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Free Events, Free Things to Do in New York City!  Read More

Are you looking for literary events like book readings, book signings, poetry readings? Then you came to the right place. Start using these unique New York City opportunities today!
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105 free poetry readings, book signings, author readings in New York City (NYC) Sun, 02/17/2019 - and on...

Not a day goes by in New York City (NYC) without a free poetry reading or a book signing or a book reading by a famous or not yet famous author. Don't miss the opportunities that only New York provides!

Author Reading | Friend of My Youth: Back to Bombay


In Friend of My Youth, novelist Amit Chaudhuri visits his childhood home of Bombay. The city, reeling from the impact of the 2008 terrorist attacks, weighs heavily on his mind, as does the unexpected absence of his childhood friend Ramu, a drifting, opaque figure who is Amit’s last remaining connection to the city he once called home. Amit Chaudhuri’s new novel is about geographical, historical and personal change. It asks a question we all grapple with in our lives: what does it mean to exist in both the past and the present? It is a striking reminder that, as The Guardian has said, “Chaudhuri has been pushing away at form, trying to make something new of the novel.”
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Feb 18
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 18, 2019, 02/18/2019, Friend of My Youth: Back to Bombay

Author Reading | The Collected Schizophrenias: Struggling with Mental Illness


An intimate, moving book written with the immediacy and directness of one who still struggles with the effects of mental and chronic illness, The Collected Schizophrenias cuts right to the core. Schizophrenia is not a single unifying diagnosis, and Esmé Weijun Wang writes not just to her fellow members of the “collected schizophrenias” but to those who wish to understand it as well. Opening with the journey toward her diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, Wang discusses the medical community’s own disagreement about labels and procedures for diagnosing those with mental illness, and then follows an arc that examines the manifestations of schizophrenia in her life. In essays that range from using fashion to present as high-functioning to the depths of a rare form of psychosis, and from the failures of the higher education system and the dangers of institutionalization to the complexity of compounding factors such as PTSD and Lyme disease, Wang’s analytical eye, honed as a former lab researcher at Stanford, allows her to balance research with personal narrative. An essay collection of undeniable power, The Collected Schizophreniasdispels misconceptions and provides insight into a condition long misunderstood. Esmé Weijun Wang is the author of The Border of Paradise. She received the Whiting Award in 2018 and was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists of 2017. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan and lives in San Francisco.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Feb 18
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 18, 2019, 02/18/2019, The Collected Schizophrenias: Struggling with Mental Illness

Author Reading | Blue-Collar Conservatism: Frank Rizzo’s Philadelphia and Populist Politics


Timothy J. Lombardo is an author and historian with a scholarly focus on modern American urban and political history. His work has appeared in The Journal of Urban History, The Journal of Social History, The Journal of American History, and The Washington Post. Born and raised in Philadelphia, he currently lives in Mobile, Alabama, where he is Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Alabama. Blue-Collar Conservatism is his first book.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Feb 19
4:30 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 19, 2019, 02/19/2019, Blue-Collar Conservatism: Frank Rizzo&rsquo;s Philadelphia and Populist Politics

Author Reading | The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe: Brittleness, Integration, Medicine, and the Great War


The injuries suffered by soldiers during WWI were as varied as they were brutal. How could the human body suffer and often absorb such disparate traumas? Why might the same wound lead one soldier to die but allow another to recover? In The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe, Stefanos Geroulanos (Professor of History) and Todd Meyers (Associate Professor of Anthropology) uncover a fascinating story of how medical scientists came to conceptualize the body as an integrated yet brittle whole. Responding to the harrowing experience of the Great War, the medical community sought conceptual frameworks to understand bodily shock, brain injury, and the vast differences in patient responses they occasioned. Geroulanos and Meyers carefully trace how this emerging constellation of ideas became essential for thinking about integration, individuality, fragility, and collapse far beyond medicine: in fields as diverse as anthropology, political economy, psychoanalysis, and cybernetics.
   New York City, NY; NYC
Tue, Feb 19
6:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 19, 2019, 02/19/2019, The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe: Brittleness, Integration, Medicine, and the Great War

