Photos by Chris Booth

Walking into the Cell on sultry late summer day, we might not have predicted that the late August IAW&A Salon would be such a magical time of storytelling and song. Maureen Hossbacher organized and hosted an exceptional lineup of musicians, actors, writers and poets. Thrilled by the quality of storytelling by all the presenters, Malachy McCourt called it one of our “best-ever.” And Malachy should know as he’s our Salon founder and inspiration. Malachy himself was on fire with his closing words, virtually a masterclass in storytelling.
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When We Became Three and When We Became Four.


Drawing raves from Salongoers as well, Mary performed a few minutes from the first act.
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Please visit Matthew’s website.
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Brian Kelly, a first-time presenter, is a poet and writing instructor whose work emerges from travels in Europe, Central Asia and NYC. His stories and poems, in the spirit of a tradition from Beowulf to Sinead O’Connor, are lived and written as though rooms for others to enter. And we fully entered those rooms with his stunning work, including “The Will of Inanimate Things” and “Above the Tree Line.”
Find his current book, L’America, a hybrid collection of drawings and poems invested in dramatic monologue on Amazon.
IAW&A Board member and Creative Writing teacher at City College, Brendan Costello, Jnr is a producer and personality on WBAI Radio. Brendan showed his “radio personality” side tonight singing tunes made famous by that other Costello, Elvis. After signing “What’s So Funny about Peace, Love and Understanding” and “New Lace Sleeves,” Brendan was joined by our favorite baritone Jack Di Monte, on the Buffalo Springfield song, “For What It’s Worth.”



For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.
