Feb/March 2012

New York

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Tuesday, February 7
6:00pm
FREE Mischief & Mayhem Reading Series w/ Kaylie Jones , Thaddeus Rutkowski and host Katie Halper
This is a general admission event in The Gallery at LPR. Mischief and Mayhem is a publishing collective, not a publishing company. Our goals are to nurture and promote distinctive authorial voices, especially those that fall outside of commercially acceptable notions of literature, and to do everything…

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This is a general admission event in The Gallery at LPR.

Mischief and Mayhem is a publishing collective, not a publishing company. Our goals are to nurture and promote distinctive authorial voices, especially those that fall outside of commercially acceptable notions of literature, and to do everything we can to bring those writers to the largest possible audience.

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Le Poisson Rouge
more at le poisson rouge
158 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012
212-505-3474
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Tuesday, February 7
6:30pm
Poetry Reading with Martha Rhodes, James Tolan, Stephanie Brown, and Marcia Pelletiere
Martha Rhodes is a poet, editor, teacher, and the author of four collections of poetry:At the Gate, Perfect Disappearance, Mother Quiet, and The Beds. James Tolan is author of the chapbooks Red Walls and Whiskey and the Rake of Mourning. >> Learn More Stephanie Brown is the author of two collections…

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Martha Rhodes is a poet, editor, teacher, and the author of four collections of poetry:At the Gate, Perfect Disappearance, Mother Quiet, and The Beds.

James Tolan is author of the chapbooks Red Walls and Whiskey and the Rake of Mourning. >> Learn More

Stephanie Brown is the author of two collections of poetry, Domestic Interior and Allegory of the Supermarket.

Marcia Pelletiere is a poet, musician, and multimedia artist. Miracle with Roasted Hens is her first poetry collection.

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NYU Book Center
more at nyu book center
18 Washington Place, Nyu, New York, NY 10003
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Tuesday, February 7
7:00pm
Clay Shirky and Eric Klinenberg in conversation
We're more wired together digitally today than at any time in our history, in a great throbbing social-media hive. At the same time, a far greater percentage of us are living alone than at any time in our history. What's the connection between these two phenomena? Where do the trend lines take us …

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We're more wired together digitally today than at any time in our history, in a great throbbing social-media hive. At the same time, a far greater percentage of us are living alone than at any time in our history. What's the connection between these two phenomena? Where do the trend lines take us from here? The Penguin Press presents celebrated public intellectual Eric Klinenberg, author of the forthcoming Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Along, and Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, coming together to discuss what it all means and where we're all heading.

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192 Books
more at 192 books
192 Tenth Avenue, New York, NY 10011
212-255-4022
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Tuesday, February 7
7:00pm
Téa Obreht reads from THE TIGER'S WIFE
St. Mark's Bookshop & The Huffington Post present: In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the …

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St. Mark's Bookshop & The Huffington Post present:

In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her—the legend of the tiger’s wife.Téa Obreht was born in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia in 1985 and has lived in the United States since the age of twelve. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, and The Guardian, and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She has been named by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty and included in the National Book Foundation's list of 5 Under 35. Téa Obreht lives in New York.

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St. Mark's Bookshop
more at st. mark's bookshop
31 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10003
212-260-7853
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Wednesday, February 8
7:00pm
Adam Gopnik's Winter
The author delivers highlights from his renowned 2011 CBC Massey Lectures. A stunning, beautiful meditation buoyed by Gopnik’s trademark gentle wit, the five Winter lectures offer an enchanting homage to an idea of a season and a captivating journey through the modern imagination. Gopnik will …

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The author delivers highlights from his renowned 2011 CBC Massey Lectures.

A stunning, beautiful meditation buoyed by Gopnik’s trademark gentle wit, the five Winter lectures offer an enchanting homage to an idea of a season and a captivating journey through the modern imagination.

Gopnik will deliver highlights from the lectures (available in book form as Winter) and engage in a Q & A with the audience. The program will be followed by a book signing with the author.

Tickets: $15

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92Y Tribeca
more at 92y tribeca
200 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10013
212-601-1000
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Wednesday, February 8
7:00pm
Josh Bazell, Wild Thing, with Malcolm Jones
Former mob hit man Dr. Brnwa is on the case, and on the run, in this electrifying sequel to Josh Bazell’s bestselling novel, Beat the Reaper. It's difficult to find work as a doctor when using your real name will get you killed—so difficult, that when a reclusive billionaire offers Dr. Peter …

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Former mob hit man Dr. Brnwa is on the case, and on the run, in this electrifying sequel to Josh Bazell’s bestselling novel, Beat the Reaper. It's difficult to find work as a doctor when using your real name will get you killed—so difficult, that when a reclusive billionaire offers Dr. Peter Brown, aka Pietro Brnwa, a job accompanying a sexy but self-destructive paleontologist on the world's worst field assignment, Brown has no choice but to say yes. Facing new and old monsters alike, Dr. Brnwa's story continues in this darkly funny and lightning-paced follow up to Bazell's thrilling debut.

Josh Bazell holds a B.A. in writing from Brown University and an M.D. from Columbia. He lives in New York City.

Malcolm Jones writes about books, music, and photography for The Daily Beast and Newsweek. He is the author of a memoir, Little Boy Blues, and collaborated with the songwriter and composer Van Dyke Parks and the illustrator Barry Moser on Jump!, a retelling of Brer Rabbit stories.

