We are thrilled to host Westchester-based Ed Friedman for an evening of humor and reflection based on his new book, I Will Not Be Ignored. Ed may or may not be joined on stage by a rapporteur. In any case, he will read excerpts from his book and entertain questions or (friendly) comments from the audience.

Copies of I Will Not Be Ignored will be available for purchase and signing during the event.

This is event is free, but we ask for RSVPs so we can put out the correct number of chairs. If you prefer to stand, then no RSVP is necessary.

About the Book

I Will Not Be Ignored combines fiction, non-fiction and opinion to create a humorous take on three aspects of the author’s thinking: his outlook on the proliferation of “current wisdom” so plentiful in the internet age; his imaginings, providing multiple answers to different versions of “what if?”, and his personal experience in navigating his own shortcomings, failures, and fears.

About Ed

Bronx-born and bred, Ed is commitment-phobic when it comes to literary forms as he flits from short plays to short non-fiction, and to short fiction (at least he’s got the short thing down). He took up playwrighting during an interminable time spent backstage while playing the Pedant in a community theatre production of Taming of the Shrew.

Ed’s plays have had over forty staged productions throughout the NY metropolitan area, and around the country. His anthology Short Plays for Long Lives is published by Blue Moon Press. Ed’s monologues are included in the anthologies, Mother/Daughter Monologues: Midlife Catharsis (Gloria) and Urgent Maturity (Sarah) published by the International Centre for Women Playwrights. His monologue, Hannah, is published in Best Women’s Monologues for 2019. His play The Keys to Life has been adapted for the screen into a film of the same title by the Northern Virginia Film Co-op and is shown at independent film festivals. His prose has been seen in The New Croton Review, Slackjaw, Flash Fiction Magazine, Mocking Owl Roost, Bright Flash Literary Review, Fleas on the Dog, The Haven, Crow’s Feet, Best of Potato Soup Journal, Submittable, Door is a Jar, Bronx Memoir Project, Shady Grove Literary, Fresh Words, Libretto Magazine, Wicked Shadow Press, and The Bad Day Book.

Ed spent over 30 years in parallel careers serving the arts community, and older adults and their families. He has directed programs at senior centers and home care providers, and created and led a caregivers’ support group in the Bronx. As Deputy Director at the Bronx Council on the Arts, Ed played a leadership role in the formulation of policy and programming, advocacy, grantmaking, and community development. He later became the co-founder and first Executive Director of Lifetime Arts, a non-profit organization that encourages creative aging by promoting the inclusion of arts education programs in organizations that serve older adults. He received a B.A. in Psychology from Hunter College and an M.A. in Liberal Studies from Empire State University.

Ed resides in Peekskill, New York which is the furthest he’s ever lived from Yankee Stadium.