Author Reading | Smoking Typewriters: The Ideas and Images of the Sixties Underground Press


Drawing from over a decade ofd research, John McMillian discusses how underground newspapers contributed to the growth, organization and decline of the late 1960s American new left.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Feb 19
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 19, 2019, 02/19/2019, Smoking Typewriters: The Ideas and Images of the Sixties Underground Press

Author Reading | The Art of Losing: Betrayed Twice


On one terrible night, 17-year-old Harley Langston’s life changes forever. At a party she discovers her boyfriend, Mike, hooking up with her younger sister, Audrey. Furious, she abandons them both. When Mike drunkenly attempts to drive Audrey home, he crashes and Audrey ends up in a coma. Now Harley is left with guilt, grief, pain and the undeniable truth that her now ex-boyfriend has a drinking problem. So it’s a surprise that she finds herself reconnecting with Raf, a neighbor and childhood friend who’s recently out of rehab and still wrestling with his own demons. At first Harley doesn’t want to get too close to him. But as her sister slowly recovers, Harley begins to see a path forward with Raf’s help that she never would have believed possible—one guided by honesty, forgiveness, and redemption. Lizzy Mason grew up in northern Virginia before moving to New York City for college and a career in publishing. She lives in Queens, New York, with her husband and cat in an apartment full of books. The Art of Losing is her first novel.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Feb 19
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 19, 2019, 02/19/2019, The Art of Losing: Betrayed Twice

Author Reading | The Stowaway: A Young Man's Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica


Laurie Gwen Shapiro’s hit literary nonfiction book is the spectacular true story of a scrappy teenager from New York’s Lower East Side who stowed away on the most remarkable feat of science and daring of the Jazz Age. Publishers Weekly called it a best book of the year, adding: “I read nonfiction almost exclusively... and I’ll be blunt: this has been a depressing year, filled with political works and stories of America’s decline and social disintegration. But Laurie Gwen Shapiro's fascinating book saved my reading year, offering an incredible story, and a reminder that American Exceptionalism once had real meaning.”
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Feb 19
7:30 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 19, 2019, 02/19/2019, The Stowaway: A Young Man's Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica

Author Reading | Escaping the Energy Poverty Trap: When and How Governments Power the Lives of the Poor


Johannes Urpelainen explores why energy poverty is persistent in some countries and not in others. Drawing on case studies from India, East Asia, Africa, and Latin America, Urpelainen and his co-authors assert that energy poverty is a policy problem, and engaging with it as such offers new opportunities not only for ensuring equal energy access, but also for political, economic, and environmental development. Following Dr. Urpelainen’s presentation, he will join Michelle Keane, World Bank Program Manager for the Sint Maarten Recovery, Reconstruction and Resilience Trust Fund, on a panel moderated by Philippe Benoit, Adjunct Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Feb 20
6:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 20, 2019, 02/20/2019, Escaping the Energy Poverty Trap: When and How Governments Power the Lives of the Poor

Book Signing | Kerry Joyce: The Intangible


Emmy Award-winning interior designer Kerry Joyce showcases eight of his diverse projects in a beautifully produced and large format book. Quietly poetic text and gorgeous photography illustrate his mantra of creating well-being and tranquility. Foreword by Whitney Robinson, editor in chief of Elle Décor.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Feb 20
6:00 pm
Free
Book Signings, February 20, 2019, 02/20/2019, Kerry Joyce: The Intangible

Author Reading | A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Bridging Literature and Science


Why is there such a wide chasm between the world of literary intellectuals and that of empirical scientists? In A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women, Siri Hustvedt, encouraged by thinkers like C.P. Snow, attempts to bridge the gap from both sides. Siri Hustvedt is a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. The author of six novels including What I Loved and The Blazing World, four collections of essays, and a work of nonfiction, Hustvedt is the recipient of numerous awards. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Feb 20
6:30 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 20, 2019, 02/20/2019, A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Bridging Literature and Science