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Strand Book Store
more at strand book store
828 Broadway, New York, NY 10003-4805
212-473-1452
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Wednesday, February 8
7:00pm
Selected Shorts: Roz Chast Presents What I Hate from A To Z
Welcome to the world of the wacky and endearing New Yorker cartoonist and stories about her most favorite least favorite things. Chast shows appealingly gloomy cartoons from her new book, What I Hate from A to Z, and introduces stories read by Jerry Stiller (Seinfeld), Anne Meara (Sex and the City),…

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Welcome to the world of the wacky and endearing New Yorker cartoonist and stories about her most favorite least favorite things. Chast shows appealingly gloomy cartoons from her new book, What I Hate from A to Z, and introduces stories read by Jerry Stiller (Seinfeld), Anne Meara (Sex and the City), and Stephen Lang (Avatar) that feature her favorite combo — humor and dread — by gothic humorist Shirley Jackson, dark comic genius Bruce Jay Friedman.

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Symphony Space
more at symphony space
2537 Broadway at 95th Street, New York, NY 10025
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Wednesday, February 8
8:00pm
Susan Howe & Roberto Tejada
Author of more than a dozen books of poetry and literary criticism, Susan Howe’s recently published a collection of poems, Souls of the Labadie Tract (New Directions, 2007). That This, a collection of work published by New Directions (that includes “Frolic Architecture”) in 2010 recently won …

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Author of more than a dozen books of poetry and literary criticism, Susan Howe’s recently published a collection of poems, Souls of the Labadie Tract (New Directions, 2007). That This, a collection of work published by New Directions (that includes “Frolic Architecture”) in 2010 recently won the Bollingen Prize. Roberto Tejada is the author of Mirrors for Gold (Krupskaya, 2006), Exposition Park (Wesleyan, 2010), and Full Foreground (University of Arizona, 2012).

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The Poetry Project
more at the poetry project
131 E. 10th Street, New York, NY 10003
212-674-0910
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Friday, February 10
6:30pm
Author's Talk with Louis Hyman
In BORROW: The American Way of Debt—How Personal Credit Created the American Middle Class and Almost Bankrupted the Nation, economist Louis Hyman delivers an accessible and informed history on the rise of personal borrowing in the United States, demonstrating that today’s problems are not as new…

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In BORROW: The American Way of Debt—How Personal Credit Created the American Middle Class and Almost Bankrupted the Nation, economist Louis Hyman delivers an accessible and informed history on the rise of personal borrowing in the United States, demonstrating that today’s problems are not as new as we think. Hyman describes the evolution of personal loans, finding that our borrowing patterns are similar to our grandparents, but higher basic expenses, stagnating wages and increased economic competition from abroad have made it harder to repay our debts.

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Rose Auditorium @ Cooper Union
more at this location
41 Cooper Square (3rd Avenue. at 7th Street.), New York, NY 10003
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Friday, February 10
7:00pm
ROBERT KANIGEL – ON AN IRISH ISLAND
On an Irish Island, by Robert Kanigel On an Irish Island is a love letter to a vanished way of life, in which Robert Kanigel, the highly praised author of The Man Who Knew Infinity and The One Best Way, tells the story of the Great Blasket, a wildly beautiful island off the west coast of Ireland, …

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On an Irish Island, by Robert Kanigel

On an Irish Island is a love letter to a vanished way of life, in which Robert Kanigel, the highly praised author of The Man Who Knew Infinity and The One Best Way, tells the story of the Great Blasket, a wildly beautiful island off the west coast of Ireland, renowned during the early twentieth century for the rich communal life of its residents and the unadulterated Irish they spoke. With the Irish language vanishing all through the rest of Ireland, the Great Blasket became a magnet for scholars and writers drawn there during the Gaelic renaissance—and the scene for a memorable clash of cultures between modern life and an older, sometimes sweeter world slipping away.

Kanigel introduces us to the playwright John Millington Synge, some of whose characters in The Playboy of the Western World, were inspired by his time on the island; Carl Marstrander, a Norwegian linguist who gave his place on Norway’s Olympic team for a summer on the Blasket; Marie-Louise Sjoestedt, a Celtic studies scholar fresh from the Sorbonne; and central to the story, George Thomson, a British classicist whose involvement with the island and its people we follow from his first visit as a twenty-year-old to the end of his life.

On the island, they met a colorful coterie of men and women with whom they formed lifelong and life-changing friendships. There’s Tomás O’Crohan, a stoic fisherman, one of the few islanders who could read and write Irish, who tutored many of the incomers in the language’s formidable intricacies and became the Blasket’s first published writer; Maurice O’Sullivan, a good-natured prankster and teller of stories, whose memoir, Twenty Years A-Growing, became an Irish classic; and Peig Sayers, whose endless repertoire of earthy tales left listeners spellbound.

As we get to know these men and women, we become immersed in the vivid culture of the islanders, their hard lives of fishing and farming matched by their love of singing, dancing, and talk. Yet, sadly, we watch them leave the island, the village becoming uninhabited by 1953. The story of the Great Blasket is one of struggle—between the call of modernity and the tug of Ireland’s ancient ways, between the promise of emigration and the peculiar warmth of island life amid its physical isolation. But ultimately it is a tribute to the strength and beauty of a people who, tucked away from the rest of civilization, kept alive a nation’s past, and to the newcomers and islanders alike who brought the island’s remarkable story to the larger world.

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BookCourt
more at bookcourt
163 Court Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
718-875-3677
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Saturday, February 11
6:00pm
Reinventing the Past
Chris Adrian, Catalin Dorian Florescu, Inka Parei and Linda Stift in conversation with Daniel Kehlmann Literature is often a delving into the past, made all but involuntary because the past has returned to haunt the present. Whether the history in question is familial, political or ancient, traces…

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Chris Adrian, Catalin Dorian Florescu, Inka Parei and Linda Stift in conversation with Daniel Kehlmann

Literature is often a delving into the past, made all but involuntary because the past has returned to haunt the present. Whether the history in question is familial, political or ancient, traces of old trauma can cast the present in a new light. This panel explores the different ways in which the past can be put to work in the name of storytelling.

