PEN AMERICA In Conversation with Adam Nelson Author of Huckleberry Jim During Banned Books Week 202610/8/2026  PEN America features author Adam Nelson in The PEN Ten, an interview exploring his debut novel, Huckleberry Jim, the enduring influence of Mark Twain, the responsibility of the writer, and the relationship between literature, history, and freedom of expression.
At heart, Huckleberry Jim is a two-hander. Set in 1991, the novel follows a twenty-two-year-old white actor and a fifty-five-year-old Black actor touring a production of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through American schools. As the two men travel together, the tensions of Twain's nineteenth-century masterpiece collide with the racial and cultural conflicts of the twentieth century. Inspired by Nelson's own experiences performing Huckleberry Finn for schoolchildren in 1991, the novel took five and a half years to complete and was published October 6, 2026, during Banned Books Week. A Publishers Weekly BookLife Editor's Pick, Huckleberry Jim was also named a 2026 William Faulkner–William Wisdom Novel Semifinalist and longlisted for The Masters Review Novel Excerpt Prize. Thank you to PEN America for featuring Nelson in The PEN Ten and for its longstanding commitment to defending writers and freedom of expression. READ THE FULL INTERVIEW: https://pen.org/adam-nelson-the-pen-ten-interview/ Huckleberry Jim is available now in hardcover, paperback, and ebook through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and independent bookstores nationwide. Audiobook published by Blackstone Publishing. PURCHASE YOUR COPY: https://www.huckleberryjimbook.com/ #PENAmerica #ThePENTen #HuckleberryJim #AdamNelson #BannedBooksWeek
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As Huckleberry Jim approaches publication on October 6, author Adam Nelson will join John Chrastka, founder and Executive Director of EveryLibrary, for a special EveryLibrary Live! Banned Books Week 2026 conversation examining books, readers, censorship and the freedom to read.
It is an especially fitting conversation for Huckleberry Jim. Set in 1991 and inspired by Nelson’s own experience touring a two-man production of Huckleberry Finn to schoolchildren, the novel places Twain’s most contested work inside another American moment of argument over race, language, censorship and what young people should be allowed to encounter. The conversation will go beyond individual book challenges to larger questions: What do we lose when books become something people are encouraged to fear rather than explore? What happens when writers begin anticipating censorship before a book is even published? And what kind of culture around books and reading are we creating for the next generation? Chrastka brings a remarkable perspective to that discussion. In addition to founding EveryLibrary, he is a longtime library trustee and advocate, a former Director for Membership Development at the American Library Association, and was named a Library Journal Mover & Shaker. EveryLibrary’s complete Banned Books Week 2026 programming can be found here: https://www.everylibrary.org/bannedbooksweek2026 Huckleberry Jim publishes October 6, 2026, during Banned Books Week. 
150 Years After Tom Sawyer, Adam Nelson’s “Huckleberry Jim” Launches Where Twain’s America Began9/27/2026  Nelson’s debut novel arrives at the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum during Banned Books Week, as America marks its 250th year
One hundred fifty years after “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” introduced the world to the children, river, humor, and contradictions of Mark Twain’s Hannibal, author Adam Nelson will launch his debut novel and Publishers Weekly BookLife Editor’s Pick, “Huckleberry Jim,” at the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum located at 120 Main St, Hannibal, Missouri on Saturday, October 10, 2026 at 5pm. The event takes place during a convergence that will not come again. Inspired by real events, “Huckleberry Jim” publishes on October 6, 2026—during Banned Books Week, in the year of America’s Semiquincentennial and the 150th anniversary of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” It also lands on Columbus Day weekend, placing a novel about the stories America tells itself inside another contested account of American beginnings. Samuel Clemens, the real man behind the Twain pen name, carried Hannibal with him for the rest of his life. Its Mississippi riverbanks provided the source of his boyhood adventures and imagination. His childhood friends became Huck, Tom, and Becky. Hannibal’s humor, violence, freedom, cruelty, and contradictions influenced his literary classics that followed. The Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum preserves the physical grounds from which “The Father of American Literature” emerged. Now a new American novel enters that unfinished conversation