Happy Solstice! In this Midsummer Night's Dream of an episode, we chat with Hawley Hussey AKA Mermaid Hawley about the tall tales she likes to tell, scribbled on cocktail napkins in diners and beach boardwalks, some composed alone and some in community. Hawley traffics in love letters, breakup letters and thank you notes, which inspired her first book, or "language object" as she thinks of it, The Lonesome Threesome, published by Nauset Press (2024).
We recommend listening to this episode with the waves in the background.
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Hawley Hussey is a muti-disciplinary artist, year-round swimmer, and Coney Islander who works between the visual, the written word, the performing arts, and contemporary art education & activism. Here most recent publication The Lonesome Threesome (Nauset Press, 2023) is a hybrid memoir tells tales of “Survival! Lies! [and] Lust!” The book was derived from over 300 cocktail napkin notes created while driving alone from LA to Brooklyn. Hawley’s new writing project (and possibly next book with Nauset) is a collaborative writing project called: Men Die Sooner.
Hawley began her career with a residency & grant from the Women’s Studio Workshop in 1987 that lead to the creation of artist books including You Can Have Him, the Mansion is Mine and The Devil and Me that are now housed in numerous permanent and prestigious collections at The Smithsonian, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, The Library of Congress, and numerous Universities.
Arriving in NYC in the fall of 2000 she served as Education Coordinator and Director of Contemporary Art Education at BRIC Arts Media and as an Art Education Mentor for the New York State Council on the Arts.
Her work in art-ed and activism includes co-founding Bronx Envision Academy, launching HH:ArtLab at public schools across NYC (including PS 119 in Brooklyn and the International Community School in the Bronx), and serving as a teaching artist-in-residence at the Park Avenue Armory, and writing love/break-up/thank you letters for the public on the Coney Island boardwalk.
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Purchase your copy of The Lonesome Threesome !
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Press for The Lonesome Threesome:
- Nauset Press Overview
- Review in Chronogram: “5 Books to Read in September 2024”
- Heart felt reviews on Good Reads
Artist Books by Hawley Hussey:
- You Can Have Him, the Mansion is Mine (Women's Studio Workshop, 1987)
- The Devil and Me (Women's Studio Workshop, 1987)
Mentioned in this episode:
- The Redneck Way of Knowledge by Blanche McCrary Boyd
- Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
- Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar
- The Lure of the Local by Lucy Lipard
- The Swimmer (1968) film based on the short story “The Swimmer” by John Cheever (1964)
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Catch Meryl on tour with her debut What You Should Worry About. See which cities she's hitting next by following along on instagram @outerboroqn
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