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Sign up todayThis Ain’t No Holiday Inn
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Learn moreDuring its heyday, the Chelsea Hotel in New York City was a home and safe haven for Bohemian artists, poets, and musicians such as Bob Dylan, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Janis Joplin, and Dee Dee Ramone.
This oral history of the famed hotel peers behind the iconic façade and delves into the mayhem, madness, and brilliance that stemmed from the hotel in the 1980s and 1990s.
Providing a window into the late Bohemia of New York during that time, countless interviews, and firsthand accounts adorn this social history of one of the most celebrated and culturally significant landmarks in New York City.
James Lough is the former director of the creative writing program at Savannah College of Art and Design, where he currently teaches full-time. He is the author of Sites of Insight, which won the Colorado Endowment of Humanities Award. He is also the winner of the Frank Waters Southwestern Writing Award for short fiction. Additionally, he is coeditor with Alex Stein of two anthologies of aphoristic and short-form poetry, Short Flights and Short Circuits, published respectively in 2015 and 2018 by Schaffner Press. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.
Read by John Rubinstein, Robertson Dean, Alex Hyde-White, Stefan Rudnicki, Paul Boehmer, Jim Meskimen, Arthur Morey, Gabrielle de Cuir, and Justine Eyre
Gabrielle de Cuir is a Grammy-nominated and Audie Award-winning producer whose narration credits include the voice of Valentine in Orson Scott Card’s Ender novels, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan, and Natalie Angier’s Woman, for which she was awarded AudioFile magazine’s Golden Earphones Award. She lives in Los Angeles where she also directs theatre and presently has several projects in various stages of development for film.
Robertson Dean has recorded hundreds of audiobooks in most every genre. He's been nominated for several Audie Awards, won eight Earphones Awards, and was named one of AudioFile magazine's Best Voices of 2010. He lives in Los Angeles, where he records books and acts in film, TV, and (especially) on stage.
Justine Eyre has turned her passion for reading and remarkable facility with accents into her dream career. This classically trained, multilingual actress has narrated well over 400 audiobooks and has been honored to receive a coveted Audie Award and multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards. Appearing in leading roles onstage in King Lear and The Crucible, she has also graced the screen in Two and Half Men and Mad Men amongst her many television credits.
Alex Hyde-White is an actor and a producer of two films and hundreds of audiobooks thru his label Punch Audio.
Jim Meskimen is a stage, film, and television actor who has appeared in many well-known movies and television shows. He acted in Apollo 13 and Frost/Nixon for director Ron Howard, both of which were nominated for Best Picture Oscars. His television appearances include The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Friends, Lie to Me, Criminal Minds, and Parks and Recreation. He is also a painter, award-winning audiobook narrator, and audiobook director for Galaxy Audio.
Arthur Morey has recorded over two hundred audiobooks in history, fiction, science, business, and religion, earning a number of AudioFile Earphones Awards and two Audie Award nominations. He was an editor at two publishers and has taught writing at Northwestern University. His plays and songs have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Milan, where he has also performed. Arthur attended Harvard and the University of Chicago.
Kevin Baker is the author of one previous novel, Sometimes You See It Coming, and served as chief historical researcher for the recently published The American Century by Harold Evans. He is married and lives in New York City.
John Rubenstein won a Theater World Award, a Tony, and a Drama Desk Award for his performances in Pippin and Children of a Lesser God.
Stefan Rudnicki is an award winning audiobook narrator, director and producer. He was born in Poland and now resides in Studio City, California. He has narrated more than three hundred audiobooks and has participated in over a thousand as a writer, producer, or director. He is a recipient of multiple Audie Awards and AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as a Grammy Award, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Ray Bradbury Award. He received AudioFile’s award for 2008 Best Voice in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Along with a cast of other narrators, Rudnicki has read a number of Orson Scott Card's best-selling science fiction novels. He worked extensively with many other science fiction authors, including David Weber and Ben Bova. In reviewing the twentieth anniversary edition audiobook of Card’s Ender's Game, Publishers Weekly stated, "Rudnicki, with his lulling, sonorous voice, does a fine job articulating Ender's inner struggle between the kind, peaceful boy he wants to be and the savage, violent actions he is frequently forced to take." Rudnicki is also a stage actor and director.
Reviews
“I think the Chelsea would be a trifle wearing as a place to live, but it’s a blast to read about.”
“Throughout the book, Lough provides some wonderful descriptions of the building itself, which has come to mean so much to so many people.”
“This exuberant oral history focuses on the period 1980-1995, arguably the landmark’s final stretch as a haven for bohemian misfits. Lough arranges anecdotes from interviews with dozens of hotel ‘veterans, ' whose memories are peppered with cameos of famous fixtures…Lough’s conversational style connects narrative threads as he bemoans the creative conditions in contemporary NYC and wonders can ‘counterculture survive in an atmosphere almost entirely comprised of wealth?’"
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