Storytelling: How to Build a Fire at Puffin
Event Date and Time: February 24, 2023 7:00 pm
Cost: $0-$10
Location: 20 Puffin Way Teaneck, NJ
Tickets and Reservations
How to Build a Fire is a community storytelling series where a diverse group of individuals share real-life, personal narratives centered around a different theme each month. At times funny, at times sad, their stories weave together a broad illustration of the human experience. This February 24th, How To Build A Fire will take place at The Puffin Cultural Forum. Most month, How to Build a Fire takes place at Open Source Gallery -a welcoming, nurturing, intimate, safe environment- where, monthly, one can see a new exhibition installed by an array of up-and-coming and established visual artists.
This month’s storytellers are SD Smith (Owl), Lisa Levy, Chan Kim, Eleazar Guzman, Stacie Evans, and Lana Siebel.
SD Smith (Owl)
Steven D. Smith received his Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and his Doctorate of Jurisprudence from the University of California at Berkeley. Mr. Smith studied Mexican culture and history as a Pacific Rim scholar at the University of California, and has traveled and lived extensively in Latin America and the Caribbean, including Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Guyana and Ecuador. He has taught and lectured on a wide variety of subjects at Virginia Tech and the University of Richmond School of Law, including business law, science, and technology. He has also taught introductory law for high school students, and lectured on diverse subjects such as telecommunications policy, trade policy, environmental law, and the human rights of indigenous people. Mr. Smith is a member of the California bar and the Virginia bar, and has assisted Navajo, Tohono O’odham, and Guyanese villagers with major environmental issues in national courts and before Congress and the United Nations. He is the son of William Alfred Smith, Esquire, who spent his early childhood in the Ramapo mountains, and grandson of Ira Smith, a professor and educator from Hillburn, NY.
Lisa Levy
Lisa Levy is a comedian, conceptual artist, and (self-proclaimed) psychotherapist.
As a live performer, her most popular character is Dr. Lisa, the self-proclaimed psychotherapist. Currently, she hosts a weekly show on Radio Free Brooklyn, called “Dr. Lisa Gives a Sh*t” where she conducts funny, emotionally revealing “psychotherapy sessions” with a wide range of creative guests. You can listen to her show live every Thursday 2-3pm on RadioFreeBrooklyn.org. Lisa has performed at The Brooklyn Museum, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, Joe’s Pub and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She has been the subject of feature stories in numerous publications such as the New York Times and The London Times.
Her visual art has been widely exhibited at many venues including The New Museum, The Bronx Museum, SPRING/BREAK Art Fair, The Pulse Art Fair, The Brooklyn Academy of Music as well as many galleries and art fairs.
Chan Kim
Chan Kim is from South Korea but raised in the United States. He attended public school and continued his education at the Fashion Institute of Technology for Graphic Design. Creating visual communication (in space) is a practice that he enjoys. His time at Open Source Gallery and KoKo has helped him reinterpert integration, sustainability, and discourse. He hopes to cotinue expanding his understanding of community through personal experiences and working with others.
Elezar Guzman
Eleazar Guzman performs stand-up comedy on a professional level and features at the greatest comedy clubs in the country, but writing stories is his first passion. A master of brevity on and off the stage, Eleazar paints a vivid picture with the simplest of words while keeping even the most advanced reader engaged. His characters are the engines that drive his tales, but his concepts will keep you thinking of possibilities hours after you finish a book. If you like comprehensive short stories with bittersweet endings that read like the first chapter of a novel, you won’t go wrong with any of his titles. Options include but are not limited to science fiction, fantasy, action-adventure, horror, noir, historical fiction, mystery, and more!
Stacie Evans
Stacie Evans is co-host of How To Build A Fire Season 9 and is one of the four storytellers on February 24th.
Stacie Evans writes in long hand. With a fountain pen. Because she’s that girl: the wannabe homesteading, selectively Luddite girl who is addicted to her phone and regularly overshares online. She met James Baldwin in Paris … which will ever and always be the most glamorous and dramatic thing about her. Her writing has appeared in New South, After Ferguson, Bellingham Review, and The Rumpus.
Lana Siebel
Lana Siebel is co-host of How To Build A Fire Season 9. Lana Siebel performs all over the US, including NYC, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, NJ, Washington DC. She was selected as a featured comedian at The Connecticut Comedy Festival along with comedians such as Gilbert Gottfried, The Headliner Series in NY, The Punch Line Comedy Club in Philadelphia, as well as the Fairfield Comedy Club in Connecticut. As an actress, Lana is featured in numerous films and off Broadway plays. She studied acting at Lee Strasberg Institute and HB Studios with Austin Pendleton. Lana was also a competitive International Latin style Ballroom dancer ranked internationally and 7th in the US! She immigrated as a refugee from Kharkiv, Ukraine when she was seven years old with her family to Brooklyn, NY where she grew up and now resides
How To Build a Fire was founded be Terence Degnan. This year Stacie Evens and Lana Siebel will be co-curating and co-hosting. This program is supported by The Puffin Foundation.
COVID POLICY
• This event is open to a limited audience up to 70 persons.
• Proof of vaccination, ID, and properly fitting KN95 or N95 masks are required.
• Please review all our Covid and General policies here before attending.
• IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO ATTEND please contact us to cancel.