For children of all ages and their caregivers... Artie Bennett will read from his "good-natured hymn of praise to rear ends in all their variety" (The Horn Book). Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz says "This book... filled with with such whimsical, lighthearted language and charming …

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For children of all ages and their caregivers...

Artie Bennett will read from his "good-natured hymn of praise to rear ends in all their variety" (The Horn Book).

Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz says "This book... filled with with such whimsical, lighthearted language and charming illustrations... is fun for fun's sake... and that's what reading should always be about!"

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Founded in 1977, Sheep Meadow is a non-profit press dedicated to poetry, poets, and books of particular interest to poets. Sheep Meadow is attracted to poets of great merit who for one reason or another have been turned away from commercial publishers. Unobtrusively but decisively, Stephanos …

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Founded in 1977, Sheep Meadow is a non-profit press dedicated to poetry, poets, and books of particular interest to poets. Sheep Meadow is attracted to poets of great merit who for one reason or another have been turned away from commercial publishers.

Unobtrusively but decisively, Stephanos Papadopoulos’ work is informed by various cultures: American, Greek, ancient and modern, French and English as distinguished from American. He follows other poets, but mostly he follows his heart. In his poetry the melancholy of the modern finds its beauty in loss itself. Papadopoulos catches this beauty in poem after poem, while his poetry swims for joy in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Aegean. This beautiful contradiction makes Hôtel Dieu a great pleasure to read and reread.

"When Virginia Woolf went to Greece in 1906, she felt that 'all lumps in the earth here are but so much dust heaped negligently over some well-ordered temple or statue beneath.' Identical treasure is inherent in the heroic soil for Christopher Bakken; this poet is nurtured by lithic yield: 'Here I believe in stone, existence in the flesh...' And with all the power of a burial that is yet a parturition, his book reads as a kind of tephromancy, a divination by ashes: 'Since the earth is god I am not dust but god.' It is not 'questions of travel,' or even the effects of an affinity these luminous poems afford, but a lasting procession. There is no 'after Greece,' nothing subsequent: the dust and what is beneath it are present forever in the poet's mouth." - Richard Howard

Stephanos Papadopoulos, a Greek-American poet and translator, was born in North Carolina in 1976 and was raised in Paris and Athens. Educated in the US and Edinburgh, Scotland, he holds a degree in classical archaeology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His work has been published in periodicals such as the Yale Review, Poetry Review, Stand Magazine, The New Republic and many others.

Christopher Bakken's first book, After Greece, won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry in 2001. Bakken is also co-translator of The Lions’ Gate: Selected Poems of Titos Patrikios (2006). He received an M.F.A. from the Writing Seminars of Columbia University and a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing at University of Houston.

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A beautifully imagined tale of the Bronte sisters and the writing of Jane Eyre. The year is 1846. In a cold parsonage on the gloomy Yorkshire moors, a family seems cursed with disaster. A mother and two children dead. A father sick, without fortune, and hardened by the loss of his two most beloved…

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A beautifully imagined tale of the Bronte sisters and the writing of Jane Eyre.

The year is 1846. In a cold parsonage on the gloomy Yorkshire moors, a family seems cursed with disaster. A mother and two children dead. A father sick, without fortune, and hardened by the loss of his two most beloved family members. A son destroyed by alcohol and opiates. And three strong, intelligent young women, reduced to poverty and spinsterhood, with nothing to save them from their fate. Nothing, that is, except their remarkable literary talent.

So unfolds the story of the Brontë sisters. At its center are Charlotte and the writing of Jane Eyre. Delicately unraveling the connections between one of fiction's most indelible heroines and the remarkable woman who created her, Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre will appeal to fans of historical fiction and, of course, the millions of readers who adore Jane Eyre.

About the Author

Sheila Kohler is the author of nine previous works of fiction, including Cracks, which is now a movie starring Eva Green. Her work has been included in the Best American Short Stories, and she has won two O'Henry Prizes, an Open Fiction Award, a Willa Cather Prize, and a Smart Family Foundation Prize.

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Brooklyn author Jennifer Gilmore’s first novel, Golden Country, was named a New York Times Notable Book and was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist. Her new novel Something Red puts a twist on the traditionally male-dominated arenas of politics and espionage with the story of the tumultuous …

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Brooklyn author Jennifer Gilmore’s first novel, Golden Country, was named a New York Times Notable Book and was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist. Her new novel Something Red puts a twist on the traditionally male-dominated arenas of politics and espionage with the story of the tumultuous Goldstein family, living in Washington D.C in 1980. Jennifer is the former publicity director at Harcourt and a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine and the New York Times Book Review; join us for the launch party for her brand-new novel.

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The Fiction Feed 2 is a follow up to last fall’s reading and raucous debate about fiction and technology organized by literary website Joyland. This installment features author and Joyland co-founder Brian Joseph Davis, Cursor’s Richard Nash, and blogger and author Jim Hanas. The event is free.…

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The Fiction Feed 2 is a follow up to last fall’s reading and raucous debate about fiction and technology organized by literary website Joyland. This installment features author and Joyland co-founder Brian Joseph Davis, Cursor’s Richard Nash, and blogger and author Jim Hanas.

The event is free.

Brian Joseph Davis is the author of I, Tania, a novel that SLATE called “The book of your fever dreams.” His music and radio productions have been acclaimed by Wired, Pitchfork, Salon, and LA Weekly. Davis is co-founder of Joyland, which the CBC called “the go-to spot for readers seeking the best in short fiction.” His new book of short fiction, Ronald Reagan My Father is out April 1.

Jim Hanas is the author of Cassingle: Five Stories (2009) and Single: Two Stories (2006), two e-book collections of short stories that previously appeared in McSweeney's, Fence, One Story, the Land-Grant College Review, Bridge, Twelve Stories, and elsewhere. His non-fiction and humor pieces have appeared in Slate, Radar, Print, the New York Daily News, and the New York Post. He also helps out with Adult Education, a "useless lecture series."

Richard Nash ran Soft Skull Press, now an imprint of Counterpoint, from 2001 to 2007 and ran the imprint on behalf of Counterpoint until early 2009. He’s developing a start-up called Cursor, a portfolio of niche social publishing communities, one of which will be called Red Lemonade.

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This is the story of how a military device became the robot voice of hip-hop and pop music. Though the vocoder, invented by Bell Labs in 1928, was designed to guard phones from eavesdroppers, it expanded beyond its original purpose and has since become widely used as a voice-altering tool for musicians.…

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This is the story of how a military device became the robot voice of hip-hop and pop music. Though the vocoder, invented by Bell Labs in 1928, was designed to guard phones from eavesdroppers, it expanded beyond its original purpose and has since become widely used as a voice-altering tool for musicians. It has served both the Pentagon and the roller rink, a double agent of pop and espionage.

In How to Wreck a Nice Beach—from a mis-hearing of the vocoder-rendered phrase “how to recognize speech”—music journalist Dave Tompkins traces the history of electronic voices from Nazi research labs to Stalin’s gulags, from the 1939 World’s Fair to Hiroshima, from Manhattan nightclubs to the Muppets.

The result is an amazing chronicle of postwar music and culture, filled with unexpected and surprising encounters. We see the vocoder brush up against FDR, Solzhenitsyn, Stanley Kubrick, Stevie Wonder, JFK, Eisenhower, Neil Young, Kanye West, the Cylons, Walt Disney, Henry Kissinger, and Winston Churchill, who boomed, when vocoderized on V-E Day, “We must go off!” And now the device is a cell phone standard, allowing your voice to sound human.

From T-Mobile to T-Pain, How to Wreck a Nice Beach is a riveting saga of technology and culture, illuminating the work of some of music’s most provocative innovators.

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A powerful and redemptive novel of love and family, from the author of the bestselling Blue Shoe, Grace (Eventually), and Operating Instructions. Rosie Ferguson is seventeen and ready to enjoy the summer before her senior year of high school. She's intelligent-she aced AP physics; athletic-a former…

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A powerful and redemptive novel of love and family, from the author of the bestselling Blue Shoe, Grace (Eventually), and Operating Instructions.

Rosie Ferguson is seventeen and ready to enjoy the summer before her senior year of high school. She's intelligent-she aced AP physics; athletic-a former state-ranked tennis doubles champion; and beautiful. She is, in short, everything her mother, Elizabeth, hoped she could be. The family's move to Landsdale, with stepfather James in tow, hadn't been as bumpy as Elizabeth feared.

But as the school year draws to a close, there are disturbing signs that the life Rosie claims to be leading is a sham, and that Elizabeth's hopes for her daughter to remain immune from the pull of the darker impulses of drugs and alcohol are dashed. Slowly and against their will, Elizabeth and James are forced to confront the fact that Rosie has been lying to them-and that her deceptions will have profound consequences.

This is Anne Lamott's most honest and heartrending novel yet, exploring our human quest for connection and salvation as it reveals the traps that can befall all of us.

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From the introduction of the reserve clause in 1879 to the lockout and new basic agreement of 1990, baseball players have been engaged in one of the longest and most colorful labor struggles in our nation’s history. The Imperfect Diamond tells the stories of the players and their opponents, the …

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From the introduction of the reserve clause in 1879 to the lockout and new basic agreement of 1990, baseball players have been engaged in one of the longest and most colorful labor struggles in our nation’s history. The Imperfect Diamond tells the stories of the players and their opponents, the powerful owners: how John Montgomery Ward led the Players League Rebellion of 1890; the rise and fall of David Fultz and the Baseball Players Fraternity (1912–18); the iron-fisted regime of Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis; the case of Danny Gardella vs. Happy Chandler and the blacklisting of the players who jumped to the Mexican League; the founding of the Baseball Players Association in 1953 and the tempestuous but triumphant reign of Marvin Miller; the struggles of Curt Flood, Andy Messersmith, and Dave McNally, and how they brought about the demise of the reserve clause; the unprecedented midseason strike of 1981 and the collusion cases of the late 1980s.


In the epilogue for this Bison Books edition, Lee Lowenfish guides the reader through the turbulent 1990s and first decade of the twenty-first century, covering expansion teams, the monumental 1994 strike, and performance-enhancing drugs. Listed by the Society of American Baseball Research as one of the fifty essential baseball books, The Imperfect Diamond will stand for years to come as the source for the real story behind America’s national pastime.

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The award-winning cartoonist, playwright and author delivers a witty, illustrated rendition of his life, from his childhood as a wimpy kid in the Bronx to his legendary career in the arts. "Jules Feiffer's original and neurotic voice—expressing the whiny child in every adult and the world-weary …

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The award-winning cartoonist, playwright and author delivers a witty, illustrated rendition of his life, from his childhood as a wimpy kid in the Bronx to his legendary career in the arts.

"Jules Feiffer's original and neurotic voice—expressing the whiny child in every adult and the world-weary sophisticate inside every kid—reinvented comics in the 1950s and made possible what's now called the 'graphic novel.' His engaging new memoir is told in that same witty perceptive New York cadence, now mellowed and laced with wisdom. He's an inspiration." -Art Spiegelman

Jules Feiffer will read selections from his new memoir.

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Of The Furies, Fernanda Eberstadt’s last novel, Alexandra Jacobs wrote in the New York Observer that it “veers pretty close to genius . . . Eberstadt is an expert, sensual, and at times truly breathtaking conjurer of New York City.” With Rat, Eberstadt has found a new setting she knows well, …

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Of The Furies, Fernanda Eberstadt’s last novel, Alexandra Jacobs wrote in the New York Observer that it “veers pretty close to genius . . . Eberstadt is an expert, sensual, and at times truly breathtaking conjurer of New York City.” With Rat, Eberstadt has found a new setting she knows well, the South of France, and the story she tells is original, powerful, and heartrending—about a child’s search for a father she has never known.

Rat is fifteen-year-old Celia Bonnet, who lives with her unmarried mother, Vanessa, a free-spirited local beauty, in a farmhouse compound with other single-parent families in the Pyrénées Orientales, a gorgeous but forlorn Mediterranean no-man’s-land just north of the Spanish Catalan border. Rat is the result of a one-night encounter between Vanessa and Gillem, the son of a London model from the 1960s, who used to spend summers in the area and whom Rat has never spoken to or met. But when Vanessa’s current boyfriend starts preying on Morgan, the orphaned nine-year-old who is Rat’s adopted brother, she decides to take Morgan and run away to her father in London. As the novel unfolds, the two children undertake a difficult journey to find the man who might finally explain to Rat who she is and where she belongs.

This is an enthralling novel with a luminous sense of place—both physical and emotional—and, at its core, a bold, engaging young heroine for our times.

