The Hungry Intellectuals Club Selects Cris Cohen Book for 2011 Dinner Theme

The Raleigh book and supper club plans its 2011 Meals From The Market

Cover art by Darla Yancho

fundraising event.

July 11, 2011 (Durham, NC) — The Hungry Intellectuals, a book and supper club in Raleigh, NC, will hold another “Meals From The Market” dinner this year to help raise funds for Durham Central Park. And the members have voted Cris Cohen’s upcoming humor book, Staying Crazy To Keep From Going Insane, as the theme for their 2011 event.

Meals From The Market dinners are annual fundraisers that individuals and groups host in their homes. Ticket sales to the dinners support Durham Central Park’s preservation and cultural activities. Last year’s Hungry Intellectuals fundraising dinner helped buy new red benches for the park.

To make the annual event more fun for book club members, The Hungry Intellectuals select a book around which they create a theme for the dinner.

“The Hungry Intellectuals Book and Supper Club is very excited to use Cris’ book for our Meals From The Market 2011 dinner theme,” said club organizer Heather Curtis. “We are all too familiar with the idea of ‘staying crazy to keep from going insane!’ “

Cris Cohen of Cary, NC, is the humor columnist for the CaryCitizen.com and a prolific humor blogger. He is publishing his new book this year as a means to raise funds for a local baseball league for kids with special needs, including his own son. The book will be a compilation of humor columns he wrote for several newspapers when he lived in California before moving to Cary in 2008 and new ones he’s written since then. Proceeds from sales will be donated to the baseball league.

Staying Crazy To Keep From Going Insane has already been endorsed by Pulitzer Prize-winning humor author Dave Barry, New Yorker magazine cartoonist Drew Dernavich, and PEN/Faulker Prize-winning author T.C. Boyle.

Cohen was invited to speak to The Hungry Intellectuals, a group of “young professionals who enjoy reading, eating, drinking and debating,” this spring. They chose his book for their dinner theme afterward.

“I am very flattered that they chose my book for this year’s event,” said Cohen. “It is possible that this decision was the result of a computer error or that most members voted while intoxicated. Although, to be fair, I think that is how most bills make it through Congress.”

The Hungry Intellectuals’ 2011 Meals from the Market dinner is scheduled for Sunday, September 18.  The group hasn’t determined the exact location yet.

Durham Central Park is a downtown destination that offers a venue for cultural activities. It is also part of a 24-hour, walkable neighborhood for arts, recreation, and locally owned businesses. The Park includes The Great Lawn, The Pavilion (home of the Durham Farmers Market) and The Skate Park. For more information, visit www.durhamcentralpark.org.

For more information on The Hungry Intellectuals, visit http://www.meetup.com/The-Hungry-Intellectuals/.

For more information on Cris Cohen and Staying Crazy To Keep From Going Insane, visit www.stayingcrazy.com.

Cris Cohen To Speak To The Raleigh Women’s Book Club

Humor writer Cris Cohen will visit the popular book club twice in May. 

Cris Cohen

April 27, 2011 (Raleigh, NC) – Cris Cohen, the author of the humor blog “Nothing In Particular” and the soon-to-be-released book Staying Crazy To Keep From Going Insane, will be the featured guest at two May meetings of the Raleigh Women’s Coffee & Book Club.

Cohen wrote a popular humor column for several newspapers in California before he and his family moved to Cary, NC, in 2008. Since then, he’s been writing “Nothing In Particular: An incomplete waste of time” (criscohen.typepad.com), a blog that entertains readers with Cohen’s wry and often hilarious takes on any number of everyday subjects.

Recently, Cohen announced that he plans to publish a book this fall, which will be a collection of some of his best humor columns from his California years as well as new pieces he’s written in Cary. Proceeds from sales of Staying Crazy To Keep From Going Insane will be donated to a local baseball league for kids with special needs, including his own son, Max. Cohen will publish the book through the small press Tyrannosaurus Max Press that he co-owns with his wife Michele in Cary.

For the Raleigh Women’s Coffee & Book Club meetings on May 17 and May 19, Cohen says he’ll talk about how he got his start in writing for newspapers, the odd and funny experiences he’s had as a writer along the way, and his new journey into the precarious world of self-publishing.

“I appreciate them letting me visit and speak to them. I consider women, coffee, and books to be three key ingredients of happiness. Add in wine and a dessert item and I might stay long enough to warrant having my mail forwarded there,” said Cohen, who has already received endorsements for his book from Pen/Faulkner Award-winning author T.C. Boyle and Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist Dave Barry.

The Tuesday, May 17, Raleigh Women’s Coffee & Book Club meeting will be held at Loco Lu’s Coffeehouse, 5210 Hollyridge Drive. The Thursday, May 19, meeting will be held in the Starbucks at 3800 Lake Boone Trail.

The Raleigh Women’s Coffee & Book Club includes over 450 members ranging in age from 17 to 80. Some members join for the reading recommendations only while others attend the monthly discussions. The group meets at least once a month to share coffee and discuss the latest “book of the month” nominated by members of the club. For more information on the club, email Kimber Conners, book club organizer, at thekimberq@yahoo.com.

For more information on Cris Cohen, visit http://criscohen.typepad.com. For more information on his upcoming book, go to www.stayingcrazy.com.