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THE SUNNYSIDE SOUND PROJECT




The two women on this illustration are both me, painted by Charmaine Wheatley for a 2007
advertorial in New York Magazine. I like it because I hate modeling, don't have money to go
to the spa, rarely find life beautiful and my legs are much longer than in real life.

WHO I AM

My name is Sabine Heinlein. My husband, Giovanni Garcia Fenech, and I moved to Sunnyside Gardens in the fall of 2008. While we were looking for a house we scouted many neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens, but none of them could compete with Sunnyside. We loved the old sycamore trees, the Gardens’ feral courtyards, the many excellent ethnic restaurants and stores, their patrons and owners. The neighborhood has preserved its quaint spirit; neighbors stop to chat and inquire about each other’s wellbeing; everyone says hello; we exchange seedlings and bulbs in the summer and shovel each other’s snow in the winter. On our block alone there live Mexican, Chinese, German, British, Irish, Puerto Rican and Pakistani residents. I’m sure there are even more cultures present and I just haven’t discovered them yet.

An interest in discovering people’s origins, their cultures, their stories and their daily lives was what initially drew me to start the Sunnyside Sound Project. Everybody in the neighborhood seemed to be doing something related to his or her environs. Some founded a group that removes graffiti; others volunteer in beautification projects for the local park. Again others run blogs, children’s theater workshops or organize jazz concerts. When I moved here I wondered what my role in the community would be.

I am a nonfiction writer and podcast producer with a keen interest in people’s quirks. I love to hear people talk about what they do and why they do it. And since Sunnyside residents always seem to be doing something, I thought it would be great to record them talking about it.

My podcasts, articles and human interest stories have appeared in German, American and British publications, among them Tablet Magazine, Die Zeit, The American Literary Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, City Limits, NYU Magazine, Epiphany, Artinfo.com and The Idler. I hold a master’s degree in journalism from NYU and a master’s in art history from Hamburg University. I have been awarded the 2011 Richard J. Margolis Award, a Yaddo residency and fellowship (2009), a NYFA fellowship for nonfiction literature (2009), the 2010 American Literary Review award for nonfiction and a residency at the MacDowell Colony (2010), where I first started editing the Sunnyside Sound Project. You can see my other work at sabineheinlein.org and follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/sabineheinlein.

The Sunnyside Sound Project was profiled by the Sunnyside Post and the New York Daily News and featured at a special event at the Sunnyside branch of the Queens Library. The library workshop was sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). The Queens Chronicle also published an article about the Sound Project but misspelled my name on several occasions. (It's Heinlein, not Heinlien or Hienlein!!)

I am always open to suggestions and welcome more participants. Some of the best interviews were with people who approached me. If you would like to be interviewed or would like to suggest someone to be interviewed, feel free to contact me at:
sabine[at]sabineheinlein[dot]org