About the Author

Fernanda Eberstadt is the author of four previous novels and one book of nonfiction. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Commentary. She lives in London with her husband and two children.

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The history of the vocoder: how popular music hijacked the Pentagon's speech scrambling weapon. The vocoder, invented by Bell Labs in 1928, once guarded phones from eavesdroppers during World War II; by the Vietnam War, it was repurposed as a voice-altering tool for musicians, and is now the ubiquitous…

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The history of the vocoder: how popular music hijacked the Pentagon's speech scrambling weapon.

The vocoder, invented by Bell Labs in 1928, once guarded phones from eavesdroppers during World War II; by the Vietnam War, it was repurposed as a voice-altering tool for musicians, and is now the ubiquitous voice of popular music.

In How to Wreck a Nice Beach—from a mis-hearing of the vocoder-rendered phrase “how to recognize speech”—music journalist Dave Tompkins traces the history of electronic voices from Nazi research labs to Stalin’s gulags, from the 1939 World’s Fair to Hiroshima, from artificial larynges to Auto-Tune.

We see the vocoder brush up against FDR, JFK, Stanley Kubrick, Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, Kraftwerk, the Cylons, Henry Kissinger, and Winston Churchill, who boomed, when vocoderized on V-E Day, “We must go off!” And now vocoder technology is a cell phone standard, allowing a digital replica of your voice to sound human.

From T-Mobile to T-Pain, How to Wreck a Nice Beach is a riveting saga of technology and culture, illuminating the work of some of music’s most provocative innovators.

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This reading will celebrate the release of The Kenning Anthology of Poets Theater 1945-1985, a superb documentation of the emergence, growth, and varied fortunes of the form over decades of American literary history. The largest and most comprehensive anthology of its kind yet assembled, the volume…

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This reading will celebrate the release of The Kenning Anthology of Poets Theater 1945-1985, a superb documentation of the emergence, growth, and varied fortunes of the form over decades of American literary history. The largest and most comprehensive anthology of its kind yet assembled, the volume collects classics of poets theater as well as rarities long out of print and texts from unpublished manuscripts and archives. Editors David Brazil and Kevin Killian will be joined by some of the contributors who will read or perform their work. With Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, Nada Gordon, Ted Greenwald, Sonia Sanchez and Fiona Templeton.

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Fort Greene’s own George Prochnik has written about everything from American psychology practices to the history of New York City parks in his books and journalism. In his new book In Pursuit of Silence, he addresses the importance – and scarcity – of silence in contemporary American life. This…

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Fort Greene’s own George Prochnik has written about everything from American psychology practices to the history of New York City parks in his books and journalism. In his new book In Pursuit of Silence, he addresses the importance – and scarcity – of silence in contemporary American life. This evening Prochnik reads and speaks about his experience of silence right here in the neighborhood and in the borough, and about the value of silence in helping us grow, connect, and see the world.

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For children of all ages and their caregivers... Zig and Wikki land on a planet of strange creatures like flies, frogs and raccoons, just when it seems to be lunchtime! In their hilarious search for a new pet, the friends discover fun facts about animals and nature. Written by recent Yale graduate …

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For children of all ages and their caregivers...

Zig and Wikki land on a planet of strange creatures like flies, frogs and raccoons, just when it seems to be lunchtime! In their hilarious search for a new pet, the friends discover fun facts about animals and nature.

Written by recent Yale graduate Nadja Spiegelman and illustrated by web designer and illustrator Trade Loeffler, the first science-based TOON Book, Zig and Wikki in "Something Ate My Homework" is an out-of-this-world adventure!

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Born in Ireland, Tóibín has been inspired by his homeland’s landscapes and by travels abroad to Barcelona and Buenos Aires. His novels include The South (1990), The Blackwater Lightship (1999), The Master (2006), and most recently Brooklyn (2009), set in 1950s Brooklyn and Ireland. In addition …

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Born in Ireland, Tóibín has been inspired by his homeland’s landscapes and by travels abroad to Barcelona and Buenos Aires. His novels include The South (1990), The Blackwater Lightship (1999), The Master (2006), and most recently Brooklyn (2009), set in 1950s Brooklyn and Ireland. In addition to fiction, Tóibín has written many travel books and essays and is known for his journalism, literary criticism, and playwriting. Currently, Tóibín is a visiting professor at Stanford University, Princeton University, and The University of Texas at Austin.

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An enduring mystery in Mark Twain’s life concerns the events of his last decade, from 1900 to 1910. Despite many Twain biographies, no one has ever determined exactly what took place during those final years after the death of Twain’s wife of thirty-four years and how those experiences affected…

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An enduring mystery in Mark Twain’s life concerns the events of his last decade, from 1900 to 1910.

Despite many Twain biographies, no one has ever determined exactly what took place during those final years after the death of Twain’s wife of thirty-four years and how those experiences affected him, personally and professionally. For nearly a century, it was believed that Twain went to his death a beloved, wisecracking iconoclastic American (“I am not an American,” Twain wrote; “I am the American”), undeterred by life’s sorrows and challenges.

Laura Skandera Trombley, the preeminent Twain scholar at work today, suspected that there had to be more to the story than the cultivated, carefully constructed version that had been intact for so long. Trombley went in search of the one woman whom she suspected had played the largest role in Twain’s life during those final years and who possibly held the answers to her questions about Twain’s life and writings.

Now, in Mark Twain’s Other Woman, after sixteen years of research, uncovering never-before-read papers and personal letters, Trombley tells the full story through Isabel Lyon’s meticulous daily journals, the only detailed record of Twain’s last years that exists, journals overlooked by Twain’s previous biographers.

For one hundred years, Isabel Van Kleek Lyon has been the mystery woman in Mark Twain’s life. Twain spent the bulk of his last six years in the company of Isabel, who was responsible for overseeing his schedule and finances, nursing him through several illnesses, managing his increasingly unmanageable daughters, running his household, arranging amusements, as well as presiding over the construction of his final residence. Isabel Lyon also served as Twain’s adoring audience (she called him “the King”), listening attentively as he read aloud to her what he’d written that day. She was Twain’s gatekeeper to an enthralled public.

Trombley writes about what happened between them that resulted in the dramatic breakup of their relationship; about how, in Twain’s final months, he gave bitter, angry press conferences denouncing her; how he ranted in personal letters that she had injured him, calling her, “a liar, a forger, a thief, a hypocrite, a drunkard, a sneak, a humbug, a traitor, a conspirator, a filthy-minded & salacious slut pining for seduction.” Trombley writes that Twain’s invective bordered on obsession (he wrote about Isabel for hours every day, even while suffering from angina pains and gout attacks) and about how, despite the inordinate attention he gave her before his death, Isabel Lyon has remained a friendless ghost haunting the margins of Twain’s biography.

For decades, biographers deliberately omitted her from the official Twain story. Her potentially destructive power was so great that Twain’s handpicked hagiographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, allowed only one timorous reference to her in his massive three-volume work, Mark Twain: A Biography (1912).

Isabel Lyon was a forgotten woman, “so private,” she wrote in her journal, “that the very mention of me [was] with held from the world. . .”

This riveting, dark story that “the King” determined no one would ever tell is now revealed at last.

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In a pioneering reinterpretation of the role of mainstream feminism, Eisenstein shows how the world's ruling elites utilize women's labor and the ideas of women's liberation and empowerment to maintain their economic and political power, both at home and abroad. Her explorations range from the …

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In a pioneering reinterpretation of the role of mainstream feminism, Eisenstein shows how the world's ruling elites utilize women's labor and the ideas of women's liberation and empowerment to maintain their economic and political power, both at home and abroad. Her explorations range from the abolition of welfare as we know it in the United States to the creation of export-processing zones in the global South that depend on women's nimble fingers; from the championing of microcredit as a path to women s empowerment in the global South to the claim of women's presumed liberation in the West as an ideological weapon in the war on terrorism. Eisenstein challenges activists and intellectuals to recognize that international feminism is at a fateful crossroads. She argues that it is crucial for feminists to throw in their lot with the progressive forces that are seeking alternatives to globalized corporate capitalism.

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The creator of the bestselling Brown Sugar series returns with her first sexy novel... In a New York City rife with emotional land mines, four friends search for Mr. Right but too often settle for Mr. Right Now. Precious, a struggling writer, discovers her fiancé Darius in bed with another woman,…

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The creator of the bestselling Brown Sugar series returns with her first sexy novel...

In a New York City rife with emotional land mines, four friends search for Mr. Right but too often settle for Mr. Right Now.

Precious, a struggling writer, discovers her fiancé Darius in bed with another woman, but that doesn't stop her from wanting him. Bella, the wise-cracking, over-indulged only child of an absent diplomat father and pill-popping socialite mother, knows her boyfriend Julius is using her, but before she can give him up she has to give up her first love, alcohol. Half black, half British Zenobia sacrifices a successful modeling career for Malcolm, her overly critical boyfriend, but when she strays she fears she's made a terrible mistake. Bourgie Hope, the creative director of a high-fashion magazine, is hiding her dementia- ridden mother and her debilitating depression, while trying to resist a strong attraction to her new driver Derrick, a single dad from the projects.

Funny and sexy, heartbreaking and inspiring, The Ex-Chronicles is a novel about faith in one's self, trust in one's friends and the sacrifices we make in the name of love.

About the Author

Carol Taylor is the editor of the bestselling Brown Sugar series. She has been featured in Essence, Ebony, Black Enterprise, The Boston Globe and many other publications. You can find her relationship column, Off the Hook: Advice on Love & Lust at BrownSugarBooks.com. She lives in Brooklyn, New York and is working on the follow up to The Ex-Chronicles.

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Golem's Mighty Swing cartoonist James Sturm will present a slide show of images from his first original graphic novel, Market Day. The Eisner Award-winning author of both Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow and Unstable Molecules: The Fantastic Four, will also talk about the creative process for …

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Golem's Mighty Swing cartoonist James Sturm will present a slide show of images from his first original graphic novel, Market Day. The Eisner Award-winning author of both Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow and Unstable Molecules: The Fantastic Four, will also talk about the creative process for his new book. Sturm is a true contemporary visionary, having co-founded the alternative weekly the Seattle Stranger and the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont, the country's premier cartooning school.

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Nelson George is the award-winning author of Hip Hop America (1998) as well as other books and films on popular culture, and was a long-time music critic with Billboard and The Village Voice. In City Kid, he writes about his coming-of-age right here in Fort Greene and elsewhere, encompassing family…

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Nelson George is the award-winning author of Hip Hop America (1998) as well as other books and films on popular culture, and was a long-time music critic with Billboard and The Village Voice. In City Kid, he writes about his coming-of-age right here in Fort Greene and elsewhere, encompassing family stories, cultural analysis, and his literary and musical influences. George talks about his story and his neighborhood tonight with his friend, fellow Fort Greene resident and music and culture critic Touré.

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Louise Glück’s new collection is A Village Life. Her poems are “rooted in landscape and weather and, increasingly, in intimacies of the heart,” wrote the late Stanley Kunitz. “Everything she touches turns to music and legend.” Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail has published four collections in …

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Louise Glück’s new collection is A Village Life. Her poems are “rooted in landscape and weather and, increasingly, in intimacies of the heart,” wrote the late Stanley Kunitz. “Everything she touches turns to music and legend.” Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail has published four collections in Arabic and two in English translation, most recently Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea. “These are political poems without political rhetoric, Arabic poems without Arabic poetical flourishes, an exile’s letter with neither nostalgia nor self-pity, an excavation of the ruins of her homeland,” wrote the judges of the Griffin Prize, for which Mikhail was short-listed in 2006.

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Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Celeste Bartos Forum April 9, 2010 7:00 PM EDT $25 General Admission, $15 library donors, seniors + students with valid ID Through his most recent book In Pursuit of Silence, George Prochnik delivers a far-reaching exploration of the frontiers of noise and silence.…

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Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Celeste Bartos Forum

April 9, 2010 7:00 PM EDT

$25 General Admission, $15 library donors, seniors + students with valid ID

Through his most recent book In Pursuit of Silence, George Prochnik delivers a far-reaching exploration of the frontiers of noise and silence. Traveling around the globe to places including a Trappist monastery, a “Boom car audio” competition and a Zen garden, Prochnik meets a bevy of rich characters including an architect dedicated to silent architecture in the deaf community, a sound designer for shopping malls, and a special operations soldier in Afghanistan.

Among his arguments for less noise in our lives are:

silence helps the brain grow,

silence strengthens our powers of attention, silence helps us see the world,

silence unites us,

silence is for lovers,

and silence helps us make sense of what we hear.