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powerHouse Arena
more at powerhouse arena
37 Main Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
718-666-3049
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Sunday, February 12
12:00pm
Frühschoppen Literary Brunch
The six German-language authors of Festival Neue Literatur: Larissa Boehning, Monica Cantieni, Catalin Dorian Florescu, Inka Parei, Linda Stift and Erwin Uhrmann, give a sampling from their work, providing a taste of new writing from Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Enjoy traditional German fare.…

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The six German-language authors of Festival Neue Literatur: Larissa Boehning, Monica Cantieni, Catalin Dorian Florescu, Inka Parei, Linda Stift and Erwin Uhrmann, give a sampling from their work, providing a taste of new writing from Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Enjoy traditional German fare. RSVP to: deutscheshaus.rsvp@nyu.edu

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Deutsches Haus at NYU
more at deutsches haus at nyu
42 Washington Mews, New York, NY 10003
212-998-8660
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Sunday, February 12
6:00pm
Writing on the Margins: Literature between Cultures
Francisco Goldman, Monica Cantieni, Larissa Boehning and Erwin Uhrmann in conversation with Liesl Schillinger As in the United States, the literary scene in Europe is currently abuzz with hybridity and border crossings that explore the lives of characters who move between different cultural and …

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Francisco Goldman, Monica Cantieni, Larissa Boehning and Erwin Uhrmann in conversation with Liesl Schillinger

As in the United States, the literary scene in Europe is currently abuzz with hybridity and border crossings that explore the lives of characters who move between different cultural and ethnic worlds. There as here questions of power and authenticity are not far behind as these authors explore the sometimes explosive conditions that arise when cultures intersect and, yes, sometimes clash.

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McNally Jackson Books
more at mcnally jackson books
52 Prince Street, New York, NY 10012
212-274-1160
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Tuesday, February 14
7:00pm
The Moth StorySLAM. Theme: Love Hurts
10 stories, 3 teams of judges, 1 winner. $8 at the door. This event always sells out. Limited seating. Please arrive early.
Housing Works Bookstore Cafe
more at this location
126 Crosby Street, New York, NY 10012
212-334-3324
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Wednesday, February 15
7:00pm
FENCE Winter Issue reading
FENCE and 192 Books celebrate the launch of FENCE magazine's winter issue. With readings by Deborah Eisenberg, Latasha N. Nevada Diggs, Anthony Madrid, and Ish Klein.
192 Books
more at 192 books
192 Tenth Avenue, New York, NY 10011
212-255-4022
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The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
by Heidi W. Durrow
$13.95 List Price
For more info visit:
Amazon • IndieBound
Wednesday, February 15
7:00pm
86th and Lex Reading Group
The Upper East Side Reading Group reconvenes for their monthly book discussion. This month's selection is The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow.
Barnes & Noble
more at barnes & noble
150 East 86th Street, New York, NY 10028-2105
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Wednesday, February 15
7:00pm
A conversation on Black Cool with Rebecca Walker, Margo Jefferson, and Miles Marshall Lewis
Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness, by Rebecca Walker Black Cool explores the ineffable state and aesthetic of Black Cool. From the effortless reserve of Miles Davis in khakis on an early album cover, to the shock of resistance in black women's fashion from Angela Davis to Rihanna, to …

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Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness, by Rebecca Walker

Black Cool explores the ineffable state and aesthetic of Black Cool. From the effortless reserve of Miles Davis in khakis on an early album cover, to the shock of resistance in black women's fashion from Angela Davis to Rihanna, to the cadence of poets as diverse as Staceyann Chin and Audre Lorde, Black Cool looks at the roots of Black Cool and attempts to name elements of the phenomena that have emerged to shape the global expectation of cool itself. Rebecca Walker, editor of the anthology, will be joined by Margo Jefferson and Miles Marshall Lewis, contributors to the book.

Rebecca Walker is the author of the memoirs Black, White and Jewish and Baby Love and the editor of the anthologies To Be Real, What Makes a Man, and One Big Happy Family. Her writing has appeared in Bookforum, The Washington Post Book World, Newsweek, Glamour, Vibe, and Interview among other publications.

Margo Jefferson is a New York–based cultural critic. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 and published On Michael Jackson in 2006. She’s written and performed two theater pieces and is working on a second book. She teaches writing at Columbia University and Eugene Lang College. Looking back, she feels she has spent too much time being a Good Negro Girl and not enough being a Willful Negro Eccentric.

Miles Marshall Lewis has been an editor at Vibe, XXL, and BET and written for the Huffington Post, Salon, Essence, the Believer, and many other publications. He is the author of the novel Irrésistible; a biography on Sly and the Family Stone, called There’s a Riot Goin’ On; and Scars of the Soul Are Why Kids Wear Bandages When They Don’t Have Bruises, a collection of essays. He lives in Manhattan. Instead of the more predictable Coltrane, Lewis named his youngest son Kalel, after Superman, the last son of Krypton. MML blogs at his site, www. furthermucker.com.

