Three Poetry and Book Events (Bonus: One Is About Pie!) for the Week of August 18-24

See also: Five Amazing Zines From the Denver Zine Library

If the late-summer heat is making you lazy, Hampton Sides's In the Kingdom of Ice will take you someplace bitter cold: His book recounts a failed nineteenth-century arctic voyage to the North Pole via the Bering Strait, financed by New York Herald owner James Gordon Bennett Jr. and led by US naval officer George Washington De Long. Like others who'd attempted to discover the Northwest Passage, the crew of the Jeannette found themselves locked in ice for months; when the ship finally broke up, they began a brutal trek by foot and by boat to the Siberian coast. Sides, whose previous books have covered everything from the Bataan Death March to the history of frontiersman Kit Carson, offers a detailed account of what the men of the Jeannette encountered along the way.

Everyone can get down with a piece of pie, and pie-baker Teeny Lamothe spreads the gospel of her Washington, D.C. kitchen, Teeny Pies -- "eat pie. be happy. eat more pie" -- in a new cookbook from Workman books. Teeny will talk crust and filling tonight at the Tattered Cover and perhaps send happy bakers home with the book to roll some dough of their own. It's peach season, people.

Denver Mercury presents Jeanann Verlee and Ian Khadan Mercury Cafe 7:30-11:30 p.m. Sunday, August 24 $5 donation

With the 2014 nationals behind us, the Denver Mercury Poetry Slam will start all over with another year of weekly open mics, slams and featured poets. The crew will kick it off with a bang, by bringing in a stellar pair of New York poets, both of whom boast longtime stage careers and lengthy resumes. Want to try your hand on the stage? Sign up at 7:30, or just crowd in to listen at 8 p.m.

What's on the next page in Denver's literary world? Visit Westword's Literary Event listings for this week.

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