Ultimately, Prochnik argues for a rethinking of our approach to the challenge of fighting noise, one that moves toward a common goal of sustainable quiet.

George Prochnik is the author of Putnam Camp: Sigmund Freud, James Jackson Putnam & The Purpose of American Psychology. He has written for the New York Times, The Boston Globe, Cabinet magazine and other publications.

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Joey Yearous-Algozin is the author of Kensington Notebook (Lean-To Press) and BOSTON STREET/TREES (Lean-To Press). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming from Cannot Exist, Forage, and the Robert Walser Society of Massachusetts. He is currently a PhD student in Poetics at SUNY-Buffalo. Divya …

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Joey Yearous-Algozin is the author of Kensington Notebook (Lean-To Press) and BOSTON STREET/TREES (Lean-To Press). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming from Cannot Exist, Forage, and the Robert Walser Society of Massachusetts. He is currently a PhD student in Poetics at SUNY-Buffalo.

Divya Victor has lived and learned in India, Singapore, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Seattle. She has an M.A. from Temple University and is currently working towards her Ph.D. at the University at Buffalo. Her work has appeared in ambit, XConnect, The Ixnay Reader, dusie, President’s Choice, P-QUEUE, and Drunken Boat. Her chapbook SUTURES was just published by Little Red Leaves.

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Award-winning poet and novelist Anne Michaels gives us a love story of extraordinary depth and complexity, a mesmerizing tale that juxtaposes historical events with the most intimate moments of individual lives. In 1964, a newly married Canadian couple settles into a Nile River houseboat moored …

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Award-winning poet and novelist Anne Michaels gives us a love story of extraordinary depth and complexity, a mesmerizing tale that juxtaposes historical events with the most intimate moments of individual lives.

In 1964, a newly married Canadian couple settles into a Nile River houseboat moored below the towering figures of Abu Simbel. Avery is one of the engineers responsible for the dismantling and reconstruction of the temple as it’s rescued from the rising waters of the Aswan Dam. He is a “machine-worshipper,” yet exquisitely sensitive to the dichotomy of creation and destruction of which machines are capable. Jean is a botanist by avocation and passion, interested in everything that grows. They had met on the banks of the St. Lawrence River and watched together as the construction of the seaway changed the course of the river and swallowed towns, homes, lives. Now, at the edge of another world about to be lost forever, Avery and Jean create their own world, exchanging the “moments that are the mortar of our days, innocent memories we don’t know we hold until given the gift of the eagerness of another.”

But that gift will not be enough to bind them when tragedy strikes, and they will go back to separate lives in Toronto. Avery returns to school to study architecture, and Jean enters the life of Lucjan, a Polish émigré artist. Lucjan’s haunting stories of occupied Warsaw draw Jean further and further away from Avery. But, in time, he will also offer her the chance for forgiveness, consolation, and, finally, her own, most essential life.

Stunning in its explorations of both the physical and emotional worlds of its characters, intensely moving and lyrical, The Winter Vault is a radiant work of fiction.

About the Author

Anne Michaels’s first novel was the international best seller Fugitive Pieces, now a major motion picture. It won several awards, including the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Guardian Fiction Award, and the Orange Prize for Fiction. Michaels is also the author of three highly acclaimed poetry collections. She lives in Toronto.

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Grushin's stunning debut drew praise that placed her in the top rank of young literary voices. Now she returns with that rarity: a second novel even more dazzling than her first. The line: the universal symbol of scarcity and bureau­cracy that exists wherever petty officials are let loose to abuse…

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Grushin's stunning debut drew praise that placed her in the top rank of young literary voices. Now she returns with that rarity: a second novel even more dazzling than her first.

The line: the universal symbol of scarcity and bureau­cracy that exists wherever petty officials are let loose to abuse their powers.

The line begins to form on the whispered rumor that a famous exiled composer is returning to Moscow to conduct his last symphony. Tickets will be limited. Nameless faces join the line, jostling for preferred position. But as time passes and the seasons change and the ticket kiosk remains shuttered, these anonymous souls take on individual shape. Unlikely friendships are forged, long-buried memories spring to life, and a year-long wait is rewarded with unexpected acts of kindness that ease the bleakness of harshly lived lives. A disparate gaggle of strangers evolves into a community of friends united in their desire to experience music they have never been allowed to hear.

The Line is a transformative novel that speaks to the endurance of the human spirit even as it explores the ways in which we love-and what we do for love.

About the Author

Olga Grushin a Granta Best Young American Novelist, won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award for The Dream Life of Sukhanov. She was also a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction Fiction and short- listed for the Orange Award for New Writers. The Dream Life of Sukhanov was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and one of the Washington Post's Top 10 Books of 2006.

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From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. The last normal moment that Mia, a talented cellist, can remember is being in the car with her family. Then she is standing outside her body beside their mangled Buick and her parents' corpses, watching herself and her little brother being tended by paramedics.…

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From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The last normal moment that Mia, a talented cellist, can remember is being in the car with her family. Then she is standing outside her body beside their mangled Buick and her parents' corpses, watching herself and her little brother being tended by paramedics. As she ponders her state (Am I dead? I actually have to ask myself this), Mia is whisked away to a hospital, where, her body in a coma, she reflects on the past and tries to decide whether to fight to live. Via Mia's thoughts and flashbacks, Forman (Sisters in Sanity) expertly explores the teenager's life, her passion for classical music and her strong relationships with her family, friends and boyfriend, Adam. Mia's singular perspective (which will recall Alice Sebold's adult novel, The Lovely Bones) also allows for powerful portraits of her friends and family as they cope: Please don't die. If you die, there's going to be one of those cheesy Princess Diana memorials at school, prays Mia's friend Kim. I know you'd hate that kind of thing. Intensely moving, the novel will force readers to take stock of their lives and the people and things that make them worth living. Ages 14–up. (Apr.)

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Brett Evans recent books include Slosh Models (Factory School, 2009) and (with Frank Sherlock) Ready-to-Eat Individual (Lavender Ink, 2007). He is currently looking for a kind publisher to release a special 20-year collector’s edition of Horse Pills. He is one of the founding members of New Orleans’…

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Brett Evans recent books include Slosh Models (Factory School, 2009) and (with Frank Sherlock) Ready-to-Eat Individual (Lavender Ink, 2007). He is currently looking for a kind publisher to release a special 20-year collector’s edition of Horse Pills. He is one of the founding members of New Orleans’ only carnival microkrewe, ‘tit rex.

Mike Hauser lives in Milwaukee. His books include crets crets crets, and Psychic Headset. His work has appeared in Sprung Formal, Abraham Lincoln, The Hat, Rust Buckle, The Blue Canary, and Fell Swoop, among other fine publications. He is editing an issue of the Milwaukee magazine Burdock, which is published by Keith Gaustad. He co-curates a reading series called Salacious Banter with Karl Saffran.

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Fate takes many forms. . . . When Henry receives a letter from an elderly taxidermist, it poses a puzzle that he cannot resist. As he is pulled further into the world of this strange and calculating man, Henry becomes increasingly involved with the lives of a donkey and a howler monkey—named …

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Fate takes many forms. . . .


When Henry receives a letter from an elderly taxidermist, it poses a puzzle that he cannot resist. As he is pulled further into the world of this strange and calculating man, Henry becomes increasingly involved with the lives of a donkey and a howler monkey—named Beatrice and Virgil—and the epic journey they undertake together.

With all the spirit and originality that made Life of Pi so beloved, this brilliant new novel takes the reader on a haunting odyssey. On the way Martel asks profound questions about life and art, truth and deception, responsibility and complicity.

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A DARK AND STYLISH PAGE-TURNER FROM A BOLD NEW VOICE IN FICTION Harry Bloch is a struggling writer who pumps out pulpy serial novels—from vampire books to detective stories—under various pseudonyms. But his life begins to imitate his fiction when he agrees to ghostwrite the memoir of Darian …

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A DARK AND STYLISH PAGE-TURNER FROM A BOLD NEW VOICE IN FICTION

Harry Bloch is a struggling writer who pumps out pulpy serial novels—from vampire books to detective stories—under various pseudonyms. But his life begins to imitate his fiction when he agrees to ghostwrite the memoir of Darian Clay, New York City’s infamous Photo Killer. Soon, three young women turn up dead, each one murdered in the Photo Killer’s gruesome signature style, and Harry must play detective in a real-life murder plot as he struggles to avoid becoming the killer’s next victim.

Witty, irreverent, and original, The Serialist is a love letter to books—from poetry to pornography—and proof that truth really can be stranger than fiction.

About the Author:

DAVID GORDON is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Columbia MFA program and also holds a Masters in English and comparative literature from Columbia. He has worked as a screenwriter and a magazine editor. He lives in New York City.

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From the astonishing imagination of Dash Shaw, visionary author of Bottomless Belly Button, comes a darkly fantastical graphic novel about a small town, a lowlife botanist and a mysterious plant with strange powers. Joining Dash on the Strand Stage will be author, editor and graphic designer, Chip …

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From the astonishing imagination of Dash Shaw, visionary author of Bottomless Belly Button, comes a darkly fantastical graphic novel about a small town, a lowlife botanist and a mysterious plant with strange powers.

Joining Dash on the Strand Stage will be author, editor and graphic designer, Chip Kidd.

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Meet Ariel. Her glass is half empty . . . and leaking. If someone tells her everything will be okay, she asks: How do you know? If there's a wrong thing to say, she'll say it. If there's a downside to see, she'll see it. She lives in a permanent fear of what's to come. But at least she's prepared.…

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Meet Ariel. Her glass is half empty . . . and leaking.

If someone tells her everything will be okay, she asks: How do you know? If there's a wrong thing to say, she'll say it. If there's a downside to see, she'll see it. She lives in a permanent fear of what's to come. But at least she's prepared.

In these witty and entertaining tales from the front lines of woe, Ariel highlights the humor in our everyday anxieties and delivers insight that will ring hilariously true if you are inclined to view the world through gray-tinted glasses.

So whether you've been dumped by the love of your life, lost your job to the guy in the cubicle next to you, said the wrong thing at the party, or weren't invited to the party at all, Ariel is here to remind you that it could be worse, you could be her.

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Since 1986 with the publication of her first story collection, Deborah Eisenberg has devoted herself to writing “exquisitely distilled stories” which “present an unusually distinctive portrait of contemporary American life” to quote the MacArthur Foundation. This one volume brings together …

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Since 1986 with the publication of her first story collection, Deborah Eisenberg has devoted herself to writing “exquisitely distilled stories” which “present an unusually distinctive portrait of contemporary American life” to quote the MacArthur Foundation. This one volume brings together Transactions in a Foreign Currency (1986), Under the 82nd Airborne (1992), All Around Atlantis (1997) and her most recent collection Twilight of the Superheroes (2006).

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In the 1970s, New York City hit rock bottom. Crime was at its highest, the middle class exodus was in high gear, and bankruptcy loomed. Many people credit New York’s “master builder” Robert Moses with turning Gotham around, despite his brutal, undemocratic. and demolition-heavy ways. Urban …

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In the 1970s, New York City hit rock bottom. Crime was at its highest, the middle class exodus was in high gear, and bankruptcy loomed. Many people credit New York’s “master builder” Robert Moses with turning Gotham around, despite his brutal, undemocratic. and demolition-heavy ways.

Urban critic and journalist Roberta Brandes Gratz contradicts this conventional view. New York City, Gratz argues, recovered precisely because of the waning power of Moses. His decline in the late 1960s and the drying up of big government funding for urban renewal projects allowed New York to organically regenerate according to the precepts defined by Jane Jacobs in her classic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and in contradiction to Moses’s urban philosophy.

As American cities face a devastating economic crisis, Jacobs’s philosophy is again vital for the redevelopment of metropolitan life. Gratz who was named as one of Planetizen’s Top 100 Urban Thinkers gives an on-the-ground account of urban renewal and community success.

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A stunningly original exploration of the ties that bind us to the beautiful, ancient, astoundingly accomplished, largely unknown, and unfathomably different species with whom we share the world. For as long as humans have existed, insects have existed, too. Wherever we’ve traveled, they’ve …

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A stunningly original exploration of the ties that bind us to the beautiful, ancient, astoundingly accomplished, largely unknown, and unfathomably different species with whom we share the world.


For as long as humans have existed, insects have existed, too. Wherever we’ve traveled, they’ve traveled, too. Yet we hardly know them, not even the ones we’re closest to: those that eat our food, share our beds, and live in our homes.


Organizing his book alphabetically with one entry for each letter, weaving together brief vignettes, meditations, and extended essays, Hugh Raffles embarks on a mesmerizing exploration of history and science, anthropology and travel, economics, philosophy, and popular culture to show us how insects have triggered our obsessions, stirred our passions, and beguiled our imaginations.


