Blue Bicycle Books, Charleston, SC

Amber Tamblyn’s Dark Sparkler, Thurs., Feb. 25

DarkSparkler hc c

Join us Thurs., Feb. 25, 6 pm at Blue Bicycle Books, 420 King St., downtown Charleston, as author and actress Amber Tamblyn reads from her poetry collection Dark Sparkler (Harper Perennial, pb., $18).

About the book: A lifelong performer from a Hollywood family, actress Amber Tamblyn (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Two and a Half Men) is also an established poet who has studied with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Hirschman and others.

As a working actress, she is also deeply fascinated—and intimately familiar—with the costs of fame and the demands placed on young women in movies and on television. An initially casual interest in the lives and disappointments of actresses before her time—tragic stories of suicide, murder, obscurity, and other forms of death—inspired this collection of poetic portraits of thirty actresses famous and obscure. Featuring subjects like Brittany Murphy, Marilyn Monroe, and Jane Mansfield—and paired with original artwork by David Lynch, Adrian Tomine, Marilyn Manson, and Marcel Dzama—Dark Sparkler is a surprising and thought-provoking collection.

About the author: Amber Tamblyn recently wrapped up a successful stint on the hit CBS-TV series Two and a Half Men, and has been nominated for the Emmy, Golden Globe, and Independent Spirit awards. She has published two previous books, Free Stallion (2005), which won the Borders Book Choice Award for Breakout Writing, and Bang Ditto (2009), an IndieNext bestseller. A contributor to the Poetry Foundation and Bust, Tamblyn’s work has been published in InterviewCosmopolitan, the San Francisco ChroniclePoets & Writers, Pank and elsewhere. She lives in New York with her husband, comedian David Cross.

“With a drummer’s approach to wording and a coroner’s attention to bodily detail, Amber Tamblyn’s tragicomic dead girl poems are a thoughtful, ghoulish kick.” —Sarah Vowell

“Ms. Tamblyn has a gift for words.” —Quentin Tarantino

Amber Tamblyn - credit Katie Jacobs