in the place where Twain first encountered it. Set in 1991, “Huckleberry Jim” follows two actors—Axel Emerson, a twenty-two-year-old white actor fresh out of conservatory, and Moses Morton, a fifty-five-year-old Black actor with a lifetime of stages behind him—on a children’s tour of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” through upstate New York and Appalachia. As the two-man company drives from one school gymnasium to another, performing Twain’s text to American children in the year of Anita Hill, Rodney King’s arrest, and the height of the culture wars, the road between them becomes a confrontation with performance, fatherhood, inherited history, and what it costs to play another man’s part. “Huckleberry Jim” is a reckoning with race and the bedtime stories America tells itself to sleep at night. Publishers Weekly BookLife Editor’s Pick: “Adam Nelson’s incisive, provocative, and robustly American debut… honors the fathoms-deep American divisions that Twain marked and urges us to look closer rather than away. For readers of Percival Everett’s ‘James’ and Paul Beatty’s ‘The Sellout.’” “The Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum is proud to welcome Adam Nelson to Hannibal and our historic campus. Mr. Nelson’s ‘Huckleberry Jim’ demonstrates the continued relevance of Twain’s stories throughout history. We are honored that Mr. Nelson chose this American cultural landmark as a launch spot for his debut literary novel.” — Mark Schneider, Development and Marketing Manager, Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum “To launch ‘Huckleberry Jim’ in Hannibal is to bring the novel to the ground from which its questions first rose,” said Nelson. “This is where Twain encountered the river, voices, children, and contradictions that became his America. One hundred fifty years later, we are still arguing over who these books belong to, what they ask of us, and whether children should be allowed to read them. ‘Huckleberry Jim’ was written inside that argument. There is no more meaningful place for its public life to begin.” “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” — Mark Twain, “Innocents Abroad” Nelson will read from the novel and join a public conversation about Twain, the true 1991 tour behind the fiction, the demands of performing an American classic, and what changes—and what refuses to change—when that classic passes from one generation to the next. The program will include audience questions and a book signing. EVENT INFORMATION Saturday, October 10, 2026 @ 5 PM Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum · 120 North Main Street · Hannibal, Missouri Free with reservations. Seating is limited. FORMATS AND AVAILABILITY Hardcover · $28.00 · ISBN 979-8-9963450-3-8 Trade Paperback · $18.99 · ISBN 979-8-9963450-0-7 Ebook (EPUB) · $11.99 · ISBN 979-8-9963450-1-4 Audiobook, unabridged · Blackstone Publishing The audiobook is narrated by Leon Nixon under senior audio producer Grover Gardner, with an introduction recorded by Adam Nelson. ADAM NELSON Adam Nelson has lived at the intersection of performance and American storytelling for more than three decades—as an actor, filmmaker, communications executive, and educator. Founder of Workhouse, the New York public relations agency he has run since 1999, Nelson is also a professor at the New Jersey Film Academy, a merit winner of the Writer’s Digest International Screenplay Competition, and co-founder of “Socko! Magazine.” His award-winning film work includes “Food for Thought,” directed by Gary Hanna. “Huckleberry Jim” draws on his own 1991 tour performing a two-man “Huckleberry Finn” for schools across the Northeast. THE MARK TWAIN BOYHOOD HOME & MUSEUM The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal, Missouri, preserves and interprets the places that shaped one of America’s most influential writers. Operated by the nonprofit Mark Twain Home Foundation, the Museum maintains eight historic buildings and related sites connected to Mark Twain’s life, family, and literary imagination. The Mark Twain Boyhood Home has been open to the public since 1912, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is designated a National Historic Landmark. The Foundation’s mission is to promote awareness and appreciation of the life and works of Mark Twain and to demonstrate the continuing relevance of his stories and ideas to citizens of the world. Learn more at marktwainmuseum.org. WORKHOUSE EDITIONS Workhouse Editions is an independent literary publisher based in New York and London, distributed by Ingram and a member of the Independent Book Publishers Association. Adam Nelson Brings ‘Huckleberry Jim’ To Philadelphia — And The Former Grounds of His Alma Mater9/27/2026  Thirty-five years after leaving Philadelphia with a theater degree and setting out on the journey that would eventually become "Huckleberry Jim," author Adam Nelson is coming back to where it began.