Reading | Guernica: Readings from the Magazine


Authors Tracy O'Neill, Alexandra Kleeman, and Rosebud Ben-Oni join Guernica to discuss art, culture, and politics in Trump's America. Moderated by Rachel Riederer, co-editor-in-chief of Guernica. Founded online in 2004, Guernica is an award-winning magazine focused on the intersection of arts and politics. Run entirely by a staff of volunteers, Guernica is also the grateful recipient of federal and private support. A home for incisive ideas and necessary questions, we publish memoir, reporting, interviews, commentary, poetry, fiction, and multimedia journalism exploring identity, conflict, culture, justice, science, and beyond. Tracy O'Neill is the author of The Hopeful, one of Electric Literature's Best Novels of 2015, and Quotients, forthcoming from Soho Press. In 2015, she was named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, long-listed for the Flaherty-Dunnan Prize, and was a Narrative Under 30 finalist. In 2012, she was awarded the Center for Fiction's Emerging Writers Fellowship. She holds an MFA in fiction from the City College of New York and an MA in communications from Columbia University. She currently teaches at the City College of New York and is the former editor-in-chief of the literary journal Epiphany. Alexandra Kleeman is a Staten Island-based writer of fiction and nonfiction, and the winner of the 2016 Bard Fiction Prize. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Zoetrope: All-Story, Conjunctions, among others. Nonfiction essays and reportage have appeared in Harper's, Tin House, n+1, and The Guardian. Her work has received scholarships and grants from Bread Loaf, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Santa Fe Art Institute, and ArtFarm Nebraska. She is the author of the debut novel You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine (Harper, 2015) and Intimations (Harper, 2016), a short story collection. Rosebud Ben-Oni is a recipient of the 2014 NYFA Fellowship in Poetry and a 2013 CantoMundo Fellow. Her most recent collection of poems, turn around, BRXGHT XYXS, was selected as Agape Editions' EDITORS' CHOICE, and will be published in 2019. She writes weekly for The Kenyon Review blog and is an Editorial Advisor for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. Her poem "Poet Wrestling with Angels in the Dark" was commissioned by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in NYC, and published by The Kenyon Review Online. She teaches creative writing at UCLA Extension's Writers' Program and The Speakeasy Project. Rachel Riederer writes about science, the environment, culture, and policy—sometimes at the same time. She holdd a BA in environmental science and public policy from Harvard and an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia. She is the co-editor-in-chief of Guernica: a magazine of global art + politics.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Feb 20
7:00 pm
Free
Readings, February 20, 2019, 02/20/2019, Guernica: Readings from the Magazine

Author Reading | The Atlas of Reds and Blues: The Second-Generation American Experience


When a woman—known only as Mother—moves her family from Atlanta to its wealthy suburbs, she discovers that neither the times nor the people have changed since her childhood in a small Southern town. Despite the intervening decades, Mother is met with the same questions: Where are you from? No, where are you really from? The American-born daughter of Bengali immigrants, she finds that her answer—Here—is never enough. Mother’s simmering anger breaks through one morning, when, during a violent and unfounded police raid on her home, she finally refuses to be complacent. As she lies bleeding from a gunshot wound, her thoughts race from childhood games with her sister and visits to cousins in India, to her time in the newsroom before having her three daughters, to the early days of her relationship with a husband who now spends more time flying business class than at home. The Atlas of Reds and Blues grapples with the complexities of the second-generation American experience, what it means to be a woman of color in the workplace, and a sister, a wife, and a mother to daughters in today’s America. Drawing inspiration from the author’s own terrifying experience of a raid on her home, Devi S. Laskar’s debut novel explores, in exquisite, lyrical prose, an alternate reality that might have been. Devi S. Laskar is a native of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and holds an MFA from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in Tin House and Rattle, among other publications. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and is an alumna of The OpEd Project and VONA. Laskar is the author of two poetry chapbooks, and this is her first novel. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Feb 20
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 20, 2019, 02/20/2019, The Atlas of Reds and Blues: The Second-Generation American Experience