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McNally Jackson Books
more at mcnally jackson books
52 Prince Street, New York, NY 10012
212-274-1160
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Thursday, February 16
7:00pm
Wayne Koestenbaum THE ANATOMY OF HARPO MARX
Critically-acclaimed Wayne Koestenbaum, poet and cultural critic extraordinaire, reads from his latest, The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, a detailed play-by-play account of Harpo Marx’s physical movements as captured on screen. Koestenbaum celebrates the astonishing range of Harpo’s body—its kinks, …

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Critically-acclaimed Wayne Koestenbaum, poet and cultural critic extraordinaire, reads from his latest, The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, a detailed play-by-play account of Harpo Marx’s physical movements as captured on screen. Koestenbaum celebrates the astonishing range of Harpo’s body—its kinks, sexual multiplicities, somnolence, Jewishness, “cute” pathos, and more. In a virtuosic performance, Koestenbaum’s text moves gracefully from insightful analysis to cultural critique to autobiographical musing, and provides Harpo with a host of odd bedfellows, including Walter Benjamin and Barbra Streisand.

“Wayne Koestenbaum is our Roland Barthes, updated, remastered, cleared for the pressure zone of American mythologies. Delicate and brave, discerning and outrageous, the meditations organized around the other Marx track unconscious byways and the remarkable turns of a highly personal investment. Startlingly original, Koestenbaum provides critical understanding with poetic acuity and breathtaking disclosure."—Avital Ronell, author of The Test Drive - Publisher's Weekly.

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192 Books
more at 192 books
192 Tenth Avenue, New York, NY 10011
212-255-4022
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Thursday, February 16
7:00pm
Stewart O'Nan in conversation with Edward Champion
The Odds: A Love Story, by Stewart O'Nan In the new novel from the author of Last Night at the Lobster, a middle-age couple goes all in for love at a Niagara Falls casino Stewart O'Nan's thirteenth novel is another wildly original, bittersweet gem like his celebrated Last Night at the Lobster. …

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The Odds: A Love Story, by Stewart O'Nan

In the new novel from the author of Last Night at the Lobster, a middle-age couple goes all in for love at a Niagara Falls casino

Stewart O'Nan's thirteenth novel is another wildly original, bittersweet gem like his celebrated Last Night at the Lobster. Valentine's weekend, Art and Marion Fowler flee their Cleveland suburb for Niagara Falls, desperate to recoup their losses. Jobless, with their home approaching foreclosure and their marriage on the brink of collapse, Art and Marion liquidate their savings account and book a bridal suite at the Falls' ritziest casino for a second honeymoon. While they sightsee like tourists during the day, at night they risk it all at the roulette wheel to fix their finances-and save their marriage. A tender yet honest exploration of faith, forgiveness and last chances, The Odds is a reminder that love, like life, is always a gamble.

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McNally Jackson Books
more at mcnally jackson books
52 Prince Street, New York, NY 10012
212-274-1160
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Tuesday, February 21
7:00pm
Edmund White - JACK HOLMES AND HIS FRIEND
Join us as Edmund White reads from and signs copies of his latest novel, Jack Holmes & His Friend, which critics have called "brilliant, moving, and hilarious." A beautifully sculpted exploration of sexuality and sensibility, deftly told by White, the novel follows the friendship of Jack and Will, …

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Join us as Edmund White reads from and signs copies of his latest novel, Jack Holmes & His Friend,

which critics have called "brilliant, moving, and hilarious." A beautifully sculpted exploration of sexuality

and sensibility, deftly told by White, the novel follows the friendship of Jack and Will, two friends

who move to New York in the early 1960s.

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Three Lives & Company
more at this location
154 West 10th Street, New York, NY 10014
212-741-2069
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Tuesday, February 21
7:00pm
ADAM WILSON – FLATSCREEN
Flatscreen, by Adam Wilson Flatscreen tells the story of Eli Schwartz as he endures the loss of his home, the indifference of his parents, the success of his older brother, and the cruel and frequent dismissal of the opposite sex. He is a loser par excellence—pasty, soft, and high—who struggles…

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Flatscreen, by Adam Wilson

Flatscreen tells the story of Eli Schwartz as he endures the loss of his home, the indifference of his parents, the success of his older brother, and the cruel and frequent dismissal of the opposite sex. He is a loser par excellence—pasty, soft, and high—who struggles to become a new person in a world where nothing is new.

Into this scene of apathy rolls Seymour J. Kahn. Former star of the small screen and current paraplegic sex addict, Kahn has purchased Eli’s old family home. The two begin a dangerous friendship, one that distracts from their circumstances but speeds their descent into utter debasement and, inevitably, YouTube stardom.

By story’s end, through unlikely acts of courage and kindness, roles will be reversed, reputations resurrected, and charges (hopefully) dropped. Adam Wilson writes mischief that moves the heart, and Flatscreen marks the wondrous debut of a truth-telling comic voice.

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BookCourt
more at bookcourt
163 Court Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
718-875-3677
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Wednesday, February 22
7:00pm
On Biography: Stacy Schiff in conversation with Rachel Syme
On Biography is a conversation and reading series devoted to the craft of biography. Host Rachel Syme will speak to leaders and emerging stars of the biography world, discussing the thrills and challenges of writing about a life. This series will explore the ethics of reading personal letters and …

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On Biography is a conversation and reading series devoted to the craft of biography. Host Rachel Syme will speak to leaders and emerging stars of the biography world, discussing the thrills and challenges of writing about a life. This series will explore the ethics of reading personal letters and diaries, the controversies that come with writing someone else's story, and the excitement of uncovering a treasure in the archives. Rachel will talk with Stacy Schiff.

Stacy Schiff is the author of Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of the George Washington Book Prize, the Ambassador Award in American Studies, and the Gilbert Chinard Prize of the Institut Français d'Amérique. All three were New York Times Notable Books; the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the Chicago Tribune, and The Economist also named A Great Improvisation a Best Book of the Year. The biographies have been published in a host of foreign editions. Her latest book is Cleopatra, a New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year. Schiff has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities and was a Director’s Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She was awarded a 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Schiff has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe, among other publications. She lives in New York City.

