Event Description

Join us for a reading & signing of Thom Nickels’ new book Learning To Do a Bad Thing Well: Looking for Johnny Bobbitt.

About the Book
This is the story of Johnny Bobbitt and the homeless scene in Philadelphia’s Riverwards neighborhood as told by an intimate friend of Bobbitt’s. Nickels was there. He entertained Bobbitt at home; he knew his secrets. He knew Bobbitt’s friends; he followed them and recorded their stories for his newspaper columns as they went ‘down the way’ into Kensington to score drugs or to hustle men or women for sex and money. He observed their lives, their fights, their struggles with police and security guards as well as their various turf wars with other homeless men.

About the Author
Thom Nickels is the author of 13 books, including Philadelphia Architecture, Out in History, Two Novellas and Literary Philadelphia: A History of Prose & Poetry in the City of Brotherly Love. His poetry has been published in Van Gogh’s Ear, an anthology of new voices in prose and poetry published in Paris. He was awarded the Philadelphia AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism in 2005. He was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in 1990 for his book, Two Novellas: Walking Water & After All This. He has been published by The Huffington Post, The New Oxford Review, Philadelphia Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Broad Street Review. He is a columnist for PJ Media in Los Angeles, and a weekly columnist for the Philadelphia Free Press and The Irish Edition. His essay on Agnes Repplier was the cover feature essay in the Winter issue of The American Catholic Studies Journal (Villanova University), 2015. His book Philadelphia Mansions: Stories and Characters behind the Walls was published in March 2018. In May 2017 he was the featured speaker at Walt Whitman’s 198th birthday celebration in the poet’s old home on Mickle Street in Camden.

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