. Susan lives in Connecticut with her husband and three children. She is working on a second novel. You may visit her website at www.susanschoenberger.com.

The readings will be held in the Ritz Theater Lobby at 107 Broadway in Newburgh, and are open to the public. Admission is free, but donations are always welcome. Light refreshments will be available for a suggested donation, all proceeds to benefit the restoration of the historic Ritz Theater. The authors will be available after the reading for a question and answer session and book signing. Books will also be available for purchase.

For more information about the series and the historic Ritz Theater, call (845) 784-1199.