Raffles offers us a glimpse into the high-stakes world of Chinese cricket fighting, the deceptive courtship rites of the dance fly, the intriguing possibilities of queer insect sex, the vital and vicious role locusts play in the famines of west Africa, how beetles deformed by Chernobyl inspired art, and how our desire and disgust for insects has prompted our own aberrant behavior.


Deftly fusing the literary and the scientific, Hugh Raffles has given us an essential book of reference that is also a fascination of the highest order.

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Winner of the 2008 Governor General’s Award for Fiction Montreal during the turbulent mid-1980s: Chernobyl has set Geiger counters thrumming across the globe, HIV/AIDS is cutting a deadly swath through the gay population worldwide, and locally, tempers are flaring over the recent codification of…

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Winner of the 2008 Governor General’s Award for Fiction

Montreal during the turbulent mid-1980s: Chernobyl has set Geiger counters thrumming across the globe, HIV/AIDS is cutting a deadly swath through the gay population worldwide, and locally, tempers are flaring over the recent codification of French as the official language of Quebec. Hiding out in a seedy apartment near campus, Alex Fratarcangeli (“Don’t worry. . . . I can’t even pronounce it myself”), an awkward, thirty-something grad student, is plagued by the sensation that his entire life is a fraud. Scarred by a distant father and a dangerous relationship with his ex Liz, and consumed by a floundering dissertation linking Darwin’s theory of evolution with the history of human narrative, Alex has come to view love and other human emotions as “evolutionary surplus, haphazard neural responses that nature had latched onto for its own insidious purposes.” When Alex receives a letter from Ingrid, the beautiful woman he knew years ago in Sweden, notifying him of the existence of his five-year-old son, he is gripped by a paralytic terror. Whenever Alex’s thoughts grow darkest, he recalls Desmond, the British professor with dubious credentials whom he met years ago in the Galapagos. Treacherous and despicable, wearing his ignominy like his rumpled jacket, Desmond nonetheless caught Alex in his thrall and led him to some life-altering truths during their weeks exploring Darwin’s islands together. It is only now that Alex can begin to comprehend these unlikely life lessons, and see a glimmer of hope shining through what he had thought was meaninglessness.

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Miles Champion’s books include Compositional Bonbons Placate, Sore Models, Three Bell Zero and How to Laugh (forthcoming from Adventures in Poetry). Providence, an artist’s book in collaboration with Jane South, was published by Sienese Shredder Editions in 2008. His recent writing appears in …

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Miles Champion’s books include Compositional Bonbons Placate, Sore Models, Three Bell Zero and How to Laugh (forthcoming from Adventures in Poetry). Providence, an artist’s book in collaboration with Jane South, was published by Sienese Shredder Editions in 2008. His recent writing appears in American Book Review, Critical Quarterly, Mimeo Mimeo, PN Review and The Poetry Project Newsletter. He lives in Brooklyn.

Jennifer Moxley is the author of five books of poetry: Clampdown (Flood 2009), The Line (Post-Apollo 2007), Often Capital (Flood 2005), The Sense Record (Edge 2002; Salt 2003) and Imagination Verses (Tender Buttons 1996; Salt 2003). Her memoir The Middle Room was published by Subpress in 2007. She has translated two books by the French poet Jacqueline Risset, The Translation Begins (Burning Deck 1996) and Sleep’s Powers (Ugly Duckling 2008). She is poetry editor of The Baffler, and contributing editor of The Poker. She works as an Associate Professor at the University of Maine.

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In The Theory of Everything, Abridged, artist Ben Luzzatto puts to work a combination of text, image, and the documentation of his site-specific performance experiments in the service of his hypothesis that any reconciliation of quantum theory with general relativity will ultimately have more to do…

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In The Theory of Everything, Abridged, artist Ben Luzzatto puts to work a combination of text, image, and the documentation of his site-specific performance experiments in the service of his hypothesis that any reconciliation of quantum theory with general relativity will ultimately have more to do with the language we are using to describe the universe than with the discovery of any extra-dimensional physical reality.

Ugly Duckling Presse returns to the P.P.O.W Gallery to present a night of readings by featuring Ben Luzzatto, author of Theory of Everything, Abridged (UDP 2010), and others.

Admission is free to all.

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Fifty years ago, a young astronomer named Frank Drake pointed a radio telescope at nearby stars in the hope of picking up a signal from an alien civilization. Thus began one of the boldest scientific projects in history, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). But after a half century …

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Fifty years ago, a young astronomer named Frank Drake pointed a radio telescope at nearby stars in the hope of picking up a signal from an alien civilization. Thus began one of the boldest scientific projects in history, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). But after a half century of scanning the skies, astronomers have little to report but an eerie silence—eerie because many scientists are convinced that the universe is teeming with life. The problem, argues the leading physicist and astrobiologist Paul Davies, is that we’ve been looking in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in the wrong way. Davies should know. For more than three decades, he has been closely involved with SETI and now chairs the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup, charged with deciding what to do if we’re confronted with evidence of alien intelligence. In this extraordinary book, he shows how SETI has lost its edge and offers a new and exciting road map for the future.

Davies believes our search so far has been overly anthropocentric: we tend to assume an alien species will look, think, and behave like us. He argues that we need to be far more expansive in our efforts, and in this book he completely redefines the search, challenging existing ideas of what form an alien intelligence might take, how it might try to communicate with us, and how we should respond if it does. A provocative and mind-expanding journey, The Eerie Silence will thrill fans of science and science fiction alike.

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From nineteenth-century newspaper publishers to the protesters in the “Battle of Seattle” and the recent Greek uprising, anarchists have long been incited to action by the ideal of a “free society of free individuals”—a transformed world in which people and communities relate to each other…

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From nineteenth-century newspaper publishers to the protesters in the “Battle of Seattle” and the recent Greek uprising, anarchists have long been incited to action by the ideal of a “free society of free individuals”—a transformed world in which people and communities relate to each other intentionally and without hierarchy or domination. But what exactly would that look like, and how can we get there?

Anarchism and Its Aspirations provides an accessible overview of the history and hopeful future of this vision for a better world. The book quickly brings even the uninitiated reader up to speed with a crash course on some of the most influential anarchists in history and their ideas about how we might achieve the transformation of society. From there, the book looks at how these principles have been put into practice by groups such as the Situationist International, social ecologists, Zapatistas, anti-globalization activists, and other directly democratic organizations and communities in their respective struggles against capitalism and state control.

Laying out a clear introduction to some of the main ideas behind an often-misunderstood political philosophy, Anarchism and Its Aspirations helps us imagine the vast possibility of a truly free and democratic society.

Cindy Milstein is an activist and educator from Vermont. She serves on the board of the Institute for Anarchist Studies, co-organizes the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition conference, and is a collective member at Black Sheep Books. Her essays have appeared in several anthologies, including Realizing the Impossible, Confronting Capitalism, and Globalize LiberationX.

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he final volume in Tariq Ali’s acclaimed cycle of historical novels. Night of the Golden Butterfly concludes the Islam Quintet—Tariq Ali’s much lauded series of historical novels, translated into more than a dozen languages, that has been twenty years in the writing. Completing an epic panorama…

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he final volume in Tariq Ali’s acclaimed cycle of historical novels. Night of the Golden Butterfly concludes the Islam Quintet—Tariq Ali’s much lauded series of historical novels, translated into more than a dozen languages, that has been twenty years in the writing. Completing an epic panorama that began in fifteenth-century Moorish Spain, the latest novel moves between the cities of the twenty-first century, from Lahore to London, from Paris to Beijing. The narrator is rung one morning and reminded that he owes a debt of honour. The creditor is Mohammed Aflatun—known as Plato—an irascible but gifted painter living in a Pakistan where “human dignity has become a wreckage.” Plato, who once specialized in stepping back from the limelight, now wants his life story written. As the tale unravels we meet Plato’s London friend Alice Stepford, now a leading music critic in New York; Mrs. “Naughty” Latif, the Islamabad housewife whose fondness for generals leads to her flight to the salons of intellectually fashionable Paris, where she is hailed as the Diderot of the Islamic world; and there’s Jindie, the Golden Butterfly of the title, the narrator’s first love. Interwoven with this chronicle of contemporary life is the turbulent history of Jindie’s family. Her great forebear, Dù Wénxiù, led a Muslim rebellion in Yunnan in the nineteenth century and ruled the region from his capital Dali for almost a decade, as Sultan Suleiman. Night of the Golden Butterfly reveals Ali in full flight, at once imaginative and intelligent, satirical and stimulating.

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AT THE RIPE OLD AGE OF THIRTY-TWO, FORMER WILD CHILD ISABEL "IZZY" SPELLMAN HAS FINALLY AGREED TO TAKE OVER THE FAMILY BUSINESS. AND THE TRANSITION WON'T BE A SMOOTH ONE. First among her priorities as head of Spellman Investigations is to dig up some dirt on the competition, slippery ex-cop Rick …

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AT THE RIPE OLD AGE OF THIRTY-TWO, FORMER WILD CHILD ISABEL "IZZY" SPELLMAN HAS FINALLY AGREED TO TAKE OVER THE FAMILY BUSINESS. AND THE TRANSITION WON'T BE A SMOOTH ONE.

First among her priorities as head of Spellman Investigations is to dig up some dirt on the competition, slippery ex-cop Rick Harkey — a task she may enjoy a little too much. Next, faced with a baffling missing-persons case at the home of an aging millionaire, Izzy hires an actor friend, Len, to infiltrate the mansion as an undercover butler — a role he may enjoy a little much.

Meanwhile, Izzy is being blackmailed by her mother (photographic evidence of Prom Night 1994) to commit to regular blind dates with promising professionals — an arrangement that doesn't thrill Connor, an Irish bartender on the brink of becoming Ex-boyfriend #12.

At Spellman headquarters, it's business as unusual. Doorknobs and light fixtures are disappearing every day, Mom's been spotted crying in the pantry, and a series of increasingly demanding Spellman Rules (Rule #27: No Speaking Today) can't quite hold the family together. Izzy also has to decipher weekly "phone calls from the edge" from her octogenarian lawyer, Morty, as well as Detective Henry Stone's mysterious interest in rekindling their relationsh...well, whatever it was.

Just when it looks like things can't go more haywire, little sister Rae's internship researching pro bono legal cases leads the youngest Spellman to launch a grassroots campaign that could spring an innocent man from jail — or land Rae in it.

The Spellmans Strike Again is hands down the most hilarious, thrilling, and moving book in this bestselling, award-nominated series. And it proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Isabel Spellman, no matter how much she matures, will never be able to follow Rule #1: Act Normal.

About the Author:

Lisa Lutz is the author of The Spellman Files, a New York Times best-seller; Curse of the Spellmans, a national best-seller and nominee for both the Macavity and Edgar® Awards for Best Novel of 2008; and the critically acclaimed Revenge of the Spellmans. Although she attended UC Santa Cruz, UC Irvine, the University of Leeds in England, and San Francisco State University, she still does not have a bachelor's degree. Lisa spent most of the 1990s hopping through a string of low-paying odd jobs while writing and rewriting the screenplay Plan B, a mob comedy. After the film was made in 2000, she vowed she would never write another screenplay. A motion picture adaptation of The Spellman Files is in development with Paramount Pictures.

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Lisa Shannon chronicles her efforts to raise money to sponsor Congolese women, start a national organization called Run for Congo Women and travel to the war-torn country to meet face-to-face with many of the women who inspired her to change her life. Shannon will share with the Strand audience the…

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Lisa Shannon chronicles her efforts to raise money to sponsor Congolese women, start a national organization called Run for Congo Women and travel to the war-torn country to meet face-to-face with many of the women who inspired her to change her life. Shannon will share with the Strand audience the lessons she learned from these women.

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One of the great comic epics of our time: the Last Jewish Novel about the Last Jew in the World. On Christmas Eve 1999, all the Jews in the world die in a strange, millennial plague, with the exception of the firstborn males, who are soon adopted by a cabal of powerful people in the American government.…

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One of the great comic epics of our time: the Last Jewish Novel about the Last Jew in the World. On Christmas Eve 1999, all the Jews in the world die in a strange, millennial plague, with the exception of the firstborn males, who are soon adopted by a cabal of powerful people in the American government. By the following Passover, however, only one is still alive: Benjamin Israelien; a kindly, innocent, ignorant man-child. As he finds himself transformed into an international superstar, Jewishness becomes all the rage: matzo-ball soup is in every bowl, sidelocks are hip; and the only truly Jewish Jew left is increasingly stigmatized for not being religious. Since his very existence exposes the illegitimacy of the newly converted, Israelien becomes the object of a worldwide hunt . . .

