Tomorrow night at the New York Institute for the Humanities, Hanif Abdurraqib will present the institute’s fourth annual humanities lecture, “The Intersections of Mundane Pleasures.” In his talk, Abdurraqip “will explore how our living in and throughout the world is also an act of writing, focusing on curiosity, rigid ideas around genre, and the way living can influence and foster curiosity.” The event is free and open to the public; RSVP here.
A public memorial will be held for Toni Morrison in New York later this month. The event will take place at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on November 21 and include eulogies from Oprah Winfrey, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Angela Davis, Kevin Young, and more.
The Guardian has more details about Zadie Smith’s debut play. The Wife of Willesden will be a reimagining of Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Tale “as a gift to her home borough of Brent.” The play will premiere at the Brent 2020 cultural festival next year.
Financial Times editor Lionel Barber is stepping down from the paper early next year. He will be succeeded by deputy editor Roula Khalaf, who will be the paper’s first female editor.
Literary Hub collects the best translated works of the past decade, including Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights, Can Xue’s Love in the New Millennium, and Han Kang’s The Vegetarian.
The New York Times’s Michael Paulson talks to Lin-Manuel Miranda and his partners who are working on reopening the Drama Book Shop in Midtown Manhattan. The new location will be on 39th Street, one block south of its previous location, and is scheduled to reopen next March. Designer David Korins said the space is inspired by “European cafes of 100 years ago, and how they were beautiful spaces where people would sip coffee and exchange ideas.” “We wanted to create a space where we were looking back into the past and into the future,” he explained, “so the space is carved up like a reading room cafe, with a tin ceiling, aged with patinas, and mix and match furniture.”
