Book Talk with Gerry Yukevich (Ivan Cox)
On Thursday, July 28th, at 4:30pm, come to the West Tisbury Library for a book talk with local author Gerry Yukevich (pen name Ivan Cox) as he presents his newly released novel, Blood Pudding, Confessions of an Immigrant Boy, Pittsburgh, 1920. The author will play a Chopin nocturne on the piano, followed by a reading and then Q&A. This event is free and open to the public. Books will be for sale by Edgartown Books.
About the book:
Blood Pudding renders vividly, at times violently, the raw struggles of the colorful Malinowski family, immigrants from Poland. Gritty, patient, always loving, their son Tad runs a gauntlet of painful and humiliating boyhood cruelties. Above Tad’s clear voice, we hear the cold constant heartbeat of a growing industrial city, whose restless yet noble soul surely resides in the lives of these very immigrants.
About the author:
Gerry Yukevich (Ivan Cox) grew up near Pittsburgh in Steubenville, Ohio. He went to Kiski School, Princeton University, and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. He finished his medical training in Boston at the N.E. Deaconess Hospital and received his M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health. For twenty years, he practiced emergency medicine at Boston area hospitals and pursued literary and theatrical interests in the city.
Gerry was the publisher of Alpha-Bête, a free-form art sheet, and he founded The Buster-Scimitar Garden and Grotto Theater, which specialized in performing European farce and original American plays. During this period he served intermittently as a ship’s doctor in the Caribbean and the Pacific.
He moved with his wife Martha and their daughter Anna to Martha’s Vineyard in 1995. He has practiced medicine on the island ever since, while writing novels, farces, and screenplays. He is a longtime supporter of the MV Playhouse, and every June 16 he acts in Arts and Society’s “Bloomsday Pageant.” Gerry/Ivan’s essays, reviews and doggerel appear periodically in the Vineyard Gazette and the MV Times.
His screenplay Death Dose was selected as a finalist of the Boston Screenwriting Contest and now also a finalist at Reno Tahoe Screenplay Contest. Death Dose takes place on Martha’s Vineyard (kind of like Jaws, but without the shark). In addition to Blood Pudding, Gerry wrote Cruise Ship Doctor.
Recently, The Princeton Alumni Weekly has honored Gerry with Featured Author status with a passage from Blood Pudding in the June issue. Also, Littsburgh, a literary website, which features Pittsburgh authors and stories, is featuring Blood Pudding in their current issue.