Author Reading | Ashes to Ashes: The Songs of David Bowie, 1976-2016


Chris O'Leary's Ashes to Ashes covers every single Bowie song, whether it was sung, written, or produced by him, from 1976, when he first recorded with Iggy Pop on "The Idiot," to his last masterpiece "Blackstar," released just days before his death in 2016. Each song is annotated in depth and explored in essays that touch upon the song's creation, production, influences and impact. It hits everything from "Heroes" to the Labyrinth soundtrack, from his 1985 camp duet with Mick Jagger on "Dancing In the Street" to "Where Are We Now," his comeback single in 2013. Along the way we encounter a vast cast of characters, weaving in and out of Bowie's life and his music: Brian Eno, John Cale, Nile Rodgers, Lou Reed, Freddie Mercury, Scott Walker, Marc Bolan, Arcade Fire, John Lennon, Mickey Rourke, Gary Oldman, Iman, Hanif Kureishi, Julien Temple, Giorgio Moroder, Neil Young and many others. And we range across the globe from Bowie's years in divided Berlin to his "exile" years in Switzerland through his final years as a New Yorker, recording within walking distance of his home. Chris O’Leary is a writer based in Massachusetts. He has written for Pitchfork, Slate, New York, Mojo, and Billboard. He is the author Rebel Rebel: All the Songs of David Bowie From '64 to '76 (2015) and creator of the acclaimed Bowie blog ‘Pushing Ahead of the Dame’, listed as one of Time's "Best Blogs of 2011".
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Feb 21
1:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 21, 2019, 02/21/2019, Ashes to Ashes: The Songs of David Bowie, 1976-2016

Reading | Literature Workshop: Postcolonial Literature


Do you want to find time for literature in your busy life? Join to celebrate literature in bite-size servings! Read aloud, enact, and discuss passages of classic and contemporary literature from across the globe. This month's theme is Race and Colonialism. In this session the class will examine how poetry from former European colonies explores the personal, social, and political aspects of imperialism. All literary enthusiasts are welcome.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Feb 21
1:00 pm
Free
Readings, February 21, 2019, 02/21/2019, Literature Workshop: Postcolonial Literature

Author Reading | Table Tales: The Global Nomad Cuisine of Abu Dhabi


An evening discussion with Hanan Sayed Worrell, author of Table Tales: The Global Nomad Cuisine of Abu Dhabi, who will share insights on the multicultural communities and cuisines of Abu Dhabi featured in her book. Joining the conversation will be Her Excellency Lana Nusseibeh, UAE Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and Dr. Mariet Westermann, executive vice president for programs and research at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Feb 21
6:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 21, 2019, 02/21/2019, Table Tales: The Global Nomad Cuisine of Abu Dhabi

Author Reading | The African Burial Ground In New York City


In 1991, archaeologists in lower Manhattan unearthed a stunning discovery. Buried for more than 200 years was a communal cemetery containing the remains of up to 20,000 people. At roughly 6.6 acres, the African Burial Ground is the largest and earliest known burial space of African descendants in North America. In the years that followed its discovery, citizens and activists fought tirelessly to demand respectful treatment of eighteenth-century funerary remains and sacred ancestors. Associate Professor of African Art History at Ohio University Andrea E. Frohne discusses this political battle as well as her book on the African American burial ground within the context of the history of enslaved Africans in New York.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Feb 21
6:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 21, 2019, 02/21/2019, The African Burial Ground In New York City

Author Reading | In Putin's Footsteps


In 2000, after Vladimir Putin was handed the Russian presidency by Boris Yeltsin and then won it himself in a landslide election, he set out on a massive PR campaign with the intent to restore his country's lost status as a great power. He hopped around the world to nearly two dozen countries and almost a quarter of Russia's own 89 regions. Inspired by his nation's enormity, its "limitless land," Putin aimed to follow it up by traveling to every one of Russia's eleven time zones on New Year’s Eve to deliver a speech in all of them at the stroke of midnight. Nearly twenty years later, in the summer of 2017, Nina Khrushcheva and journalist Jeffrey Tayler set out to travel in what would have been Putin’s footsteps. Focusing on a town in each time zone, and examining how factors from politics to natural resources define each, the two create a portrait of the country. Khrushcheva, who has made New York her home, speaks about the trans Siberian journey and whether Putin’s promise to restore pride in Russia’s greatness has ultimately been fulfilled.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Feb 21
6:30 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 21, 2019, 02/21/2019, In Putin's Footsteps