Rachel Syme is the former Books Editor for National Public Radio and a current NPR contributor and contributing culture editor for TIME Magazine. She is currently writing a biography of the love affair between Hollywood gossip columnist Sheilah Graham and author F. Scott Fitzgerald for Random House. She has read so many biographies that she often feels like she is living a hundred other lives in addition to her own.

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McNally Jackson Books
more at mcnally jackson books
52 Prince Street, New York, NY 10012
212-274-1160
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Wednesday, February 22
7:00pm
Selected Shorts: An Evening With One Story Magazine
Come celebrate 10 years of One Story, the unique, award-winning literary magazine that publishes one short story at a time. Co-founders Maribeth Batcha and Selected Shorts literary commentator Hannah Tinti will be joined by contributors Tom Barbash, L.Annette Binder, Seth Fried and Jim Shepard, who…

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Come celebrate 10 years of One Story, the unique, award-winning literary magazine that publishes one short story at a time. Co-founders Maribeth Batcha and Selected Shorts literary commentator Hannah Tinti will be joined by contributors Tom Barbash, L.Annette Binder, Seth Fried and Jim Shepard, who will introduce their stories. The stories will be performed by Tom Cavanagh (Royal Pains, Ed) and others. All ticket holders will receive a free issue of the magazine!

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Symphony Space
more at symphony space
2537 Broadway at 95th Street, New York, NY 10025
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An Ermine in Czernopol (New York Review Books Classics)
by Gregor von Rezzori
$16.95 List Price
For more info visit:
Amazon • IndieBound
Wednesday, February 22
7:00pm
Deborah Eisenberg & Wallace Shawn read from An Ermine in Czernopol (NYC)
Hosted by The Center for Fiction, Deborah Eisenberg and Wallace Shawn will read excerpts of Gregor von Rezzori’s masterpiece of post-war literature An Ermine in Czernopol (translated by Philip Boehm). An Ermine in Czernopol is a story that takes place just after World War I, centering on the …

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Hosted by The Center for Fiction, Deborah Eisenberg and Wallace Shawn will read excerpts of Gregor von Rezzori’s masterpiece of post-war literature An Ermine in Czernopol (translated by Philip Boehm).

An Ermine in Czernopol is a story that takes place just after World War I, centering on the tragicomic fate of Tildy, an erstwhile officer in the army of the now-defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire, determined to defend the virtue of his cheating sister-in-law at any cost.

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The Center for Fiction
more at the center for fiction
17 East 47th Street, New York, NY, New York, NY 10017
212-755-6710
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Thursday, February 23
7:00pm
Toby Lester in conversation with Robert Krulwich of RadioLab
Da Vinci's Ghost: Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image, by Toby Lester EVERYONE KNOWSTHE IMAGE. NO ONE KNOWS ITS STORY. This is the story of Vitruvian Man: Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawing of a man in a circle and a square. Deployed today to celebrate subjects…

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Da Vinci's Ghost: Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image, by Toby Lester

EVERYONE KNOWSTHE IMAGE. NO ONE KNOWS ITS STORY. This is the story of Vitruvian Man: Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawing of a man in a circle and a square. Deployed today to celebrate subjects as various as the nature of genius, the beauty of the human form, and the universality of the human spirit, the figure appears on everything from coffee cups and T-shirts to book covers and corporate logos. In short, it has become the world’s most famous cultural icon, yet almost nobody knows anything about it. Leonardo didn’t summon Vitruvian Man out of thin air. He was playing with the idea, set down by the Roman architect Vitruvius, that the human body could be made to fit inside a circle, long associated with the divine, and a square, related to the earthly and secular. To place a man inside those shapes was therefore to imply that the human body was the world in miniature. This idea, known as the theory of the microcosm, was the engine that had powered Western religious and scientific thought for centuries, and Leonardo hitched himself to it in no uncertain terms. Yet starting in the 1480s he set out to do something unprecedented. If the design of the body truly did reflect that of the cosmos, he reasoned, then by studying its proportions and anatomy more thoroughly than had ever been done before—by peering deep into both body and soul—he might broaden the scope of his art to include the broadest of metaphysical horizons. He might, in other words, obtain an almost godlike perspective on the makeup of the world as a whole. Vitruvian Man gives that exhilarating idea visual expression. In telling its story, Toby Lester weaves together a century-spanning saga of people and ideas. Assembled here is an eclectic cast of fascinating characters: the architect Vitruvius; the emperor Caesar Augustus and his “body of empire”; early Christian and Muslim thinkers; the visionary mystic Hildegard of Bingen; the book-hunter Poggio Bracciolini; the famous dome-builder Filippo Brunelleschi; Renaissance anatomists, architects, art theorists, doctors, and military engineers; and, of course, in the starring role, Leonardo himself—whose ghost Lester resurrects in the surprisingly unfamiliar context of his own times. Da Vinci’s Ghost is written with the same narrative flair and intellectual sweep as Lester’s award-winning first book, the “almost unbearably thrilling” (Simon Winchester) Fourth Part of the World. Like Vitruvian Man itself, the book captures a pivotal time in the history of Western thought when the Middle Ages was giving way to the Renaissance, when art and science and philosophy all seemed to be converging as one, and when it seemed just possible, at least to Leonardo da Vinci, that a single human being might embody—and even understand—the nature of everything.

