East End Fringe Festival To Provide “Theatre On The Edge” This Summer

Literary lovers put down your latest read and head to the Madison Theatre at Molloy College in Rockville Centre for the third annual Long Island LitFest “Word Up” on Sunday, March 26th. The Island’s first literary festival presents a day of writing workshops and live readings by best-selling authors, columnists, and writers. This year will feature Pulitzer Prize winning humorist Dave Barry, international acclaimed author of Passages, Gail Sheehy, and many more incredible authors!

General admission is $40 and includes two sessions of author talks and readings, plus two introductory workshops on essay writing and storytelling. Both begin at 12 p.m., just before the full day of author readings, talks, and book signings which start at 1 p.m. Other featured authors include Kelly Carlin, Steven Gaines, Caroline Leavitt, and Bill Scheft, with Friars Club historian and author Barry Dougherty as the afternoon’s emcee. For more information, visit longislandlitfest.com.

And, if you’re already a fan of LitFest, mark your calendar for East End Fringefest which will make its debut this summer to provide a diverse and intimate theatrical event at the historic Vail-Leavitt Music Hall.

“We are so excited about presenting the East End Fringe Festival in Riverhead this summer,” said Debbie Slevin, Artistic Director.

This new event serves as a cultural and community development effort and is dedicated to connecting adventurous emerging and established artists. This Festival helps foster the growth of creative arts on Long Island, and will run from July 26 through August 6, 2017.

“The festival is not just about presenting new plays to a new audience,” added Slevin. “It’s a unique opportunity to use theater as a communal event to entertain, inform, unite people with different opinions, pose new questions, try to answer some old ones and ultimately, to make you think, laugh… and possibly cry.”

Prior to the inaugural Fringefest, the Festival will host The Future is Female Festival on Thursday, March 23rd at the Dark Horse Restaurant (1 East Main Street, Riverhead). The twist on ladies night will showcase monologues, songs, skits and more for and about women, with special guest appearances from Minerva Perez, Executive Director of OLA (Organización Latino-Americana) and Sharon Weeks, whose letter to Wisconsin’s Leader-Telegram on “What Young Women May Not Know” went viral with over 600 thousand likes on Facebook.

For more information, visit www.eastendfringefest.com.