Benefit Reading for Rita Project

Mariel Hemingway will serve as the Mistress of Ceremonies at a Benefit Reading for Rita Project. The reading will commence at 8:00pm, followed by a 9:30pm book signing.

Rita Project is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization devoted to using the arts to help bring an end to suicide and to celebrate life. Through Rita Studios, Rita Exhibitions, Rita Workshops, and Rita Reach, the organization uses the arts to foster healing, to raise public awareness of mental health and the importance of the arts, and to assist with suicide prevention education.

The benefit reading will be hosted by the illustrious Mariel Hemingway, author of Finding My Balance, A Memoir. Sarah Arvio (Visits from the Seventh), Maud Casey (The Shape of Things to Come), Nell Casey (Unholy Ghost), Edward Hirsch (Lay Back the Darkness) and Andrew Solomon (The Noonday Demon) will be reading works by artists who have died of suicide or struggled with mental illness, and will then read a piece of their own. The focus of the material will commemorate death, contemplate art and celebrate life.

Kim Strouse founded Rita Project when her sister Kristin Rita Strouse, then a freshman at Parson’s School of Design, took her own life. At the age of 24, Kim was able to transform her grief into hope by creating Rita Project.

The benefit is sponsored by the AFSP (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention), Greenwich House Pottery, the Biography Bookstore and Knopf Publishers.