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McNally Jackson Books
more at mcnally jackson books
52 Prince Street, New York, NY 10012
212-274-1160
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Friday, February 24
7:00pm
Friday Night Book Group
The Friday Night Book Group reconvenes in the Cafe for their monthly meeting. This month the group will discuss Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm. Group meetings are open to the public.
Barnes & Noble
more at barnes & noble
150 East 86th Street, New York, NY 10028-2105
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Saturday, February 25
7:00pm
Tom McCarthy's MEN IN SPACE
The first novel written by Booker finalist Tom McCarthy—acclaimed author of Remainder and C— Men in Space is set in a Central Europe rapidly disintegrating after the fall of Communism. It follows an oddball cast of characters—dissolute bohemians, political refugees, a football referee, a …

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The first novel written by Booker finalist Tom McCarthy—acclaimed author of Remainder and C— Men in Space is set in a Central Europe rapidly disintegrating after the fall of Communism. It follows an oddball cast of characters—dissolute bohemians, political refugees, a football referee, a disorientated police agent, and a stranded astronaut—as they chase a stolen painting from Sofia to Prague and onward. The icon’s melancholy orbit is reflected in the various characters’ ellipses and near misses as they career vertiginously through all kinds of space: physical, political, emotional and metaphysical. What emerges is a vision of humanity adrift in history, and a world in a state of disintegration.

“McCarthy is fast revealing himself as a master craftsman who is steering the contemporary novel towards exciting territories."- The Observer (London)

“I think it means rather to shake the novel out of its present complacency. It clears away a little of the dead wood, offering a glimpse of an alternate road down which the novel might, with difficulty, travel forward... one of the great English novels of the past ten years."- Zadie Smith on Remainder in The New York Review of Books

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192 Books
more at 192 books
192 Tenth Avenue, New York, NY 10011
212-255-4022
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Monday, February 27
7:00pm
Eleanor Henderson in conversation with Taylor Antrim
Ten Thousand Saints, by Eleanor Henderson “Eleanor Henderson is in possession of an enormous talent which she has matched up with skill, ambition, and a fierce imagination. The resulting novel, Ten Thousand Saints, is the best thing I’ve read in a long time.” —Ann Patchett, bestselling …

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Ten Thousand Saints, by Eleanor Henderson

“Eleanor Henderson is in possession of an enormous talent which she has matched up with skill, ambition, and a fierce imagination. The resulting novel, Ten Thousand Saints, is the best thing I’ve read in a long time.”

—Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder

A sweeping, multigenerational drama, set against the backdrop of the raw, roaring New York City during the late 1980s, Ten Thousand Saints triumphantly heralds the arrival a remarkable new writer. Eleanor Henderson makes a truly stunning debut with a novel that is part coming of age, part coming to terms, immediately joining the ranks of The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud and Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude. Adoption, teen pregnancy, drugs, hardcore punk rock, the unbridled optimism and reckless stupidity of the young—and old—are all major elements in this heart-aching tale of the son of diehard hippies and his strange odyssey through the extremes of late 20th century youth culture.

About the author...

Eleanor Henderson earned her MFA from the University of Virginia in 2005. Her story "The Farms" was selected by Alice Sebold for The Best American Short Stories 2009. Henderson's fiction has also appeared in Agni, North American Review, Ninth Letter, and Columbia, among other publications. Her nonfiction has appeared in Poets & Writers, where she was a contributing editor, and Virginia Quarterly Review, where she was the chair of the fiction board. An assistant professor at Ithaca College, she lives in Ithaca, New York.

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McNally Jackson Books
more at mcnally jackson books
52 Prince Street, New York, NY 10012
212-274-1160
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Monday, February 27
8:15pm
“Our America”: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Ilan Stavans
A conversation with two of our most esteemed editor-scholars on the relationship between African American and Latino literature. “The urgent duty of our America is to show herself as she is, one in soul and intent, rapidly overcoming the crushing weight of her past,” wrote José Martí, in his…

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A conversation with two of our most esteemed editor-scholars on the relationship between African American and Latino literature.

“The urgent duty of our America is to show herself as she is, one in soul and intent, rapidly overcoming the crushing weight of her past,” wrote José Martí, in his essay “Our America.” Among many other projects, Henry Louis Gates has overseen The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, while Ilan Stavans has served as general editor on The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature.

$19 / $10 for those 35 and under

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92nd Street Y
more at 92nd street y
1395 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10128
212-415-5500
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Tuesday, February 28
7:00pm
Richard Mason, History of a Pleasure SeekerRichard Mason, History of a Pleasure Seeker
History of a Pleasure Seeker is an opulent, romantic novel, written in the grand manner, set at the height of Europe's belle epoque, about a handsome young man in his mid-twenties—a golden boy who secures a position as a tutor in the household of one of the most prominent bourgeois families in …

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History of a Pleasure Seeker is an opulent, romantic novel, written in the grand manner, set at the height of Europe's belle epoque, about a handsome young man in his mid-twenties—a golden boy who secures a position as a tutor in the household of one of the most prominent bourgeois families in Amsterdam and his entry into a world of moneyed glamour and dangerous temptations. Piet Barol, blue-eyed, dark-haired, seductive and seductively charged, enters this magnificent world, and inexorably learns the hidden truths of this vastly rich, secretive family and, through the course of the novel, is profoundly transformed as his charm and sexual pull transform each of their lives. In the heady exhilaration of this new world, amid delights and temptations that Piet has only dreamed of, he discovers that some of the intimacies he has cultivated are dangerous liaisons indeed

Richard Mason was born in South Africa and lives in Glasgow. His first novel, The Drowning People, which the New York Times Book Review called “a literary sensation,” was published when he was twenty-one and still a student at Oxford. It sold more than a million copies in Germany alone and won Italy's Grinzane Cavour Prize for Best First Novel. He is also the author of the novel, Natural Elements, which The New Yorker called “a magnum opus.” In 1999, Mason started the Kay Mason Foundation, which awards scholarships to disadvantaged students in South Africa.