On Wednesday, Oct 21, 2026, from 7–9 p.m., Nelson will return to the former campus of the University of the Arts for a special Philadelphia celebration of "Huckleberry Jim" at the Village of Industry & Art, 320 S. Broad Street. It is more than another stop on a book tour. Nelson earned his BFA in Theater from the University of the Arts in 1991. The people he encountered there and the creative life he discovered in Philadelphia became part of the personal history from which "Huckleberry Jim" would eventually emerge. The novel looks back at precisely that year—and at a twenty-two-year-old actor stepping out of school and into an America he does not yet understand. Now Nelson returns to the same historic S. Broad Street grounds, transformed following the University’s abrupt closure in 2024 into the Village of Industry & Art, a new creative community conceived to keep artists and cultural workers at the center of the site. “There is a beautiful circularity to this,” said Nelson. “I came to Philadelphia to learn how to become an actor. I left in '91 and almost immediately began accumulating the experiences that would eventually become "Huckleberry Jim." Thirty-five years later, I’m coming back with the book. The University may no longer exist as we knew it, but the ground is still here. The history is still here. And, wonderfully, artists are here again.” The Philadelphia homecoming follows the novel’s Oct 6 publication during Banned Books Week and its official Oct 10 launch at the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal, Missouri. The timing places "Huckleberry Jim" at an unusual intersection: America’s 250th year, the 150th anniversary of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," and thirty-five years since the turbulent American moment in which Nelson has set his story. Inspired by Nelson’s own experience as a young actor touring a two-man production of "Huckleberry Finn" to American schoolchildren, "Huckleberry Jim" follows twenty-two-year-old Axel Emerson and fifty-five-year-old Black actor Moses Morton as they carry Twain’s controversial American classic through schools in upstate New York and Appalachia. Against the backdrop of Rodney King, Anita Hill, David Duke, Desert Storm and the emerging culture wars, the novel becomes a darkly funny reckoning with race, censorship, performance, inherited history and the stories America tells about itself. Beneath the fictional journey lies another geography: the artistic world from which its young protagonist emerged. Philadelphia, theater school, teachers, actors, rehearsal rooms, friendships and the almost religious seriousness with which young artists regard the places where they first discover what they might become all reverberate through the novel. Some of the people who populated Nelson’s Philadelphia years would remain in his life; others would disappear into memory. Their presence—and the intensity of young artists learning, arguing, rehearsing, performing and imagining lives for themselves—became part of the emotional landscape from which the novel was eventually written. The University of the Arts closed abruptly in June 2024. In March 2025, Philadelphia-based Scout acquired the historic Haviland and Furness buildings and began reimagining them as the Village of Industry & Art, preserving their creative purpose rather than severing it. Today, the Village of Industry & Art describes its mission as continuing the buildings as “a place for people to create and make,” while honoring the creative generations that previously inhabited them. For Nelson, one of those generations was his own. “The school is gone,” Nelson said. “But this place mattered. The people who filled it mattered. What happened in these rooms mattered. Some of them found their way, transformed, into the pages of this book. To come back here carrying something that began, in ways I couldn’t possibly have understood at twenty-two, on this ground—means everything to me.” The homecoming arrives as "Huckleberry Jim" receives national recognition. The novel was named a Publishers Weekly BookLife Editor’s Pick, with Publishers Weekly calling it: “Adam Nelson’s incisive, provocative, and robustly American debut... honors the fathoms-deep American divisions that Twain marked and urges us to look closer rather than away.” Full Review: https://booklife.com/project/huckleberry-jim-108347 "Huckleberry Jim" was also named a Semi-Finalist in the Novel Category of the 2026 William Faulkner–William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition and longlisted for The Masters Review Novel Excerpt Prize, placing in the top three percent of submissions. The 2026 BookLife Prize awarded the novel an 8.25/10 Critic’s Report, including 9/10 for Originality, calling the story “emotional, funny, and compelling” and concluding, “Nelson has the chops to do it.” The Oct 21 evening will feature a conversation about the true 1991 journey behind the novel, Nelson’s years at the University of the Arts, Twain, censorship and the transformation of lived experience into fiction, followed by a reading, audience Q&A and book signing. EVENT INFORMATION Adam Nelson — Huckleberry Jim: A Philadelphia Homecoming Wednesday, October 21, 2026 | 7:00–9:00 p.m. Village of Industry & Art 320 S. Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102 ABOUT HUCKLEBERRY JIM Set in 1991, "Huckleberry Jim" follows two actors touring American schools with a stripped-down production of Mark Twain’s "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." As the country outside their rental car convulses over race, language, censorship and identity, Twain’s argument becomes increasingly difficult to separate from the argument taking place around them. "Huckleberry Jim" publishes October 6 during Banned Books Week. Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Inc., Bookshop.org, and independent bookstores nationwide. Blackstone Publishing will simultaneously release the audiobook, narrated by Leon Nixon. A limited first edition of only 200 individually numbered hardcover copies signed by Adam Nelson is also available. Visit https://www.huckleberryjimbook.com ABOUT THE VILLAGE OF INDUSTRY & ART The Village of Industry & Art reimagines the historic Haviland and Furness buildings on South Broad Street as a working community for artists and cultural workers, continuing nearly 200 years of education and creativity on the site.  BLACKSTONE PUBLISHING TO RELEASE AUDIOBOOK OF HUCKLEBERRY JIM -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BOOKLIFE EDITOR’S PICK ARRIVES DURING BANNED BOOKS WEEK