Meanwhile, in the not-too-distant future of our own, “real” world, another last Jew—the last living Holocaust survivor—sits alone in a snowbound Manhattan, providing a final melancholy witness to his experiences in the form of the punch lines to half-remembered jokes.

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On the third Thursday of every month, join Bob Powers (author of Happy Cruelty Day) and Jason Reich (former writer for "The Daily Show"), as they welcome the city's best humor writers for a night of wine-addled text-based hilarity. Jason Diamond is the creator of the literary blog vol1brooklyn.com,…

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On the third Thursday of every month, join Bob Powers (author of Happy Cruelty Day) and Jason Reich (former writer for "The Daily Show"), as they welcome the city's best humor writers for a night of wine-addled text-based hilarity.

Jason Diamond is the creator of the literary blog vol1brooklyn.com, and writes for Heeb, Jewcy, and other publications.

The Reverend Jen Miller is the author of Live Nude Elf, a hilarious memoir recounting the "sexperiments" performed for her online Nerve magazine column.

Dave Hill is a New York based stand-up comedian, called “brilliant” by New York Magazine.

Tao Lin is the author of Shoplifting from American Apparel, an autobiographical novella spanning two years in the life of a young, hip writer who is trying to both not be a bad person and find some kind of happiness or something.

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Since the Korean War, gijichon—U.S. military camp towns—have been fixtures in South Korea. The most popular entertainment venues in gijichon are clubs, attracting military clientele with duty-free alcohol, music, shows, and women entertainers. In the 1990s, South Korea's rapid economic advancement,…

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Since the Korean War, gijichon—U.S. military camp towns—have been fixtures in South Korea. The most popular entertainment venues in gijichon are clubs, attracting military clientele with duty-free alcohol, music, shows, and women entertainers. In the 1990s, South Korea's rapid economic advancement, combined with the stigma and low pay attached to this work, led to a shortage of Korean women willing to serve American soldiers. Club owners brought in cheap labor, predominantly from the Philippines and ex-Soviet states, to fill the vacancies left by Korean women. The increasing presence of foreign workers has precipitated new conversations about modernity, nationalism, ethnicity, and human rights in South Korea. International NGOs, feminists, and media reports have identified women migrant entertainers as "victims of sex trafficking," insisting that their plight is one of forced prostitution.

Are women who travel to work in such clubs victims of trafficking, sex slaves, or simply migrant women? How do these women understand their own experiences? Is antitrafficking activism helpful in protecting them? In On the Move for Love, Sealing Cheng attempts to answer these questions by following the lives of migrant Filipina entertainers working in various gijichon clubs. Focusing on their aspirations for love and a better future, Cheng's ethnography illuminates the complex relationships these women form with their employers, customer-boyfriends, and families. She offers an insightful critique of antitrafficking discourses, pointing to the inadequacy of recognizing women only as victims and ignoring their agency and aspirations. Cheng analyzes the women's experience in South Korea in relation to their subsequent journeys to other countries, providing a diachronic look at the way migrant issues of work, sex, and love fit within the larger context of transnationalism, identity, and global hierarchies of inequality.

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Fifty years ago, a young astronomer named Frank Drake pointed a radio telescope at nearby stars in the hope of picking up a signal from an alien civilization. Thus began one of the boldest scientific projects in history, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). But after a half century …

MORE ABOUT THIS EVENT

Fifty years ago, a young astronomer named Frank Drake pointed a radio telescope at nearby stars in the hope of picking up a signal from an alien civilization. Thus began one of the boldest scientific projects in history, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). But after a half century of scanning the skies, astronomers have little to report but an eerie silence—eerie because many scientists are convinced that the universe is teeming with life. The problem, argues the leading physicist and astrobiologist Paul Davies, is that we’ve been looking in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in the wrong way. Davies should know. For more than three decades, he has been closely involved with SETI and now chairs the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup, charged with deciding what to do if we’re confronted with evidence of alien intelligence. In this extraordinary book, he shows how SETI has lost its edge and offers a new and exciting road map for the future.

Davies believes our search so far has been overly anthropocentric: we tend to assume an alien species will look, think, and behave like us. He argues that we need to be far more expansive in our efforts, and in this book he completely redefines the search, challenging existing ideas of what form an alien intelligence might take, how it might try to communicate with us, and how we should respond if it does. A provocative and mind-expanding journey, The Eerie Silence will thrill fans of science and science fiction alike.

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Le Taxi by Maud Franklin is a succession of scattered yet interweaving stories that tell about life after an accident. While the writing echoes Maud's fragmented body, her bold language and rough edges reveal a temper and a vitality that finds its anchor in the stark linocuts by Brooklyn-based artist…

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Le Taxi by Maud Franklin is a succession of scattered yet interweaving stories that tell about life after an accident. While the writing echoes Maud's fragmented body, her bold language and rough edges reveal a temper and a vitality that finds its anchor in the stark linocuts by Brooklyn-based artist Nathalie Trovato. Franklin will read from the book in French this evening, and Trovato’s artwork will also be on display. Reception to follow.

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Hillary Juster has black hair and soon a BA in interdisciplinary studies from NYU as well. She won 1st place in a poetry competition in 8th grade, won the Lamont Younger Poet’s Prize at 15, but hasn’t won much since. As a compliment to reading poetry, she likes to engage members of audience with…

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Hillary Juster has black hair and soon a BA in interdisciplinary studies from NYU as well. She won 1st place in a poetry competition in 8th grade, won the Lamont Younger Poet’s Prize at 15, but hasn’t won much since. As a compliment to reading poetry, she likes to engage members of audience with sculpture, lighting, photography, and touching. In her spare time, she edits the old college lit mag, The Minetta Review, or is about to do something pretty impressive. Check out her work in the forthcoming The Physical Poets Home Library.

Gregory Laynor has been teaching & studying at Temple University in Philadelphia. His reading of Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans appears on UbuWeb. He does a blog at academicpoetry.com. He is co-editing for Chax Press the collected writings of the Philadelphia poet Gil Ott.

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Please join us in celebrating the publication of our friend and neighbor Elisha Cooper's latest children's book, Farm. Elisha, a Society of Illustrators 2006 Gold Medal recipient, lyrically and beautifully captures the rhythms of the changing seasons of the farm, bringing it to life with his words …

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Please join us in celebrating the publication of our friend and neighbor Elisha Cooper's

latest children's book, Farm. Elisha, a Society of Illustrators 2006 Gold Medal recipient,

lyrically and beautifully captures the rhythms of the changing seasons of the farm,

bringing it to life with his words and illustrations.

Elisha will be here to sign copies of the book, and refreshments will be served. See you then!

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Davy Brown is a bright, all-American boy with some not-so-typical problems. His best friend may be leaving the country. His teacher has just instructed the class to describe their own immigration stories but his family doesn t have one! And if he fails the class, he may lose his spot on the baseball…

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Davy Brown is a bright, all-American boy with some not-so-typical problems. His best friend may be leaving the country. His teacher has just instructed the class to describe their own immigration stories but his family doesn t have one! And if he fails the class, he may lose his spot on the baseball team. And if all that weren t bad enough, the cafeteria is serving coleslaw again... Join Davy and his friends Carlos, Erika, and Amit on their quest as they discover that even the most seemingly typical people have exciting immigration histories. Then, using the resources in this book, embark on your own voyage of discovery what fascinating immigration stories will you unearth? How many flags adorn your family tree? The answers may surprise and delight you!

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The intriguing, inspiring history of one small, impoverished area in the Dominican Republic that has produced a staggering number of Major League Baseball talent, from an award-winning, bestselling author. In the town of San Pedro in the Dominican Republic, baseball is not just a way of life. It's…

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The intriguing, inspiring history of one small, impoverished area in the Dominican Republic that has produced a staggering number of Major League Baseball talent, from an award-winning, bestselling author.

In the town of San Pedro in the Dominican Republic, baseball is not just a way of life. It's the way of life. By the year 2008, seventy-nine boys and men from San Pedro have gone on to play in the Major Leagues-that means one in six Dominican Republicans who have played in the Majors have come from one tiny, impoverished region. Manny Alexander, Sammy Sosa, Tony Fernandez, and legions of other San Pedro players who came up in the sugar mill teams flocked to the United States, looking for opportunity, wealth, and a better life.

Because of the sugar industry, and the influxes of migrant workers from across the Caribbean to work in the cane fields and factories, San Pedro is one of the most ethnically diverse areas of the Dominican Republic. A multitude of languages are spoken there, and a variety of skin colors populate the community; but the one constant is sugar and baseball. The history of players from San Pedro is also a chronicle of racism in baseball, changing social mores in sports and in the Dominican Republic, and the personal stories of the many men who sought freedom from poverty through playing ball. The story of baseball in San Pedro is also that of the Caribbean in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and on a broader level opens a window into our country's history.

As with Kurlansky's Cod and Salt, this small story, rich with anecdote and detail, becomes much larger than ever imagined. Kurlansky reveals two countries' love affair with a sport and the remarkable journey of San Pedro and its baseball players. In his distinctive style, he follows common threads and discovers wider meanings about place, identity, and, above all, baseball.

About the Author

Mark Kurlansky is the New York Times-bestselling author of many books, including The Food of a Younger Land; Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World; Salt: A World History; 1968: The Year That Rocked the World; and The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell.

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In celebration of their 30th Anniversary, London Review of Books is hosting a series of talks in New York City. "Obama’s War" A lecture by Tariq Ali During his presidential campaign, President Obama pledged more troops, ground intrusions and drone attacks to end the war in Afghanistan. This is …

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In celebration of their 30th Anniversary, London Review of Books is hosting a series of talks in New York City.

"Obama’s War"

A lecture by Tariq Ali

During his presidential campaign, President Obama pledged more troops, ground intrusions and drone attacks to end the war in Afghanistan. This is a promise he has kept, but it won’t work. Tariq Ali will be talking about why the war is unwinnable and can only lead to a bloody stalemate.

Tariq Ali is the author of more than two dozen books about world history and politics, including The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power and The Protocols of the Elders of Sodom.

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Acclaimed author and indie musician Willy Vlautin will be performing some acoustic songs and reading from his new novel LEAN ON PETE on Monday, April 19th at 7 p.m. at Powerhouse Arena in DUMBO, Brooklyn. He will also be doing a q&a with author Hannah Tinti at the event, which is free and open to …

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Acclaimed author and indie musician Willy Vlautin will be performing some acoustic songs and reading from his new novel LEAN ON PETE on Monday, April 19th at 7 p.m. at Powerhouse Arena in DUMBO, Brooklyn. He will also be doing a q&a with author Hannah Tinti at the event, which is free and open to the public. Powerhouse is located at 37 Main Street in DUMBO.

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According to the most recent U.S. census, about three million of New York’s eight million residents are foreign-born. New York Writer’s Coalition (NYWC) has created niche writing workshops which cater to this significant population in New York City, and celebrates their accomplishments each year…

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According to the most recent U.S. census, about three million of New York’s eight million residents are foreign-born. New York Writer’s Coalition (NYWC) has created niche writing workshops which cater to this significant population in New York City, and celebrates their accomplishments each year during Immigrant Heritage Week. The talented children and adult readers come from all over the world from Yemen to Mexico, Guyana to Japan. Iraqi poet and novelist Sinan Antoon (author of Baghdad Blues and I’jam: An Iraqi Rhapsody) will read his work, along with workshop participants Abdel Baidhani (Arab American Family Support Center workshop), Luz Aguirre (“Mano a Mano” Latin American workshop), Jacqueline Carter-Cutting (Brooklyn Veterans Center workshop), Yasuko Nasasawa (14th Street Y seniors workshop), and Aidan Amog (Fort Greene Park kids workshop)

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In her first letter to Robert Lowell, dated May 12, 1947, Elizabeth Bishop wrote, “I was supposed to read, too, up at the YMHA Saturday evening but couldn’t make it, and I hope my absence was a help rather than a hindrance.” The poets never shared an evening at the Poetry Center, but as the …

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In her first letter to Robert Lowell, dated May 12, 1947, Elizabeth Bishop wrote, “I was supposed to read, too, up at the YMHA Saturday evening but couldn’t make it, and I hope my absence was a help rather than a hindrance.” The poets never shared an evening at the Poetry Center, but as the recently published Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell makes clear, there was much they did share in their 30-year friendship. In a dramatic presentation of their letters and some of their poems, Tony-nominated actors Kate Burton and Michael Cumpsty bring that friendship to life.