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Strand Book Store
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828 Broadway, New York, NY 10003-4805
212-473-1452
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The Guardians:
An Elegy
by Sarah Manguso
$20.00 List Price
For more info visit:
Amazon • IndieBound
Tuesday, February 28
7:00pm
SARAH MANGUSO – THE GUARDIANS
The Guardians, Sarah Manguso The Guardians opens with a story from the July 24, 2008, edition of the Riverdale Press that begins, “An unidentified white man was struck and instantly killed by a Metro-North train last night as it pulled into the station on West 254th Street.” Sarah Manguso writes:…

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The Guardians, Sarah Manguso

The Guardians opens with a story from the July 24, 2008, edition of the Riverdale Press that begins, “An unidentified white man was struck and instantly killed by a Metro-North train last night as it pulled into the station on West 254th Street.” Sarah Manguso writes: “The train’s engineer told the police that the man was alone and that he jumped. The police officers pulled the body from the track and found no identification. The train’s 425 passengers were transferred to another train and delayed about twenty minutes.”

The Guardians is an elegy for Manguso’s friend Harris, two years after he escaped from a psychiatric hospital and jumped under that train. The narrative contemplates with unrelenting clarity their crowded postcollege apartment, Manguso’s fellowship year in Rome, Harris’s death and the year that followed—the year of mourning and the year of Manguso’s marriage. As Harris is revealed both to the reader and to the narrator, the book becomes a monument to their intimacy and inability to express their love to each other properly, and to the reverberating effects of Harris’s presence in and absence from Manguso’s life. There is grief in the book but also humor, as Manguso marvels at the unexpected details that constitute a friendship. The Guardians explores the insufficiency of explanation and the necessity of the imagination in making sense of anything.

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BookCourt
more at bookcourt
163 Court Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
718-875-3677
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Wednesday, February 29
7:00pm
The Role of the Critic
Adam Kirsch, author, Why Trilling Matters, in conversation with Judith Shulevitz, author, The Sabbath World Kirsch and Shulevitz, two of today’s leading literary critics, discuss the legacy of Lionel Trilling and the evolving place of the critic in today’s intellectual world. For tickets call:…

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Adam Kirsch, author, Why Trilling Matters, in conversation with Judith Shulevitz, author, The Sabbath World

Kirsch and Shulevitz, two of today’s leading literary critics, discuss the legacy of Lionel Trilling and the evolving place of the critic in today’s intellectual world.

For tickets call: 646.437.4202

$10, $5 members

Location: 36 Battery Place

Visit: www.mjhnyc.org

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Museum of Jewish Heritage
more at this location
Edmond J. Safra Plaza, 36 Battery Place, New York, NY 10280
646-437-4200
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Wednesday, February 29
7:00pm
Panel discussion Daniel Banks, reg e. gaines, Eboni Hogan, and others to be announced, on the book: Say Word! Voices from Hip Hop Theater
The book, edited by Daniel Banks, collects eight works by contemporary playwrights Abiola Abrams, Zakiyyah Alexander, Chadwick Boseman, Kristoffer Diaz, Rha Goddess, Antoy Grant, Joe Hernandez-Kolski, Rickerby Hinds, and Ben Snyder. The book also includes a roundtable moderated by Holly Bass and …

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The book, edited by Daniel Banks, collects eight works by contemporary playwrights Abiola Abrams, Zakiyyah Alexander, Chadwick Boseman, Kristoffer Diaz, Rha Goddess, Antoy Grant, Joe Hernandez-Kolski, Rickerby Hinds, and Ben Snyder. The book also includes a roundtable moderated by Holly Bass and featuring Eisa Davis, Danny Hoch, Sarah Jones, and Will Power.

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Revolution Books
more at revolution books
146 W. 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
212-691-3345
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Tuesday, March 6
7:00pm
Kathryn Harrison, Enchantments
Enchantments is a gorgeously written, enthralling novel set in the final days of Russia’s Romanov Empire, in St. Petersburg, 1917. After Rasputin’s body is pulled from the icy waters of the Neva River, his eighteen-year-old daughter, Masha, is sent to live at the imperial palace with Tsar Nikolay…

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Enchantments is a gorgeously written, enthralling novel set in the final days of Russia’s Romanov Empire, in St. Petersburg, 1917. After Rasputin’s body is pulled from the icy waters of the Neva River, his eighteen-year-old daughter, Masha, is sent to live at the imperial palace with Tsar Nikolay and his family—including the headstrong Prince Alyosha. Desperately hoping that Masha has inherited Rasputin’s miraculous healing powers, Tsarina Alexandra asks her to tend to Aloysha, who suffers from hemophilia, a blood disease that keeps the boy confined to his sickbed, lest a simple scrape or bump prove fatal. Two months after Masha arrives at the palace, the tsar is forced to abdicate, and Bolsheviks place the royal family under house arrest. As Russia descends into civil war, Masha and Alyosha grieve the loss of their former lives, finding solace in each other’s company. To escape the confinement of the palace, they tell stories—some embellished and some entirely imagined—about Nikolay and Alexandra’s courtship, Rasputin’s many exploits, and the wild and wonderful country on the brink of an irrevocable transformation. In the worlds of their imagination, the weak become strong, legend becomes fact, and a future that will never come to pass feels close at hand. Mesmerizing, haunting, and told in Kathryn Harrison’s signature crystalline prose, Enchantments is a love story about two people who come together as everything around them is falling apart.