Author Reading | The Noisemakers: Estridentismo, Vanguardism, and Social Action in Post-Revolutionary Mexico


The publication examines Estridentismo, one of Mexico’s first modern art and literary movements. The program includes a discussion between the author Lynda Klich, Luis Carranza (Roger Williams University) and Mary Coffey (Dartmouth College), moderated by Edward J. Sullivan (deputy director and professor, The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University).
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Feb 21
6:30 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 21, 2019, 02/21/2019, The Noisemakers: Estridentismo, Vanguardism, and Social Action in Post-Revolutionary Mexico

Author Reading | Violence: Humans in Dark Times


Through a series of penetrating conversations originally published in The New York Times and The Los Angeles Review of Books, Brad Evans and Natasha Lennard talk with a wide range of cutting edge thinkers--including Oliver Stone, Simon Critchley, and Elaine Scarry--to explore the problem of violence in everyday life, politics, culture, media, language, memory, and the environment. "To bring out the best of us," writes Evans, "we have to confront the worst of what humans are capable of doing to one another. In short, there is a need to confront the intolerable realities of violence in this world." These lively, in-depth exchanges among historians, theorists, and artists offer a timely and bracing look at how the increasing expression and acceptance of violence--in all strata of society--has become a defining feature of our times.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Feb 21
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 21, 2019, 02/21/2019, Violence: Humans in Dark Times

Author Reading | Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval


Saidiya Hartman examines the revolution of black intimate life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. Free love, common-law and transient marriages, serial partners, cohabitation outside of wedlock, queer relations, and single motherhood were among the sweeping changes that altered the character of everyday life and challenged traditional Victorian beliefs about courtship, love, and marriage. Hartman narrates the story of this radical social transformation against the grain of the prevailing century-old argument about the crisis of the black family. In wrestling with the question of what a free life is, many young black women created forms of intimacy and kinship that were indifferent to the dictates of respectability and outside the bounds of law. They cleaved to and cast off lovers, exchanged sex to subsist, and revised the meaning of marriage. Longing and desire fueled their experiments in how to live. They refused to labor like slaves or to accept degrading conditions of work. Beautifully written and deeply researched, Wayward Lives recreates the experience of young urban black women who desired an existence qualitatively different than the one that had been scripted for them--domestic service, second-class citizenship, and respectable poverty--and whose intimate revolution was apprehended as crime and pathology. For the first time, young black women are credited with shaping a cultural movement that transformed the urban landscape. Through a melding of history and literary imagination, Wayward Lives recovers their radical aspirations and insurgent desires. Saidiya Hartman is a Guggenheim Fellow and author of Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route and Scenes of Subjection. She has been a Cullman Fellow and Fulbright Scholar. She is a professor at Columbia University, and lives in New York.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Feb 21
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 21, 2019, 02/21/2019, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval

Author Reading | A Light in Dark Times: The New School for Social Research and its University in Exile


Judith Friedlander's riveting new book is from Columbia University Press. Friedlander is Professor Emerita of Anthropology, Hunter College, and former Walter E. Eberstadt Professor of Anthropology and Dean of the New School for Social Research. Reception to follow.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Feb 21
8:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 21, 2019, 02/21/2019, A Light in Dark Times: The New School for Social Research and its University in Exile

Poetry Reading | 3 Poets Share Their Work


Brionne Janae was the winner of the 2014 Muriel Craft Bailey Contest from the Comstock Review, judged by Kwame Dawes, and her first manuscript was selected by Michael Ryan for Emerson Colleges Best Thesis Award. Her debut collection, After Jubilee  (Boaat Press, 2017), was also was selected by Dorianne Laux as the finalist for the 2016 BOAAT Book Prize. Nabila Lovelace is a first-generation native of Queens, New York, whose family is originally from Trinidad and Nigeria. The author of Sons of Achilles (YesYes Books, 2018), she lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Justin Phillip Reed is an American poet living in St. Louis. He is the author of Indecency (Coffee House Press), winner of the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry, and of the chapbook A History of Flamboyance (YesYes Books, 2016).
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Fri, Feb 22
5:00 pm
Free
Poetry Readings, February 22, 2019, 02/22/2019, 3 Poets Share Their Work