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Sarah Silverman is the co-creator and star of The Sarah Silverman Program. She won an Emmy in 2009 for her video I'm F*ing Matt Damon, and was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for her role on The Sarah Silverman Program. Silverman lives in Los Angeles with her dog, Duck, presuming he does not die prior…

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Sarah Silverman is the co-creator and star of The Sarah Silverman Program. She won an Emmy in 2009 for her video I'm F*ing Matt Damon, and was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for her role on The Sarah Silverman Program. Silverman lives in Los Angeles with her dog, Duck, presuming he does not die prior to publication, which is moderately to extremely likely.

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Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, South Court Auditorium (Map and directions) April 20, 2010 7:00 PM EDT $25 General Admission, $15 library donors, seniors + students with valid ID Parrot and Olivier is Peter Carey’s most recent novel, set inearly-nineteenth-century America. Olivier—an improvisation…

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Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, South Court Auditorium (Map and directions)

April 20, 2010 7:00 PM EDT

$25 General Admission, $15 library donors, seniors + students with valid ID

Parrot and Olivier is Peter Carey’s most recent novel, set inearly-nineteenth-century America. Olivier—an improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville—is the traumatized child of aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerant English engraver. They are born on different sides of history, but their lives are joined by an enigmatic one-armed marquis.

As the narrative shifts between Parrot and Olivier—their adventures in love and politics, prisons and finance, homelands and brave new lands—a most unlikely friendship begins to take hold. Through Parrot and Olivier, Peter Carey explores the adventure of American democracy.

Peter Carey was born in Australia in 1943. His first work, The Fat Man in Historywas published in 1974. He went on to write War Crimes, Bliss, Illywhacker, Oscar and Lucinda, The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, Jack Maggs, and True History of the Kelly Gang, My Life as a Fake, Wrong About Japan, Theft, and His Illegal Self, and The Tax Inspector. Illywhacker was short listed for the Booker Prize, while Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang both won it. Oscar and Lucinda was made into a major motion picture starring Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett in 1997. Peter Carey taught at NYU, Princeton, The New School, and Barnard College before he joined Hunter College as the Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing in 1993, where he continues to teach.

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In 1957, Eugene Smith, a thirty-eight-year-old magazine photographer, walked out of his comfortable settled world—his longtime well-paying job at Life and the home he shared with his wife and four children in Croton-on-Hudson, New York—to move into a dilapidated, five-story loft building at 821…

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In 1957, Eugene Smith, a thirty-eight-year-old magazine photographer, walked out of his comfortable settled world—his longtime well-paying job at Life and the home he shared with his wife and four children in Croton-on-Hudson, New York—to move into a dilapidated, five-story loft building at 821 Sixth Avenue (between Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth streets) in New York City’s wholesale flower district. Smith was trying to complete the most ambitious project of his life, a massive photo-essay on the city of Pittsburgh.

821 Sixth Avenue was a late-night haunt of musicians, including some of the biggest names in jazz—Charles Mingus, Zoot Sims, Bill Evans, and Thelonious Monk among them—and countless fascinating, underground characters. As his ambitions broke down for his quixotic Pittsburgh opus, Smith found solace in the chaotic, somnambulistic world of the loft and its artists. He turned his documentary impulses away from Pittsburgh and toward his offbeat new surroundings.

From 1957 to 1965, Smith exposed 1,447 rolls of film at his loft, making roughly 40,000 pictures, the largest body of work in his career, photographing the nocturnal jazz scene as well as life on the streets of the flower district, as seen from his fourth-floor window. He wired the building like a surreptitious recording studio and made 1,740 reels (4,000 hours) of stereo and mono audiotapes, capturing more than 300 musicians, among them Roy Haynes, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Roland Kirk, Alice Coltrane, Don Cherry, and Paul Bley. He recorded, as well, legends such as pianists Eddie Costa, and Sonny Clark, drummers Ronnie Free and Edgar Bateman, saxophonist Lin Halliday, bassist Henry Grimes, and multi-instrumentalist Eddie Listengart.

Also dropping in on the nighttime scene were the likes of Doris Duke, Norman Mailer, Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Salvador Dalí, as well as pimps, prostitutes, drug addicts, thieves, photography students, local cops, building inspectors, marijuana dealers, and others.

Sam Stephenson discovered Smith’s jazz loft photographs and tapes eleven years ago and has spent the last seven years cataloging, archiving, selecting, and editing Smith’s materials for this book, as well as writing its introduction and the text interwoven throughout.

W. Eugene Smith’s Jazz Loft Project has been legendary in the worlds of art, photography, and music for more than forty years, but until the publication of The Jazz Loft Project, no one had seen Smith’s extraordinary photographs or read any of the firsthand accounts of those who were there and lived to tell the tale(s) . . .

About the Author

Sam Stephenson is a writer and instructor at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. He is the author of Dream Street: W. Eugene Smith’s Pittsburgh Project and W. Eugene Smith 55. He lives in Chatham County, North Carolina.

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My First New York: Early Adventures in the Big City (As Remembered by Actors, Artists, Athletes, Chefs, Comedians, Filmmakers, Mayors, Models, Moguls, Porn Stars, Rockers, Writers, and Others) With author David Rakoff and artist Kara Walker Hosted by HarperCollins editor Matt Weiland and New York…

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My First New York: Early Adventures in the Big City (As Remembered by Actors, Artists, Athletes, Chefs, Comedians, Filmmakers, Mayors, Models, Moguls, Porn Stars, Rockers, Writers, and Others)

With author David Rakoff and artist Kara Walker

Hosted by HarperCollins editor Matt Weiland and New York Magazine editor David Haskell

From the pages of New York Magazine comes My First New York, a glorious collection of recollections and reminiscences as fifty of the city’s most famous residents recapture the kicks and thrills of first arriving in the Big Apple. Actors and athletes, rock stars and porn stars, writers, artists, and politicos all share their hilarious, frightening, amazing early big city adventures. This evening at Greenlight, the book’s editor (and Fort Greene’s own) Matt Weiland and New York Magazine senior editor David Haskell host Brooklynites who tell their stories of arrival. Join David Rakoff (author of Fraud and Don’t Get Too Comfortable) and visual artist Kara Walker (creator of After the Deluge and visual works featured at the Met and many other museums) as they reminisce about their first experiences. Then share your own stories of coming to the city in the Q&A!

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3rd Wavers: Then and Now—-third wavers at 40. An assessment of where feminism has been and where it’s going from the 90s on—hosted by Amy Richards and Jennifer Baumgardner (with Debbie Stoller/Editor of Bust, author Veronica Chambers, and Alison Wolfson of Bratmobile.) …

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3rd Wavers: Then and Now—-third wavers at 40. An assessment of where feminism has been and where it’s going from the 90s on—hosted by Amy Richards and Jennifer Baumgardner (with Debbie Stoller/Editor of Bust, author Veronica Chambers, and Alison Wolfson of Bratmobile.)

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In honor of their 30th Anniversary in the US, London Review of Books is hosting a series of talks in New York City. J’accuse: Dreyfus in Our Time A lecture by Jacqueline Rose What lessons can we learn today from the Dreyfus Affair? What part does it play – or should it play – in the history…

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In honor of their 30th Anniversary in the US, London Review of Books is hosting a series of talks in New York City.

J’accuse: Dreyfus in Our Time

A lecture by Jacqueline Rose

What lessons can we learn today from the Dreyfus Affair? What part does it play – or should it play – in the history of the Jews? Jacqueline Rose will offer a new interpretation of Dreyfus, while also investigating what the affair tells us about the public role of the intellectual and writer in our times.

Jacqueline Rose is a scholar and critic whose recent books include The Question of Zion and The Last Resistance.

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The price of college tuition has increased more than any other major good or service for the last twenty years. Nine out of ten American high school seniors aspire to go to college, yet the United States has fallen from world leader to only the tenth most educated nation. Almost half of college …

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The price of college tuition has increased more than any other major good or service for the last twenty years. Nine out of ten American high school seniors aspire to go to college, yet the United States has fallen from world leader to only the tenth most educated nation. Almost half of college students don't graduate; those who do have unprecedented levels of federal and private student loan debt, which constitutes a credit bubble similar to the mortgage crisis.

The system particularly fails the first-generation, the low-income, and students of color who predominate in coming generations. What we need to know is changing more quickly than ever, and a rising tide of information threatens to swamp knowledge and wisdom. America cannot regain its economic and cultural leadership with an increasingly ignorant population. Our choice is clear: Radically change the way higher education is delivered, or resign ourselves to never having enough of it.

The roots of the words "university" and "college" both mean community. In the age of constant connectedness and social media, it's time for the monolithic, millennium-old, ivy-covered walls to undergo a phase change into something much lighter, more permeable, and fluid.

The future lies in personal learning networks and paths, learning that blends experiential and digital approaches, and free and open-source educational models. Increasingly, you will decide what, when, where, and with whom you want to learn, and you will learn by doing. The university is the cathedral of modernity and rationality, and with our whole civilization in crisis, we are poised on the brink of Reformation.

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Joshua Ferris’ first novel Then We Came to the End (2007) won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Barnes and Noble Discover Award, and was a National Book Award finalist. Remarkable for its hilarious first-person plural account of the American workplace, it has been translated into 24 languages. Ferris'…

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Joshua Ferris’ first novel Then We Came to the End (2007) won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Barnes and Noble Discover Award, and was a National Book Award finalist. Remarkable for its hilarious first-person plural account of the American workplace, it has been translated into 24 languages. Ferris' new novel is called The Unnamed (2010 release). His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Best New American Voices, New Stories from the South, Prairie Schooner, and The Iowa Review.

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It is the end of the nineteenth century and China is riding on the crest of great change, but for nine-year-old Willow, the only child of a destitute family in the small southern town of Chin-kiang, nothing ever seems to change. Until the day she meets Pearl, the eldest daughter of a zealous American…

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It is the end of the nineteenth century and China is riding on the crest of great change, but for nine-year-old Willow, the only child of a destitute family in the small southern town of Chin-kiang, nothing ever seems to change. Until the day she meets Pearl, the eldest daughter of a zealous American missionary.

Pearl is head-strong, independent and fiercely intelligent, and will grow up to be Pearl S Buck, the Pulitzer- and Nobel Prize-winning writer and humanitarian activist, but for now all Willow knows is that she has never met anyone like her in all her life. From the start the two are thick as thieves, but when the Boxer Rebellion rocks the nation, Pearl's family is forced to leave China to flee religious persecution. As the twentieth century unfolds in all its turmoil, through right-wing military coups and Mao's Red Revolution, through bad marriages and broken dreams, the two girls cling to their lifelong friendship across the sea.

In this ambitious and moving new novel, Anchee Min, acclaimed author of Empress Orchid and Red Azalea, brings to life a courageous and passionate woman who loved the country of her childhood and who has been hailed in China as a modern heroine.

About the Author:

Anchee Min was born in Shanghai in 1957. At seventeen she was sent to a labor collective, where a talent scout for Madame Mao's Shanghai Film Studio recruited her to work as a movie actress. She moved to the United States in 1984. Her memoir, Red Azalea, was an international bestseller, published in twenty countries.

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Bestselling author Geoffrey Hayes has devoted his life to comics and children's literature. He is the author of three Benny and Penny TOON Books, including the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award-winning Benny and Penny in the Big No-No. The award is given to "the author of the most distinguished American …

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Bestselling author Geoffrey Hayes has devoted his life to comics and children's literature. He is the author of three Benny and Penny TOON Books, including the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award-winning Benny and Penny in the Big No-No. The award is given to "the author of the most distinguished American book for beginning readers published in English in the U.S. during the preceding year." Francoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman will introduce Geoffrey, who will demonstrate how the popular (pulp) fiction of one generation becomes the literature of another and how comics are changing the way children learn to read.

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Cela pourrait être résumé en une phrase lapidaire : récit autobiographique d’un accident, or c’est bien plus. Ce texte est un objet brut, il parle tout autant de la renaissance du corps que du désir de vie et de la soif d’amour. C’est aussi une naissance à l’écriture, une forme de …

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Cela pourrait être résumé en une phrase lapidaire : récit autobiographique d’un accident, or c’est bien plus. Ce texte est un objet brut, il parle tout autant de la renaissance du corps que du désir de vie et de la soif d’amour. C’est aussi une naissance à l’écriture, une forme de langue crue et directe au rythme soutenu à l’image de la vitalité qui habite son auteur. Tout est dans la forme et dans le ton, et les images de Nathalie Trovato s’associent à cette forme par la découpe des noirs et blancs de l’impression au lino.

