On June 7th, The Sunset Reading Series will present poet/ memoirist Nick Flynn. The series, which began this year with a reading by poet Jeffrey McDaniel, is rapidly becoming one of the best cultural events around. The audience sat rapt as McDaniel, preceded by local Haldane High School student Kimberly Hyatt and Sarah Lawrence College student Natalie Park, read his powerful, and often hilarious, work. Afterwards, the crowd enjoyed wine donated by Yannitelli Wines and Liquors and cheeses from Homespun in Beacon while taking in the stunning locale on the banks of the Hudson.

Nick Flynn is a poet (Some Ether, Blind Huber) whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, NPR's This American Life and The New York Times Book Review. His memoir won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, was short-listed for France's Prix Femina, and has been translated into 13 languages; see www.nickflynn.org. Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River, says of Flynn's memoir, "What a piece of work. I don't usually like memoirs but if they were all like Nick Flynn's, eloquent, funny, unsentimental, and bravely inventive, I'd read them by the truck load". The memoir tells how Flynn, aged 27, ran into his own father, who'd he met only twice before, while working at a homeless shelter. Flynn is currently working on a new memoir, The Ticking is the Bomb, to be published in 2010.

Nick Flynn will read with Haldane student Stefano Guida and Sarah Lawrence College student Clementine Breslin, 4pm at Chapel of Our Lady Restoration, 45 Market St. Cold Spring, adjacent to the Cold Spring Metro-North Station. A free wine and cheese reception will follow, during which the Quadrinnial flotilla will pass by.