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Shop nowGrand Central Winter, Expanded Second Edition
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Learn moreIn the underground tunnels below Grand Central Terminal, Lee Stringer—homeless and drug-addicted for eleven years—found a pencil to run through his crack pipe. One day he used it to write. Soon writing became a habit that won out over drugs, and before long Stringer had created one of the most powerful urban memoirs of our time.
With humane wisdom and a biting wit, Stringer chronicles the unraveling of his seemingly secure existence as a marketing executive and his odyssey of survival on the streets of New York. Whether he is portraying "God's corner," as he calls 42nd Street, or his friend Suzi, a hooker and "past-due tourist" whose infant he sometimes babysits, whether he recounts taking shelter underneath Grand Central by night and collecting cans by day or making a living hawking Street News on the subway, Lee Stringer conveys the vitality and complexity of a down-and-out life.
Rich with small acts of kindness, humor, and even heroism amid violence and desperation, Grand Central Winter offers a touching portrait of our shared humanity.
Lee Stringer’s journey from childhood homelessness in the 1960s to adult homelessness in the ’80s to his present career as a writer and lecturer, as told in Sleepaway School and Grand Central Winter, is one of the great odysseys of contemporary American life and letters. Stringer, the only board member of Project Renewal who is also a former patient of the facility, has demonstrated that writers are made, not born. He is the two-time recipient of the Washington Irving Award and, in 2005, a Lannan Foundation Residency. He is a former editor and columnist of Street News. His essays and articles have appeared in a variety of other publications, including the Nation, New York Times, and Newsday. He lives in Mamaroneck, New York, where he also serves on the board of the Mamaroneck Public Libraries.
Kevin Kenerly, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, earned a BA at Olivet College. A longtime member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he has acted in more than twenty seasons, playing dozens of roles.
Reviews
“Stringer knows full well that freedom begins between the ears. It is the discovery of this freedom that liberates the heart.”
“[Lee Stringer’s] writing is edgy and pointed and sometimes startlingly funny.”
“Grand Central Winter contains surprisingly entertaining vignettes, as the author is blessed with a light touch as well as empathy for his fellow down and out. You can imagine his characters—hookers and junkies and people who’ve fallen just off the edge—in a lyrical, neo-realist Disney film about New York.”
“While such vivid observations would be impressive for any writer, they seem nearly miraculous when you consider that they were drafted while the author was living on the street under the duress of drug addiction.”
“The book gives full humanity to its troubled characters and homes in on the motivations, strategies, and relationships of people surviving on the streets.”
“A unique and incisive memoir of street life that neatly eviscerates all stereotypical images of the homeless…Stringer’s crisp detail, straight-no-chaser wit, and uncompromising frankness are as bracing as his subject is significant.”
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