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Brooklyn Poet Laureate Tina Chang hosts the poets of Ronald Edmonds Learning Center (MS113) Award-winning poet Tina Chang was recently named Poet Laureate of Brooklyn by Borough President Marty Markowitz. One of Chang’s initiatives as Laureate is the Adopt-A-Poet Project, in which published poets…

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Brooklyn Poet Laureate Tina Chang hosts the poets of Ronald Edmonds Learning Center (MS113)

Award-winning poet Tina Chang was recently named Poet Laureate of Brooklyn by Borough President Marty Markowitz. One of Chang’s initiatives as Laureate is the Adopt-A-Poet Project, in which published poets bring the craft and appreciation of poetry into the borough’s middle schools. Chang launches the project this evening with a reading by the students of Fort Greene’s own Ronald Edmonds Learning Center (MS 113), who have been working with her on their own poems this month. Join us to hear from Brooklyn’s budding poetic talents, hosted by our own poet laureate.

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In the U.S., 40% of homeless youth identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer(LGBTQ). Kicked Out brings together the voices of current and former homeless LGBTQ youth and tells the forgotten stories of some of our nation’s most vulnerable citizens. Diverse contributors share stories…

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In the U.S., 40% of homeless youth identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer(LGBTQ). Kicked Out brings together the voices of current and former homeless LGBTQ youth and tells the forgotten stories of some of our nation’s most vulnerable citizens. Diverse contributors share stories of survival and abuse with poignant accounts of the sanctuary of community and the power of creating chosen families. Kicked Out highlights the nuanced perspectives of national organizations such as The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force and The National Alliance Against Homelessness and regional agencies, including Sylvia’s Place, The Circus Project and Family Builders. This anthology, introduced by Judy Shepard, gives voice to the voiceless and challenges the stereotypical face of homelessness.

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The Author in the Age of the Internet Developments in the internet and electronic publishing are revolutionizing the way books are sold and read. Not since Gutenberg has there been such a profound change in the transfer of knowledge in our society. What effect is this having on authors? Is it changing…

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The Author in the Age of the Internet

Developments in the internet and electronic publishing are revolutionizing the way books are sold and read. Not since Gutenberg has there been such a profound change in the transfer of knowledge in our society. What effect is this having on authors? Is it changing the way they write? If the physical book dies out, how will this alter the nature of fictional and non-fictional texts? With the decline of print newspapers and the fragmentation of the reading constituency, how will classics be identified and reputations made?

John Lanchester, Andrew O’Hagan, Colm Tóibín, Mary-Kay Wilmers and James Wood will discuss these and a host of related issues with special reference to their own practice as writers.

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John Ross has been living in the old colonial quarter of Mexico City for the last three decades, a rebel journalist covering Mexico and the region from the bottom up. He is filled with a gnawing sense that his beloved Mexico City’s days as the most gargantuan, chaotic, crime-ridden, toxically …

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John Ross has been living in the old colonial quarter of Mexico City for the last three decades, a rebel journalist covering Mexico and the region from the bottom up. He is filled with a gnawing sense that his beloved Mexico City’s days as the most gargantuan, chaotic, crime-ridden, toxically contaminated urban stain in the western world are doomed, and the monster he has grown to know and love through a quarter century of reporting on its foibles and tragedies and blight will be globalized into one more McCity.

El Monstruo is a defense of place and the history of that place. No one has told the gritty, vibrant histories of this city of 23 million faceless souls from the ground up, listened to the stories of those who have not been crushed, deconstructed the Monstruo’s very monstrousness, and lived to tell its secrets. In El Monstruo, Ross now does.

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Akashic Books presents Poets of the Calabash Festival reading from So Much things to Say: 100 Calabash Poets Featuring poets Colin Channer, Justine Henzell, Willie Perdomo, Aracelis Girmay, Cheryl Boyce Taylor, Everton Sylvester, Linda Susan Jackson, Terese Svoboda, Meena Alexander Introduction by …

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Akashic Books presents Poets of the Calabash Festival reading from So Much things to Say: 100 Calabash Poets

Featuring poets Colin Channer, Justine Henzell, Willie Perdomo, Aracelis Girmay, Cheryl Boyce Taylor, Everton Sylvester, Linda Susan Jackson, Terese Svoboda, Meena Alexander

Introduction by Paul Holdengraber, Director of Public Programs at the New York Public Library

The Calabash International Literary Festival, which takes place in Jamaica each May, is a world-class three-day festival of readings and music that draws outstanding poets from all over the world, and especially from the Caribbean diaspora. Brooklyn independent publisher Akashic Books has been a long-time supporter of Calabash, and now presents So Much Things to Say: 100 Calabash Poets, an anthology of poets who have read at the festival over the years, with all profits from the sale of the book to be donated to Calabash. Greenlight is proud to host some of those poets tonight, representing our own Brooklyn poetry culture and the broad range of talents who are drawn to Calabash. Colin Channer will start things off with some appropriate music, and the NYPL's own Paul Holdengraber will introduce the evening.

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Sarah Pekkanen, author of The Opposite of Me, talks with blogger Christina Oppold Hosted by Ron Hogan of Beatrice.com Our monthly Blogger/Author Pairings series features a noted local blogger interviewing an author that they are passionate about. Christina Oppold is the founder and editor of the …

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Sarah Pekkanen, author of The Opposite of Me, talks with blogger Christina Oppold

Hosted by Ron Hogan of Beatrice.com

Our monthly Blogger/Author Pairings series features a noted local blogger interviewing an author that they are passionate about. Christina Oppold is the founder and editor of the blog Stacked, focused on finding books and experiences that create joy and inspiration. She talks tonight with Sarah Pekkanen, a New York writer whose debut novel The Opposite of Me has been garnering rave reviews for its portrait of adult sisters reconsidering who they are and who they are meant to be.

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Terrance Hayes’s new collection is Lighthead. “First you’ll marvel at his skill, his near-perfect pitch, his disarming humor, his brilliant turn of phrase,” wrote Cornelius Eady. “Then you’ll notice the grace, the tenderness, the unblinking truth-telling just beneath his lines, the open…

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Terrance Hayes’s new collection is Lighthead. “First you’ll marvel at his skill, his near-perfect pitch, his disarming humor, his brilliant turn of phrase,” wrote Cornelius Eady. “Then you’ll notice the grace, the tenderness, the unblinking truth-telling just beneath his lines, the open and generous way he takes in our world.” Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007. “Here is a young poet in full possession of her craft, ready to testify,” wrote Rita Dove. “To which I say: ‘Can we get an Amen?’ And: ‘Let these voices be heard.’”

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On February 15, 1898, the USS Maine exploded in the Havana Harbor. Although there was no evidence that the Spanish were responsible, newspapers such as Hearst's New York Journal whipped up a frenzy, claiming that Spain had destroyed the ship. Soon after, the easily influenced President McKinley …

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On February 15, 1898, the USS Maine exploded in the Havana Harbor. Although there was no evidence that the Spanish were responsible, newspapers such as Hearst's New York Journal whipped up a frenzy, claiming that Spain had destroyed the ship. Soon after, the easily influenced President McKinley declared war, sending troops to both Cuba and the Philippines In this rip-roaring history Thomas reveals that the hunger for war had begun years earlier. Depressed by the 'closing' of the Western frontier and embracing theories of social Darwinism, a group of warmongers including a young Teddy Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge agitated incessantly that the US exert its influence across the seas. US foreign policy was transformed and when Roosevelt became president there began a war without reason, concocted within the White House - a bloody conflict that would come at huge cost. Thrillingly written and brilliantly researched, THE WAR LOVERS is the story of 6 men at the center of history: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, McKinley, William James and Thomas Reed and confirms once more than Evan Thomas is a popular historian of the first rank.

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Garnering international prizes and acclaim before its publication, Ilustrado has been called “brilliantly conceived and stylishly executed . . .It is also ceaselessly entertaining, frequently raunchy, and effervescent with humor” (2008 Man Asian Literary Prize panel of judges). It begins with …

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Garnering international prizes and acclaim before its publication, Ilustrado has been called “brilliantly conceived and stylishly executed . . .It is also ceaselessly entertaining, frequently raunchy, and effervescent with humor” (2008 Man Asian Literary Prize panel of judges).

It begins with a body. On a clear day in winter, the battered corpse of Crispin Salvador is pulled from the Hudson River—taken from the world is the controversial lion of Philippine literature. Gone, too, is the only manuscript of his final book, a work meant to rescue him from obscurity by exposing the crimes of the Filipino ruling families. Miguel, his student and only remaining friend, sets out for Manila to investigate.

To understand the death, Miguel scours the life, piecing together Salvador’s story through his poetry, interviews, novels, polemics, and memoirs. The result is a rich and dramatic family saga of four generations, tracing 150 years of Philippine history forged under the Spanish, the Americans, and the Filipinos themselves. Finally, we are surprised to learn that this story belongs to young Miguel as much as to his lost mentor, and we are treated to an unhindered view of a society caught between reckless decay and hopeful progress.

Exuberant and wise, wildly funny and deeply moving, Ilustrado explores the hidden truths that haunt every family. It is a daring and inventive debut by a new writer of astonishing tale.

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The 2010 PEN Literary Gala is PEN’s largest source of unrestricted support, providing crucial funding for its work to secure the liberty of persecuted and imprisoned writers around the world, to defend freedom of expression wherever it is threatened, and to promote literature and international …

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The 2010 PEN Literary Gala is PEN’s largest source of unrestricted support, providing crucial funding for its work to secure the liberty of persecuted and imprisoned writers around the world, to defend freedom of expression wherever it is threatened, and to promote literature and international cultural exchange. The PEN Gala draws attention to imprisoned writers of conscience who are in particularly dire circumstances through the presentation of the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. The PEN Literary Service Award is also presented to a writer whose critically acclaimed work helps us to understand the human condition in original and powerful ways. 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft will serve as master of ceremonies.

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With Philippe Djian and A.M. Homes Philippe Djian is a French writer of Armenian descent. He is the author of more than twenty novels, including Assassins, Frictions, Impuretés, and the bestseller 37°2 le matin, which was published in the United States as Betty Blue and adapted for film by …

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With Philippe Djian and A.M. Homes

Philippe Djian is a French writer of Armenian descent. He is the author of more than twenty novels, including Assassins, Frictions, Impuretés, and the bestseller 37°2 le matin, which was published in the United States as Betty Blue and adapted for film by Jean-Jacques Beineix. His novel Unforgivable was a bestseller in France, and received the 2009 Prix Jean Freustié. Djian will talk with novelist and screenwriter A.M. Homes about a life in literature, traveling to America, and much more besides.

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With Mohsin Hamid, László Krasznahorkai, Andrea Levy, Yiyun Li, Daniele Mastrogiacomo, Sofi Oksanen, Atiq Rahimi, Salman Rushdie, Alberto Ruy-Sánchez, Patti Smith, Andrzej Stasiuk,and Miguel Syjuco. Celebrate the official opening of the sixth annual PEN World Voices Festival with an extraordinary…

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With Mohsin Hamid, László Krasznahorkai, Andrea Levy, Yiyun Li, Daniele Mastrogiacomo, Sofi Oksanen, Atiq Rahimi, Salman Rushdie, Alberto Ruy-Sánchez, Patti Smith, Andrzej Stasiuk,and Miguel Syjuco.

Celebrate the official opening of the sixth annual PEN World Voices Festival with an extraordinary lineup of internationally acclaimed writers from Pakistan, Hungary, China, the United Kingdom, Italy, Finland, Afghanistan, India, Mexico, the United States, Poland, and the Philippines. Readers include the winner of the Booker of Bookers, a journalist who was kidnapped in Afghanistan, and Estonia’s Person of the Year for 2009. The writers will read in their own beautiful languages—with an English translation projected on the screen behind them, so you can read along. Don’t miss an unforgettable celebration of literature from around the world.

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New York City, 2010: A bomb goes off in a Manhattan office tower, and foreign terrorists are immediately suspected. But four days later, with no arrests and a city still on edge, Aidan Cole, a failed New York journalist-turned-gossip blogger, opens an anonymous email to find a photograph of a young…

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New York City, 2010: A bomb goes off in a Manhattan office tower, and foreign terrorists are immediately suspected. But four days later, with no arrests and a city still on edge, Aidan Cole, a failed New York journalist-turned-gossip blogger, opens an anonymous email to find a photograph of a young American woman, along with a chilling message: “This is Paige Roderick. She’s the one responsible…”

So begins a journey, at once classic and contemporary, into the dark soul of America—from the foothills of the Smoky Mountains to a bomb factory in Vermont, from a wealthy enclave on Fishers Island to the hip lofts of Brooklyn. A sharp and penetrating commentary on recent U.S. history, American Subversive explores the connection between our collective apathy and the roots of insurrection. It is a story—a love story, really—about two Americans grasping for a foothold in a culture, and a country, that’s slowly crumbling around them.