Author Reading | Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon


An evening with Dr. Cheryl Finley to discuss her 2018 book. In an illustrated presentation, Finley will address how an eighteenth-century engraving of a slave ship became a cultural icon of black resistance, identity, and remembrance. Guided by the question “How do artists use visual culture to create alternative narratives?”, Finley will present on salient themes that emerged from her research, including “How is the slave ship icon relevant to contemporary culture and identities? A wine and cheese reception to follow. Cheryl Finley is an associate professor of art history at Cornell University, as well as a curator, contemporary art critic, and frequent essayist. She is the co-author of My Soul Has Grown Deep: Black Art from the American South (Yale University Press, 2018). A specialist in the art market, Finley’s current research examines the global art economy, focusing on the relationship among artists, museums, biennials, and migration in the book project Black Market: Inside the Art World.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Fri, Feb 22
6:00 pm
$5
Author Readings, February 22, 2019, 02/22/2019, Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon

Author Reading | An American Odyssey: The Life and Work of Romare Bearden


Author Mary Schmidt Campbell discusses a new biography. Romare Bearden was a major figure in 20th-century art, best known by the time of his death in 1988 for his public murals and collages evoking the Black experience in America. He grew up in the era of the New Negro and the Harlem Renaissance (his studio was above the Apollo theater). In 1987, Bearden was awarded the National Medal of Arts and was described as "the nation's foremost collagist" by The New York Times.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Fri, Feb 22
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 22, 2019, 02/22/2019, An American Odyssey: The Life and Work of Romare Bearden

Author Reading | Decolonial Daughter: Letters from a Black Woman to Her European Son


Decolonial Daughter explores motherhood, migration, identity, nationhood and how it relates to land, imprisonment, and genocide for Black and Indigenous peoples. What treasures lie beneath the surface of our understanding of our past, that shape who we are today? What powerful stories guide our existence and understanding of the past? Through our exploration and acceptance of other perspectives, can we begin to pave the way towards liberation in hopes of understanding who we truly are?
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Fri, Feb 22
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 22, 2019, 02/22/2019, Decolonial Daughter: Letters from a Black Woman to Her European Son

Author Reading | Mind Over Memes: Passive Listening, Toxic Talk, and Other Modern Language Follies


Too often our use of language has become lazy, frivolous, and even counterproductive. We rely on cliches and bromides to communicate in such a way that our intentions are lost or misinterpreted. In a culture of "takeaways" and buzzwords, it requires study and cunning to keep language alive. Diana Senechal examines words, concepts, and phrases that demand reappraisal. Targeting a variety of terms, the author contends that a "good fit" may not always be desirable; delivers a takedown of the adjective "toxic"; and argues that "social justice" must take its place among other justices. This book also includes a critique of our modern emphasis on quick answers and immediate utility. By scrutinizing words and phrases that serve contemporary fads and follies, this book stands up against the excesses of language and offers engaging alternatives. Drawing on literature, philosophy, social sciences, music, and technology, Senechal offers a rich framework to make fresh connections between topics. Combining sharp criticism, lyricism, and wit, Mind over Memes argues for judicious and imaginative speech. Diana Senechal is an educator and author whose writing has appeared in The New Republic, Education Week, American Educator, and The New York Times. Senechal is the 2011 winner of the Hiett Prize and the author of Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture (Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2012), which was a Choice Outstanding Academic title. She now teaches at the Varga Katalin Gimnázium in Szolnok, Hungary..
   New York City, NY; NYC
Fri, Feb 22
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 22, 2019, 02/22/2019, Mind Over Memes: Passive Listening, Toxic Talk, and Other Modern Language Follies

Author Reading | When I Walk Through That Door, I Am: An Immigrant Mother’s Quest for Freedom