Debut novel by Adam Nelson heralded as “an incisive, provocative, and robustly American debut.” International rights on offer at 2026 Frankfurt Book Fair. NEW YORK — Workhouse Editions today announced that Blackstone Publishing will produce the unabridged audiobook of Huckleberry Jim, a Publishers Weekly BookLife Editor’s Pick, and the debut novel by Adam Nelson, on October 6, 2026, alongside the hardcover, trade paperback, and ebook editions. Blackstone will release the audiobook wide on publication day, available from day one across Audible, Amazon, Spotify, Apple, Libro.fm, Chirp, Audiobooks.com, and more than 150 digital retail and library partners, including OverDrive and Hoopla. Inspired by real events and set in 1991, Huckleberry Jim follows two actors — Axel Emerson, a twenty-two-year-old white actor fresh out of conservatory, and Moses Morton, a fifty-five-year-old Black actor with a lifetime of stages behind him — on a children’s tour of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through upstate New York and the Appalachians. As the two-man company drives from school gymnasium to community theater, performing Twain’s text to American children in the year of Anita Hill, the Rodney King brutality, and the height of the culture wars, the road between them becomes a slow accounting of race, performance, fatherhood, and what it costs to play another man’s part. A reckoning with race, guilt, and the bedtime stories America tells itself to sleep at night. For readers of Percival Everett’s James and Paul Beatty’s The Sellout. The audiobook will be narrated by Leon Nixon under senior audio producer Grover Gardner, with an introduction recorded by the author. “Huckleberry Jim is about performance, but it is equally about what survives after the performance ends,” said author Adam Nelson. “The tension between those two truths is the heartbeat of the novel, and Blackstone understood that an audio edition could make that tension impossible not to hear. We are thrilled by the partnership and could not have asked for better hands.” “Huckleberry Jim is a sharp, darkly funny, and deeply relevant novel that takes on race, identity, and the stories America tells about itself,” added Anne Fonteneau, Chief Sales Officer at Blackstone. “Adam Nelson has created two unforgettable characters in Axel and Moses, and we’re thrilled to bring their complicated journey to life in audio with Leon Nixon’s powerful performance.” A Publishers Weekly BookLife Editor’s Pick Huckleberry Jim has been named an Editor’s Pick by BookLife Reviews, the Publishers Weekly imprint. Read the Editor’s Pick https://booklife.com/project/huckleberry-jim-108347 “An incisive, provocative, and robustly American debut … capturing the spirit of Twain, social commentary marks every page with a steady stream of cleverly worded aphorisms and elegant analogies. Nelson honors the fathoms-deep American divisions that Twain marked and urges us to look closer rather than away.” — BookLife Reviews, Publishers Weekly (Editor’s Pick) “At the story’s core is an interesting and convincing relationship. Nelson is adept at character development.” — BlueInk Review “A blunt historical novel about the power — and limitations — of the arts to educate, connect, effect change, or create an escape. A thorny discussion about book censorship … is a discomfiting highlight.” — Clarion Reviews The novel was longlisted for The Masters Review Novel Excerpt Prize, placing in the top three percent of submissions, and carries the Authors Guild “Human Authored” certification. Publication During Banned Books Week and Columbus Day Weekend Huckleberry Jim will publish on October 6, 2026 — in the middle of Banned Books Week (October 4–10) and Columbus Day weekend, the observance commemorating the arrival on this land. Publication also falls during the 150th anniversary year of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and in America’s Semiquincentennial year. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remains one of the most-challenged books in United States history. In advance of publication, Nelson’s op-ed “The Word We Won’t Say and the Country We Won’t See” — on Twain, censorship, and American language — appeared in The Village Voice. Adam Nelson is available for bookstore Q&As, readings, and signings, and for library and festival appearances during the Banned Books Week window and throughout the fall. To book, contact Kat Carlson at Workhouse Editions. International Rights at the Frankfurt Book Fair International rights to Huckleberry Jim will be on offer at the Frankfurt Book Fair, October 7–11, 2026. Blackstone Publishing will exhibit at its own stand, and Workhouse Editions will additionally be represented at the IBPA Cooperative Booth, with a single-title display in the IBPA Frankfurt Catalog distributed to foreign rights agents from 131 countries. Rights inquiries may be directed to Kat Carlson at Workhouse Editions in advance of or during the Fair. Pre-Orders Open Now Pre-orders for Huckleberry Jim are open now through Ingram and Baker & Taylor, and at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and independent booksellers nationwide. A limited first-edition signed hardcover, autographed by the author, will be available exclusively through huckleberryjimbook.com while supplies last. Review copies are available in physical and digital editions. Formats and Availability Hardcover · $28.00 · ISBN 979-8-9963450-3-8 Trade Paperback · $18.99 · ISBN 979-8-9963450-0-7 Ebook (EPUB) · $11.99 · ISBN 979-8-9963450-1-4 Audiobook, unabridged · Blackstone Publishing Audio CD · $39.95 · ISBN 979-8-2360-0898-3 Library CD · ISBN 979-8-2360-0897-6 MP3 CD · $35.95 · ISBN 979-8-2360-0899-0 On sale October 6, 2026 · Distributed by Ingram and Baker & Taylor · Cover design by Marcel Mutt About Adam Nelson Adam Nelson has lived at the intersection of performance and American storytelling for more than three decades — as an actor, filmmaker, and founder of Workhouse, the New York public relations agency he has run since 1999, representing filmmakers, artists, and cultural institutions. A professor at the New Jersey Film Academy, he is a merit winner of the Writer’s Digest International Screenplay Competition and co-founder of Socko! Magazine, recently recognized for Best eMagazine. His short film Food for Thought, directed by Gary Hanna, was awarded Best Silent Film at the 2026 Absurd Film Festival in Milan. Huckleberry Jim draws on his own 1991 tour performing a two-man Huckleberry Finn for schools across the Northeast. About Workhouse Editions Workhouse Editions is an independent literary publisher based in New York and London, distributed by Ingram, and a member of the Independent Book Publishers Association. The imprint publishes format-agnostic literary work from novels, photography, print editions, and gallery projects. About Blackstone Publishing Founded in 1987 by Craig and Michelle Black in a Southern Oregon garage, Blackstone Publishing is a truly independent, privately owned publisher with offices on both coasts. Today, Blackstone is one of America’s fastest-growing publishing houses, with multiple New York Times bestsellers, Grammy Award–winning audio productions, and books placed on the New York Times Best Books of the Year list. Blackstone titles are printed at company headquarters in Ashland, Oregon, with paper sourced from mills that use responsibly managed forests, minimal chemicals, and renewable energy. Learn more at blackstonepublishing.com. MEDIA CONTACT Kat Carlson, Account Director Workhouse Editions · New York | London [email protected] · +1 212.645.8006 # # #
Socko! publisher Adam Nelson and editor-in-chief Angela Matusik went on the Garden State Roots podcast, created by the New Jersey Historical Commission, with host Justin Williams to spool through 250 years of New Jersey movie history — and how the Garden State built a billion-dollar industry the rest of the country forgot to credit.
Because Hollywood likes to pretend it invented the movies. It didn’t. New Jersey did. Edison built the first studio — the Black Maria — in West Orange in 1893. By the 1910s Fort Lee was the film capital of the country, until the studios fled west to dodge Edison’s patent trust and California took the crown for good. Now the industry is coming home: Netflix, Paramount Pictures and Lionsgate are all building here. The state that invented American cinema finally gets to tell its own story. Listen to “How New Jersey created Hollywood” now. #SOCKOMagazine #NewJerseyFilm #GardenStateRoots #FortLee #FilmHistory  The Word We Won’t Say and the Country We Won’t SeeBy Adam NelsonAmerica was founded on the power of language. It has spent 250 years deciding whose language counts. YOU CANNOT READ THIS.Not this page. Not these words. Not what is being said here, or the books that said it first, or the voices that have been saying it for two hundred and fifty years without being heard. You cannot read this because someone has decided you shouldn’t. Because the rules say so. Because this page is already burning, already redacted, already cut into the kind of quiet that doesn’t sound like quiet at all. It sounds like a school board meeting, a new library policy, a database updated, a curriculum revised to remove what made it difficult. The country begins with a sentence. We hold these truths to be self-evident. A claim that presents itself as fact, written by men who knew, in the most immediate way possible, that it wasn’t. The argument has never been whether those words were written. It has been whether they were ever meant. Two hundred and fifty years later, that question is still open, still answered the same way it always has been: by deciding which words are permitted to ask it. At the same time, in the same country, books are disappearing from the shelves of schools and libraries. Not because they are wrong, but because they are right. Because they named people the country would rather not remember. Because they described things the country would rather not have described. The removal is not censorship of fiction. It is the erasure of record. Lenny Bruce understood, before most, what happens when a country decides that certain words cannot be heard. He stood on stages and said them anyway, and for that he was dragged through courts that claimed to be protecting the public from harm while demonstrating, in real time, how quickly the protection of language becomes the control of it. He was not dragged through those courts for being offensive. He was dragged through them for being accurate. Once the words are removed, what remains is not silence but permission. Permission to leave the thing itself unexamined, unspoken, intact. Twain arrived at the same problem from the other direction. He wrote a book that refused to let the country pretend it didn’t know what it was doing, and he used the language of that world because there was no honest way around it. The discomfort is not incidental to the work. It is the work. Remove it, and the book survives only as a gesture, which is why it has been removed, restored, and removed again for more than a century. Not because it endorses what it depicts, but because it will not excuse it. The Declaration protects the right to speak, while the culture decides which speech requires protection — and which requires removal. We have learned, or taught ourselves, to believe that removing a word removes the damage it names. It doesn’t. It removes the only proof that the damage occurred. The country keeps the performance and buries the rest, ensuring nothing is ever settled. That is not failure. It is the design.