Kathryn Harrison is the author of the memoirs The Kiss and The Mother Knot. She is also author of the novels, Envy, The Seal Wife, The Binding Chair, Poison, Exposure, and Thicker Than Water; a travel memoir, The Road to Santiago; a biography, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux; and a collection of essays, Seeking Rapture. She lives in New York City.

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Strand Book Store
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828 Broadway, New York, NY 10003-4805
212-473-1452
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Coral Glynn:
A Novel
by Peter Cameron
$24.00 List Price
For more info visit:
Amazon • IndieBound
Tuesday, March 20
7:00pm
CORAL GLYNN by Peter Cameron
Please join us for an evening with Peter Cameron as we celebrate the publication of his most recent novel. Set in Hart House, a countryside manor in 1950s England, Coral Glynn follows the lives and loves of a cast of troubled characters who discover how quickly need and desire can blossom into love,…

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Please join us for an evening with Peter Cameron as we celebrate the publication of his most recent novel.

Set in Hart House, a countryside manor in 1950s England, Coral Glynn follows the lives and loves of a

cast of troubled characters who discover how quickly need and desire can blossom into love, and just as

quickly transform into something less categorical.

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Three Lives & Company
more at this location
154 West 10th Street, New York, NY 10014
212-741-2069
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Sunday, March 25
11:00am
The Nets of Modernism: James, Woolf, Joyce, Freud
Maud Ellmann’s new book examines how these four modernist masters confront the entangled nature of the self. She is also author of a biography of Elizabeth Bowen and The Hunger Artists: Starving, Writing & Imprisonment.

Tickets available for $35.
92nd Street Y
more at 92nd street y
1395 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10128
212-415-5500
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Monday, March 26
8:15pm
Brian Turner and Kevin Young
A former soldier who served in the Iraq War, Brian Turner is the author of two collections: Here, Bullet and Phantom Noise. “His poetic gifts [detonate] into a spray of lyric force that will mark what is possible in poetry for years to come,” wrote Carolyn Forché. “A chiseling of agony onto…

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A former soldier who served in the Iraq War, Brian Turner is the author of two collections: Here, Bullet and Phantom Noise.

“His poetic gifts [detonate] into a spray of lyric force that will mark what is possible in poetry for years to come,” wrote Carolyn Forché. “A chiseling of agony onto paper and a poignant cri de coeur to the republic of conscience.”

Kevin Young’s new book of poems is Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels. His “gift of storytelling and understanding of the music inherent in the oral tradition of language re-creates for us an inner history which is compelling and authentic and American,” wrote Lucille Clifton.

Tickets from $19 / $10 for those 35 and under.

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92nd Street Y
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1395 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10128
212-415-5500
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Thursday, April 12
8:00pm
Kathryn Harrison and Lionel Shriver
Kathryn Harrison’s new novel is Enchantments. “She is one of the most compelling writers I know,” wrote Elizabeth Berg. “A true artist whose formidable talent is matched by her courage.” Lionel Shriver’s new novel is The New Republic. Her work is “tough, complicated, brilliant,” …

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Kathryn Harrison’s new novel is Enchantments.

“She is one of the most compelling writers I know,” wrote Elizabeth Berg. “A true artist whose formidable talent is matched by her courage.”

Lionel Shriver’s new novel is The New Republic. Her work is “tough, complicated, brilliant,” wrote Ruth Franklin. “Shriver isn’t the kind of writer who lets her themes bubble up opaquely; she seizes them and interrogates them for all they’re worth. … [It’s] exhilarating to be in the presence of a writer who exercises her intelligence so vigorously.”

$19 / $10 for those 35 and under

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Unterberg Poetry Center
more at unterberg poetry center
92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10128
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Monday, April 16
8:00pm
Francisco Goldman and Roger Rosenblatt
Francisco Goldman’s recent memoir is Say Her Name. It “must be the only book about love ever written. It’s certainly the only one I’ll ever need to read,” wrote Susan Choi. “Francisco Goldman has alchemized grief into joy, death into life and the act of reading into one of resurrection.…

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Francisco Goldman’s recent memoir is Say Her Name.

It “must be the only book about love ever written. It’s certainly the only one I’ll ever need to read,” wrote Susan Choi. “Francisco Goldman has alchemized grief into joy, death into life and the act of reading into one of resurrection. His book is a miracle.”

Roger Rosenblatt’s new memoir is Kayak Morning. “Roger Rosenblatt means, I believe, to teach patience, love, a fondness for the quotidian and a deftness for saving the lost moment—when faced with lacerating loss,” wrote Richard Ford. “These are brilliant lessons, fiercely-learned. But Rosenblatt comes to them and to us—suitably—with immense humility.”

$19 / $10 for those 35 and under

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Unterberg Poetry Center
more at unterberg poetry center
92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10128
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New York

Tuesday, February 7

6:00pm

FREE Mischief & Mayhem Reading Series w/ Kaylie Jones , Thaddeus Rutkowski and host Katie Halper

Tuesday, February 7

6:30pm

Poetry Reading with Martha Rhodes, James Tolan, Stephanie Brown, and Marcia Pelletiere

Tuesday, February 7

7:00pm

Tuesday, February 7

7:00pm

Wednesday, February 8

7:00pm

Wednesday, February 8

7:00pm

Josh Bazell, Wild Thing, with Malcolm Jones

Wednesday, February 8

7:00pm

Wednesday, February 8

8:00pm

Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards

by Al Kooper

$19.99 List Price

For more info visit:Amazon • IndieBound

Thursday, February 9

4:00pm

Thursday, February 9

7:00pm

Thursday, February 9

7:00pm

Thursday, February 9

8:00pm

Friday, February 10

6:30pm

For more info visit:
Amazon • IndieBound