Also this issue: Fit To Print The self-publishers converging on Zine Fest resist the rise of the machines. -Patrick Rapa Chinese Ceramics Today Hide Sadohara: New Work Chinese ceramicists reflect the country’s changing cultural climate. A local artist complements their vision. -Susan Hagen Swoosh -Lori Hill Nrityagram Dance Ensemble -Deni Kasrel Bridging the Gap -Dana Procaccino Puppetry of the Penis -Deni Kasrel 1776 -Steve Cohen Mao in the Boardroom: Marketing Genius From The Mind Of The Master Guerrilla -Andrew Parks

July 10-16, 2003

artpicks

E. Lynn Harris

At first, novelist E. Lynn Harris' new What Becomes of the Brokenhearted (Doubleday) moves just like one of his naughty, chatty soap operas -- its young, black professional main character coming up from a closeted gay childhood in Arkansas, through self-publishing and selling books from the back of a car and finally to the triumph of being a New York Times best-selling author. That's the feel of his last two African-American showbiz-focused novels. It's par for the course, until you realize that Brokenhearted is his autobiography. But Harris' life has been so triumphant because of his willingness to detail the deeply depressing circumstances that led him to stirring works like Invisible Life and Just As I Am. Perhaps more telling than even this autobiography (and it's telling), Harris' well-off characters always seem one step away from closeted, soul-crushing disaster. And that makes Harris, the winner of 2000's James Baldwin Award for Literary Excellence, at one with his heroes.

E. Lynn Harris, Tue., July 15, 7 p.m., free, Free Library of Philadelphia, 19th and Vine sts., 215-567-4341.

—A.D. Amorosi