The novel I wrote is called Huckleberry Jim. A young Jewish actor on the run from his father’s death joins a children’s tour of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn across a hostile America, paired with a Black man who has played Jim two thousand times and remembers every one. It is set in 1991. In the book, the past isn’t behind them. It’s up ahead. Two hundred and fifty years later, the founding sentence still hasn’t been completed because the words that would complete it keep getting removed. The country continues to decide which words may remain in circulation and which must be taken out, as if the argument can be resolved by narrowing the language allowed to describe it at all. It can’t. It never has. Happy Birthday, America. Words were never about freedom. They have always been about ████████████ ‘Food for Thought’ Wins Best Experimental Film at the 26th Annual Coney Island Film Festival5/6/2026 Gary Hanna and Adam Nelson’s Asbury Park short adds another festival win following Best Silent Film honors ath the Absurd Film Festival in Milan, Italy "Food for Thought,” the surreal short directed, shot, and edited by Gary Hanna and written by and starring Adam Nelson, has been named Best Experimental Film at the 26th Annual Coney Island Film Festival in Brooklyn, New York. The win follows the film’s Best Silent Film award at the 9th annual Festival Del Cinema Assurdo — the Absurd Film Festival — held at the Auditorium Centro Culturale “Il Pertini” in Cinisello Balsamo, just outside Milan, Italy. Adrift on the Asbury Park boardwalk, a half-starved sailor searches for scraps — of food, of memory, of meaning. Sun-struck and drifting between hallucination and history, he wanders through the ruins of a world that left him shipwrecked. The result is a salt-rusted meditation on hunger, erasure, and the price of progress. Now in its 26th year, the Coney Island Film Festival has been named one of MovieMaker Magazine’s “25 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee” and “25 Coolest Film Festivals.” Produced by the nonprofit Coney Island USA, the festival has earned a reputation for grit, whimsy, and an unapologetically independent spirit, screening a deliberately eclectic slate across every genre imaginable. Past honorees include Darren Aronofsky. “Food for Thought” was created for the AP’N3 Film Challenge, the Asbury Park Arts Council’s fiercely inventive three-week filmmaking competition. On Day One, each team received a theme, prop, line of dialogue, and location, the only ingredients allowed. Competing in the On Location category, every frame had to be filmed entirely within Asbury Park’s borders, transforming the city itself into both subject and character. The twin wins mark the latest chapter in an unlikely creative partnership. Nelson and Hanna first met when Hanna cast Nelson as a subject in University of the Arts – We’re Still Here, his ongoing documentary series investigating the abrupt 2024 collapse of the nearly 150-year-old Philadelphia institution where both filmmakers studied at very different times — Hanna as a Film major in the Class of 2004, Nelson as a Theatre student in the Class of 1991. What began as an interview about the shuttered school became a working friendship, and then a creative engine.  Hanna is an accomplished director, cinematographer, editor, and 3D artist whose multi-decade career spans filmmaking, animation, and digital storytelling. He began at Banyan Productions, assisting on Trading Spaces and Ambush Makeover, before spending more than a decade as a camera operator and live editor at Crystalline Studios, capturing high-profile corporate events with the precision of a newsroom and the polish of a studio feature. As the founder of Psynema, he expanded into 3D animation and game asset production, developing the Houdini-based plugin Hairdini, adopted by mainstream gaming studios and featured on 80.lv. His production credits include a Little Caesars commercial for Current TV and an NHL Winter Classic highlight picked up by the league. He continues contract work with New Pace Productions, New Cape Pictures, and ES3D Studios, contributing camera, lighting, and advanced 3D modeling for Unreal Engine medical simulations and RPG environments. Hanna’s work blends cinematic instinct with technical innovation — a restless, evolving artist grounded in story, texture, and the drive to elevate every frame. Nelson is an actor, writer, filmmaker, and founder of Workhouse, the nationally recognized PR agency he has run for nearly three decades. Trained at Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, the University of the Arts, Yale, and the British American Drama Academy at Oxford, he was a founding member of New York’s Workhouse Theater alongside Adrienne Shelly, Mira Sorvino, Calista Flockhart, and Tom Sizemore, and later secured rights from the Lenny Bruce estate to adapt How to Talk Dirty and Influence People into an Off-Broadway one-man show. In 2001 he co-produced The 24 Hour Plays: Broadway for the World Trade Center Relief Fund and was named a winner of the Writer’s Digest International Writing Competition for screenwriting. His previous short, Flower, shot on an iPhone during COVID lockdown, won Best Mobile Short at the Berlin Indie Film Festival. Nelson also serves as Professor and Academic Lead for the New Jersey Film Academy’s Script to Screen program, a workforce-development course preparing students for New Jersey’s rapidly expanding film and television industry. The curriculum moves from story development and pre-production through on-set protocols, departmental structure, and distribution, bridging the classroom and the working set. His debut novel, Huckleberry Jim, was developed over six years at The Novelry under a former Penguin Random House editor. Two actors try to hold a children’s tour of Huckleberry Finn together — while the country tries to tear them apart. The debut novel that rips the curtain down on America’s oldest performance. He is the publisher of Socko! Magazine which recently launched at the New Jersey Film Expo.  With two international festival wins in hand, Hanna and Nelson are already deep into their next collaboration: BUSE!, a factory-inspired comedy that will serve as their official entry in the 2026 AP’N3 Short Film Challenge. Production will begin this summer in Asbury Park, New Jersey.
