Mick Cochrane launches his new poetry collection and BABEL goes to the movies as two films based on Sigrid Nunez novels screen at Hallwalls.


Tuesday, Oct. 6, 6 p.m.: BABEL at the Movies: The Friend

Join Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center and Just Buffalo Literary at Hallwalls Cinema, 341 Delaware Ave Tuesday for a free screening of The Friend in advance of Sigrid Nunez’s BABEL visit on Wednesday, October 15.

Adapted from Nunez’s award-winning novel of the same name, The Friend stars Naomi Watts, Bill Murray, and an astonishingly talented Great Dane.

Directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, 2024. Distributed by Bleecker Street Media. Runtime: 120 minutes

Register to attend at justbuffalo.org.

Tuesday, October 6, 7 p.m.: Mick Cochrane will read from his new collection of poems How to Sacrifice (Foundlings Press) at a book launch, question and answer session, book signing, with reception afterwards at the Grupp Fireside Lounge in the Richard E. Winter Student Center at Canisius University, 80 Hughes Avenue in Buffalo.

The event is free and open to the public.

About the Author

Mick Cochrane is professor emeritus at Canisius University in Buffalo, NY, where he taught literature and writing for many years. He is the author of four novels Flesh Wounds, Sport, The Girl Who Threw Butterflies and Fitz.

He has also published stories, essays, and poems in a wide variety of journals and anthologies.

Wednesday, Oct. 7, p.m.: 6 p.m.: The Buffalo and Erie County Public Library presents MOVEMENTS, a Banned Books Week Conversation with with Rashad Robinson and Buffalo-area multimedia and investigative journalist, the correct spelling of her name is I’Jaz Ja’ciel.

This program is free & open to the public, but registration is required at buffalolib.libcal.com. This program is sponsored by the Library Foundation of Buffalo & Erie County and will be held at the Auditorium of the Central Branch, 1 Lafayette Square, Buffalo NY 14203.

Rashad Robinson has spent more than twenty years at the highest levels of two of the defining movements of our time: the fight for LGBTQ rights and the fight for racial justice. He led Color of Change for nearly fourteen years, growing it from a startup into a national force, and before that ran programs at GLAAD during the fights over marriage equality and media representation.

Much of that work has turned on a question public libraries know intimately: Who decides which stories get told, and which ones quietly disappear? Robinson has spent his career on the machinery behind that decision: the studios, the platforms, the algorithms, the boardrooms. The same question drives the record wave of book challenges now moving through schools and libraries across the country, where the titles pulled from shelves are overwhelmingly by and about Black, brown, and LGBTQ people.

Banned Books Week asks what happens when a story is removed, and Robinson’s work asks the harder follow-up: Who had the power to remove it, and what would it take to take that power back?

Robinson’s new book, From Presence to Power: How to Take On the Fights That Matter–and Win (One World / Penguin Random House), is a national bestseller built on a hard distinction: Being seen is not the same as having leverage.

Wednesday, Oct. 7, 6 p.m.:BABEL at the Movies: The Room Next Door

Join Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center and Just Buffalo Literary at Hallwalls Cinema, 341 Delaware Ave Tuesday for a free screening of The Room Next Door with talkback led by Girish Shambu, in advance of Sigrid Nunez’ BABEL visit on Wednesday, October 15.

Adapted from Nunez’ award-winning novel What Are You Going Through, The Room Next Door stars the inimitable Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. It is Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature film, and the winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival.
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar, 2024

Distributed by Bleecker Street Media

Runtime: 107 minutes

Register to attend at justbuffalo.org.

Wednesday, Oct. 7, 7 p.m.: Steve McCaffery will read from his work in the Salon Series of readings and talks curated by Olivier Delrieu Schulze at Fitz Books and Waffles, 1462 Main St. in Buffalo.

Free and open to the public. The reading coincides with an ongoing exhibit of visual and media art work by McCaffery and poet Karen Mac Cormack at Fitz Books.

About the Author

Stephen McCaffery is a Canadian poet and scholar who held the David Gray Chair at the University at Buffalo prior to his retirement in 2024. Prior to that time, he had been a professor at York University.

McCaffery was born in Sheffield, England and lived in the UK for most of his youth attending University of Hull.

He moved to Toronto in 1968. In 1970, he began to collaborate with fellow poets Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Paul Dutton, and bpNichol, forming the sound-poetry group, The Four Horsemen. Some of McCaffery’s poetry attempts to break language from the logic of syntax and structure to create a purely emotional response.He has created three-dimensional structures of words and has released a number of sound and video works, often in collaboration with other poets.

McCaffery is the author of over thirty books, including Sound Poetry: A Catalogue (edited with bpNichol, 1978); North of Intention: Critical Writings 1973–1986 (1986); Theory of Sediment (1991, nominated for a Governor General’s Award); Imagining Language (edited with Jed Rasula, 2001); Prior to Meaning: The Protosematic and Poetics (2001); Language to Cover a Wall (edited with Michael Basinski & Karen Mac Cormack, 2011); and Carnival: The Complete Edition (2021).

Wednesday, Oct. 7, 7:30 p.m.: CFI Literary Café Series reading hosted by poet Ryki Zuckerman and featuring poet and singer-songwriter Maria Sebastian reading from her work and performing a few of her songs at The Center for Inquiry, 1310 Sweet Home Rd. in Amherst, NY.

Ten additional reading slots available. The event is free and open to the public.

About the Author

About the Author

Maria Sebastian is a Buffalo Music Hall of Fame singer/songwriter and poet who teaches English and public speaking at various WNY colleges. She is the author of three chapbooks of poems, the most recent of which is The Scenery of Saviors published in 2019 by Finishing Line Press.