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Ten Minutes from Home is the poignant account of how a suburban New Jersey family struggles to come together after being shattered by tragedy. In this searing, sparely written, and surprisingly wry memoir, Beth Greenfield shares what happens in 1982 when, as a twelve-year-old, she survives a …

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Ten Minutes from Home is the poignant account of how a suburban New Jersey family struggles to come together after being shattered by tragedy.


In this searing, sparely written, and surprisingly wry memoir, Beth Greenfield shares what happens in 1982 when, as a twelve-year-old, she survives a drunk-driving accident that kills her younger brother Adam and best friend Kristin. As the benign concerns of adolescence are re­placed by crushing guilt and grief, Beth searches for hope and support in some likely and not-so-likely places (General Hospital, a kindly rabbi, the bottom of a keg), eventually discovering that while life is fragile, love doesn’t have to be.


Ten Minutes from Home exquisitely captures both the heartache of lost innocence and the solace of strength and survival.

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With Bernardo Atxaga, Randa Jarrar, Roger Sedarat, and Francisco X. Stork; moderated by Cathy Park Hong This event is free but reservations are required. For information on bringing your class to this event, please contact Stacy Leigh at (212) 334-1660 ext. 109 As a nation of immigrants, the United…

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With Bernardo Atxaga, Randa Jarrar, Roger Sedarat, and Francisco X. Stork; moderated by Cathy Park Hong

This event is free but reservations are required. For information on bringing your class to this event, please contact Stacy Leigh at (212) 334-1660 ext. 109

As a nation of immigrants, the United States has a rich linguistic life. English is a common language of communication; still, many other languages unify American communities and influence our lives as we work, reflect, and create. For writers, a second language can influence word choice, grammar, and other aspects of craft. A panel of accomplished authors discusses the ways in which they rely upon, contend with, and work through a language other than English in their professional and creative lives.

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Featuring plays by Mohammad Al Attar and Arzé Khodr Withdrawal by Mohammad Al Attar from Syria; translated by Clem Naylor Ahmad and Nour rent a flat so that they can spend time together away from their families, but is having space to themselves going to solve all their problems? A brutally honest…

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Featuring plays by Mohammad Al Attar and Arzé Khodr

Withdrawal by Mohammad Al Attar from Syria; translated by Clem Naylor

Ahmad and Nour rent a flat so that they can spend time together away from their families, but is having space to themselves going to solve all their problems? A brutally honest examination of a relationship.



The House by Arzé Khodr from Lebanon; translated by Khalid Laith

Nadia wants nothing else but to remain in the house she grew up in. Her sister, Reem, wants nothing else but to sell the house which is full of painful memories.

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With Michael Hofmann and Peter Stamm; moderated by Susan Bernofsky Free and open to the public. No reservations. Acclaimed Swiss writer Peter Stamm, author of the novels Agnes, Unformed Landscape, and On a Day Like This, and the short story collection In Strange Gardens, and poet Michael Hofmann,…

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With Michael Hofmann and Peter Stamm; moderated by Susan Bernofsky

Free and open to the public. No reservations.

Acclaimed Swiss writer Peter Stamm, author of the novels Agnes, Unformed Landscape, and On a Day Like This, and the short story collection In Strange Gardens, and poet Michael Hofmann, translator of Stamm’s works and of many twentieth-century masters, will converse about the challenges of bringing Stamm into English. Moderated by Susan Bernofsky, co-chair of the Translation Committee and an award-winning translator from German.

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In March 2007, while on assignment in southern Afghanistan, Italian reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo was kidnapped by the Taliban. He was moved from one improvised prison to the next over a dozen times during his captivity, and was forced to witness the decapitation of his interpreter when negotiations…

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In March 2007, while on assignment in southern Afghanistan, Italian reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo was kidnapped by the Taliban. He was moved from one improvised prison to the next over a dozen times during his captivity, and was forced to witness the decapitation of his interpreter when negotiations for his and his collaborators’ release stalled. He talks about his experience, about the relationships that formed between him and his captors, about the war in Afghanistan and the rise of the new Taliban, with veteran foreign correspondent and La Repubblica’s New York bureau chief, Federico Rampini.

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With David Almond, Francisco X. Stork, Janne Teller, and Ed Young; moderated by Elizabeth Bird. A unique appearance by British author David Almond, winner of the 2010 Hans Christian Andersen medal, the world’s most prestigious prize in children’s literature. He joins Francisco X. Stork, Janne …

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With David Almond, Francisco X. Stork, Janne Teller, and Ed Young; moderated by Elizabeth Bird.

A unique appearance by British author David Almond, winner of the 2010 Hans Christian Andersen medal, the world’s most prestigious prize in children’s literature. He joins Francisco X. Stork, Janne Teller, and Ed Young to talk about their work and its sources. Each author is rooted in and has found inspiration from a specific culture—in England, Mexico, Denmark, and China. How do their roots influence how they speak to children? Which subjects seem right? How have influences from other cultures affected them, and in what ways do they approach universal themes—and taboos? This lively panel will be moderated by Elizabeth Bird, author and senior children’s librarian with New York Public Library’s Children’s Center at 42nd Street.

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With Preston L. Allen, Javier Cercas, Siri Hustvedt, Karl O. Knausgaard, Anne Landsman, Thomas Pletzinger, Monique Proulx, Lee Stringer, Christos Tsiolkas, and Tommy Wieringa Grab your passport and come on a trip around the world with Festival airlines. We’ll make numerous stops in Europe, then …

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With Preston L. Allen, Javier Cercas, Siri Hustvedt, Karl O. Knausgaard, Anne Landsman, Thomas Pletzinger, Monique Proulx, Lee Stringer, Christos Tsiolkas, and Tommy Wieringa

Grab your passport and come on a trip around the world with Festival airlines. We’ll make numerous stops in Europe, then head to Australia, Quebec, and South Africa before we land back in the U.S. Please fasten your seat belts, sit back and relax, even grab a delicious Joe’s Pub cocktail, while you enjoy a very special evening of fiction and nonfiction readings by award-winning writers from here and abroad.

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Join the editors of Granta, Tin House, and PEN America—along with contributors to those magazines—for a freewheeling conversation about the past, present, and future of literary magazines, both in the United States and abroad. For two centuries now, literary magazines have played essential roles…

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Join the editors of Granta, Tin House, and PEN America—along with contributors to those magazines—for a freewheeling conversation about the past, present, and future of literary magazines, both in the United States and abroad. For two centuries now, literary magazines have played essential roles in the lives and careers of writers, editors, and readers—introducing and nurturing new authors, providing outlets for writers both overlooked and established, and publishing groundbreaking work that might not otherwise find a readership. How are those tasks changing in the internet age? And how does the job of the literary magazine vary across continents? John Freeman of Granta, Rob Spillman of Tin House, and M Mark of PEN America will be joined by writer Rodrigo Fresán and writer and editor Peter Stamm in a conversation moderated by David Haglund.

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WIth Elyse Dodgson, Mohammad Al Attar, Arzé Khodr, Kamal Khalladi, Laila Soliman, Imad Farajin, Dominic Cooke, & April De Angelis A forum led by Elyse Dodgson with all five Arab writers featured in the presentations, discussing the dramatization of contemporary life in the Near East and North …

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WIth Elyse Dodgson, Mohammad Al Attar, Arzé Khodr, Kamal Khalladi, Laila Soliman, Imad Farajin, Dominic Cooke, & April De Angelis

A forum led by Elyse Dodgson with all five Arab writers featured in the presentations, discussing the dramatization of contemporary life in the Near East and North Africa region. They will also talk about the question of translation, with Dominic Cooke (Royal Court, artistic director), Elyse Dodgson (Royal Court, associate director international), and U.K. mentor playwright April De Angelis.

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With Alina Bronsky, Rodrigo Fresán, Mohsin Hamid, Aleksandar Hemon, Randa Jarrar, Irakli Kakabadze, Elias Khoury, valter hugo mãe, Sofi Oksanen, Peter Schneider, and special guests The discovery of a subterranean CIA dungeon at a former riding academy in Lithuania, the flight records of thousands…

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With Alina Bronsky, Rodrigo Fresán, Mohsin Hamid, Aleksandar Hemon, Randa Jarrar, Irakli Kakabadze, Elias Khoury, valter hugo mãe, Sofi Oksanen, Peter Schneider, and special guests

The discovery of a subterranean CIA dungeon at a former riding academy in Lithuania, the flight records of thousands of secret U.S. rendition flights, the testimonies of a growing number of released detainees describing their abuse in American custody—as the evidence around the globe mounts that the United States tortured hundreds of captives in the “War on Terror,” people of conscience everywhere are watching to see if those who ordered and carried out the abuse will be held accountable.

Many of those watching are in countries that have successfully confronted their own legacies of torture and human rights abuses. Join us for an evening of readings from documentary and imaginative literature from around the world, in which people have stood face-to-face with their torturers.

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In Just Kids, Patti Smith’s first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest story of …

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In Just Kids, Patti Smith’s first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work—from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.

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In honor of National Poetry Month, the Strand Book Store and BUST Magazine are proud to present an evening of spoken word featuring some of the country's top female performance poets. Poet Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz (BUST writer and author of Everything is Everything) will host the reading, which will…

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In honor of National Poetry Month, the Strand Book Store and BUST Magazine are proud to present an evening of spoken word featuring some of the country's top female performance poets.

Poet Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz (BUST writer and author of Everything is Everything) will host the reading, which will feature electrifying performances by Aptowicz, National Book Award nominee Patricia Smith (Blood Dazzler), Golden Globe nominee Amber Tamblyn (Bang Ditto) and Women of the World Poetry Slam champion Rachel McKibbens (Pink Elephant).

This is a poetry event for anyone who thinks they hate poetry—and for those who love it.

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With David Almond, Alina Bronsky, Janne Teller, and Tommy Wieringa; moderated by Matt de la Peña It is often said that it is not the life that matters, but the courage one brings to it. Four acclaimed authors from the U.K., Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands, discuss how the characters in their…

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With David Almond, Alina Bronsky, Janne Teller, and Tommy Wieringa; moderated by Matt de la Peña

It is often said that it is not the life that matters, but the courage one brings to it. Four acclaimed authors from the U.K., Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands, discuss how the characters in their books summon the courage to overcome obstacles and live the kind of life they aspire to. Do writers get a kind of freedom, a way to problem solve issues from their own lives and even an opportunity to test their own mettle, through their characters? Matt De La Peña asks our guests to share how their characters face down obstacles, both internal and external, and what their work means to their own lives.

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Romanian author Filip Florian introduces us to strange saints, inept lovers, wanderers from old fairy tales, and local legends; Monique Proulx describes a unique landscape in her novel, Wildlives; and Marcel Möring’s In a Dark Wood explores the guilt, fear, and loss suffered by Europeans, and in…

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Romanian author Filip Florian introduces us to strange saints, inept lovers, wanderers from old fairy tales, and local legends; Monique Proulx describes a unique landscape in her novel, Wildlives; and Marcel Möring’s In a Dark Wood explores the guilt, fear, and loss suffered by Europeans, and in particular the Jewish people, during and after the Holocaust. According to Jonathan Lethem, Rodrigo Fresán is “a kaleidoscopic, open-hearted, shamelessly polymathic storyteller, the kind who brings a blast of oxygen into the room.” Join us under the trees in the beautiful courtyard of Deutsches Haus for this special lunchtime reading with international guests of the Festival.

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With Eric Banks, Jane Ciabattari, Rigoberto González, and Mary Ann Newman Have a conversation with leading literary critics about the work of some of the writers at this year’s Festival—including Sherman Alexie, Quim Monzó, Peter Schneider, Martin Solares, and Peter Stamm. Who are their …

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With Eric Banks, Jane Ciabattari, Rigoberto González, and Mary Ann Newman

Have a conversation with leading literary critics about the work of some of the writers at this year’s Festival—including Sherman Alexie, Quim Monzó, Peter Schneider, Martin Solares, and Peter Stamm. Who are their influences? How has their work been received, both here and abroad? Members of the National Book Critics Circle trace the journey these writers have traveled from publication to translation to critical attention.

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With Lewis Lapham, Joris Luyendijk, Martin Pollack, and Mary Anne Weaver International desks and bureaus—once the backbone of the news business—are closing around the world. Journalists in general are losing their jobs at a huge rate—yet degrees in journalism remain popular. Several respected…