“Food for Thought” — Awards & Selections Winner: Best Experimental Film, 2026 Coney Island Film Festival (Brooklyn, NY) Winner: Best Silent Film, 2026 Absurd Film Festival (Milan, Italy) Official Selection: 24th Annual Garden State Film Festival (East Coast Premiere) Finalist: 2025 AP’N3 Film Challenge, Asbury Park Credits Directed by Gary Hanna Written by Adam Nelson Produced by Adam Nelson and Gary Hanna Cinematography & Edited by Gary Hanna Original Music by Adam Nelson, in collaboration with ElevenLabs Key Cast Adam Nelson – “Sailor” Edmondo Abbruzzese – “Signore” Nicole Abbruzzese Nelson – “Senora” Janet Abbruzzese – “Signora” Jessica Abbruzzese – “Senorita” And introducing Viva June Nelson as “Baby"  As New Jersey’s film and television industry continues to expand, Brookdale Community College is preparing students to step onto professional sets with confidence through its Script to Screen program, a cornerstone of the New Jersey Film Academy. At the center of the program is Script to Screen: Introduction to the Entertainment Industry, a required prerequisite course that introduces students to the full lifecycle of film and television production—from concept development to final distribution. Designed as both an academic and workforce training experience, the course gives students a practical understanding of how projects move from script to screen while preparing them for entry-level roles in a competitive industry. At the center of the program is Script to Screen: Introduction to the Entertainment Industry, a required prerequisite course that introduces students to the full lifecycle of film and television production—from concept development to final distribution. Designed as both an academic and workforce training experience, the course gives students a practical understanding of how projects move from script to screen while preparing them for entry-level roles in a competitive industry. Offered from May 28 through July 16, 2026, in both daytime and evening sessions, the course blends theory with hands-on learning. Students explore industry terminology, production stages, and career pathways, including both above-the-line creative roles and below-the-line technical positions. Emphasis is placed on professional expectations, on-set safety protocols, and the realities of today’s job market. Students also gain essential career skills, including how to find employment in the industry and what training is needed to succeed. By the end of the course, participants leave with a comprehensive understanding of the entertainment landscape and a clear pathway to advanced training within the program.  Leading the Script to Screen program is Professor Adam Nelson, an accomplished actor, writer, filmmaker, and founder of the nationally recognized PR agency Workhouse. Nelson brings decades of real-world industry experience into the classroom, giving students direct insight into both the creative and business sides of entertainment. His career spans stage, screen, and publishing. Trained at institutions including Yale and the British American Drama Academy at Oxford, Nelson was a founding member of New York’s Workhouse Theater alongside notable actors such as Mira Sorvino and Calista Flockhart. He later secured rights to adapt How to Talk Dirty and Influence People into an Off-Broadway production and co-produced The 24 Hour Plays: Broadway for the World Trade Center Relief Fund. As a filmmaker and writer, Nelson continues to build an impressive portfolio. His recent short film Food for Thought, created in collaboration with director Gary Hanna, earned Best Experimental Film at the 2026 Coney Island Film Festival and Best Silent Film at the Absurd Film Festival in Milan. Beyond filmmaking, Nelson is also an award-winning screenwriter and author. His forthcoming debut novel, Huckleberry Jim, reflects his deep engagement with storytelling across mediums. He is the Publisher of Socko! Magazine launched at the New Jersey Film Expo. Through Script to Screen, Nelson channels this experience into a workforce-driven curriculum that mirrors the realities of the industry. The program not only teaches students how to create content but also how to navigate professional environments, collaborate effectively, and build sustainable careers. Brookdale’s investment in film and media education reflects a broader commitment to workforce development and emerging industries. With support from statewide initiatives and partnerships, the college is helping to position students at the forefront of New Jersey’s growing role as a hub for film and television production. For students looking to break into the entertainment industry, Script to Screen offers more than an introduction—it provides a launching pad. For more information about the program and to register visit the website.  SOCKO! MAGAZINE DEBUTS AT NEW JERSEY FILM EXPO WITH A LIGHTNING BOLT AND A MISSIONFirst-Ever Focused Publication for New Jersey’s Booming Film Industry Arrives April 30 at Meadowlands ArenaFocused Publication for New Jersey’s Booming Film Industry Arrives April 30 at Meadowlands Arena New Jersey is the fastest-growing film production market in the United States. Its filming count jumped 45 percent in Q1 2026 while every other major market in the country declined. Netflix is building a billion-dollar studio at Fort Monmouth. Lionsgate is rising in Newark. Paramount just signed a ten-year lease in Bayonne. And until now, the state that invented American cinema has never had its own film focused publication. That changes on April 30. SOCKO!, a new magazine built both for the New Jersey film and television industry and its fans, launches its inaugural issue at the New Jersey Film Expo at Meadowlands Arena in East Rutherford. The issue is titled “New Jersey Now!” and its cover, photographed by Samad Haq, features two-and-a-half-year-old Viva June as a goddess of entertainment, golden lightning bolt in hand, standing at the gates of a new era. It is intentionally symbolic: old Hollywood DNA, young Jersey fire. ed Publication for New Jersey’s Booming Film Industry Arrives April 30 at Meadowlands Arena  SOCKO! is co-founded by Angela Matusik and Adam Nelson. Matusik, who serves as Editor in Chief, was one of the founding editors of InStyle, held senior editorial leadership roles at People and NBCUniversal, and ran global brand and content at HP. She has produced several award-winning documentary film series including The Big Idea, which won a 2024 Webby, and is co-founder of the Maplewood Film Society. Nelson, SOCKO!’s Publisher, wrote the issue’s cover story, is founder of Workhouse, an award-winning public relations agency, and a professor at the New Jersey Film Academy at Brookdale Community College. “The idea for SOCKO! rose out of a constant drumbeat about how much is happening around film and entertainment in New Jersey right now,” said Matusik. “We’ve seen our charming village taken over by production crews. Everyone you meet is working on a new show, play, or film project. The new studios are rising. One thing is clear: New Jersey deserves its own publication that not only celebrates its historic influence on film, but its new starring role as the heartbeat of the entertainment industry.” “I have spent my whole life at the intersection of performance and storytelling, and I have never seen anything like what is happening in the state right now,” said Nelson. “We named it SOCKO! because that is the sound a great story makes when it hits you in the chest. Which is what is happening in New Jersey right now, the original home of American cinema. It’s waking up after a hundred-year nap. Every great industry deserves a voice that matches its ambition. There is no publication like this because there has never been a moment like this. Somebody needed to be in the room writing it all down. That’s us.”  The inaugural issue is stacked. Nelson’s cover story, “New Jersey Now!,” is a full-throated declaration on the state’s return to the center of filmmaking. Nicole Acosta of the Thomas Edison Foundation contributes “The Mother of All Film Studios,” tracing the story of Edison’s Black Maria in West Orange, the $650 shack where all of this began, and in a magazine born in the same state as the medium itself, the piece reads less like history and more like a birth certificate. “There Is Oil in the Ground” dives into the Netflix studios at Fort Monmouth, the gold rush it ignites, and the warning the state cannot afford to forget. “America’s Greatest Export Is Leaving Home” makes the case for a federal film tax incentive through the Coalition for American Production, the nationwide alliance fighting to keep production on American soil. Barry Lyga profiles legendary producer Michael Uslan, the New Jersey Hall of Famer behind the Batman franchise, in “Life Lessons from Batman’s Protector and Defender.” Nelson sits down with Diane Raver, the woman who built the New Jersey Film Academy, in “The Keeper of Jersey’s Cinematic Flame.” Wilhelm Kuhn profiles master film editor Tim Squyres, Ang Lee’s longtime collaborator, in “Shining Light on the Man in the Dark.” Matusik profiles renowned production designer Jane Musky, the talent behind When Harry Met Sally and Ghost, in “Magic Maker,” and much, much more.
SOCKO! launches at the second annual New Jersey Film Expo, the largest gathering of the state’s film and television production community. Last year’s inaugural Expo drew more than 3,000 attendees and 80 vendors. This year returns bigger, with speaker panels, exhibits from indie suppliers to major studio operations, and a keynote address by Governor Mikie Sherrill. The Expo is hosted by the Screen Alliance of New Jersey, April 30 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Meadowlands Arena, 50 State Route 120, East Rutherford, NJ 07073. Admission is free. Register at screenalliancenj.com/nj-film-expo. Founding partners of SOCKO! include the Edison Foundation, the New Jersey Film Academy, the New Jersey Production Guide, the Garden State Film Festival, and Workhouse. For more information, visit sockomagazine.com. |
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