Poet and activist Jimmy Sanitago Baca reads from his new book which tells the harrowing story of Sophia, a young mother from San Salvador who travels north in search of asylum after her husband’s brutal murder. Jimmy Santiago Baca is an American poet, teacher, and activist of Apache and Chicano descent, and he holds a number of awards for his easily accessible writing style and activism. He is the author of A Place to Stand, which was developed into a documentary film about his life, airing on PBS.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Sun, Feb 24
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 24, 2019, 02/24/2019, When I Walk Through That Door, I Am: An Immigrant Mother&rsquo;s Quest for Freedom

Author Reading | You Know You Want This


When “Cat Person” appeared in the New Yorker in December 2017 it quickly took Book Twitter by storm. The short story centers on a young woman's experience dating in a sleepy college town, but with decidedly skin-crawling twists. You Know You Want This is Kristen Roupenian's highly anticipated debut collection of stories that explore the ways in which women are horrifying as much as it captures the horrors that are done to them. Spanning a range of topics and genres, it is darkly funny, delightfully cringeworthy, and compulsively readable. Kristen Roupenian graduated from Barnard and holds a PhD in African Literature from Harvard. She is a Zell Fellow in the University of Michigan MFA program, and she has received numerous awards for her work.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Feb 25
6:30 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 25, 2019, 02/25/2019, You Know You Want This

Poetry Reading | Bertolt Brecht Out Loud


Some of today’s most captivating poets perform Bertolt Brecht’s funny, heartbreaking, personal, and political verse.  Featuring Adam Fitzgerald Paul Muldoon (with musician David Mansfield) Eileen Myles Amber Tamblyn Though he is widely regarded as the greatest German playwright of the twentieth century, among English readers it is less known that all the while Bertolt Brecht was doing double duty as a poet. Touching on subjects from chess to war to sex, he composed more than 2,000 poems, though fewer than half were published in his lifetime.  Translators David Constantine and Tom Kuhn have made 1,200 of Brecht’s poems available to English readers in The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht, the most comprehensive collection of his poetry to date. To celebrate this monumental achievement, contemporary poets will gather to read aloud and perform poems that illustrate his ever-lasting lust for life. 
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Feb 25
6:30 pm
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Poetry Readings, February 25, 2019, 02/25/2019, Bertolt Brecht Out Loud

Reading | The 100-Word Happening: Short Readings


The 100-Word Happening consists of 7 people, each reading 5 pieces, all of which have to be 100 words exactly. After the reading part of the event, a workshop for audience members will be held where they can write and read aloud a 100-word piece of their own. Light refreshments will be served afterwards. .
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Feb 25
6:30 pm
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Readings, February 25, 2019, 02/25/2019, The 100-Word Happening: Short Readings

Author Reading | Trump Sky Alpha: A Satire of Apocalypse


Twice a week, the president pilots his ultraluxury airship Trump Sky Alpha (seats start at $50,000), delivering, as he travels between DC, NYC, and Mar-a-Lago, a streaming YouTube address to the nation, in which he trumpets his successes and blasts his enemies—until the day his words plunge the world into nuclear war. One year later, with 90 percent of the world’s population destroyed, a journalist named Rachel has taken refuge in the Twin Cities Metro Containment Zone. Rachel goes on assignment to document the final throes of humor on the internet in those moments before the end, hoping along the way to discover the final resting place of her wife and daughter. Mark Doten, a satirist of unparalleled vision, brilliantly details how the internet has infiltrated every aspect of our lives, laying the groundwork for the tumult of our current political moment, and, in the kaleidoscopic, queer, all-consuming, parallactic swirl of Trump Sky Alpha, for the future headed our way.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Feb 25
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, February 25, 2019, 02/25/2019, Trump Sky Alpha: A Satire of Apocalypse

Author Reading | Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women: Today's Violence Against Women


The world is witnessing a new surge of interpersonal and institutional violence against women, including new witch hunts. This surge of violence has occurred alongside an expansion of capitalist social relation. In this new work, Silvia Federici examines the root causes of these developments and outlines the consequences for the women affected and their communities. She argues, that this new war on women, a mirror of witch hunts in 16th- and 17th-century Europe and the “New World,” is a structural element of the new forms of capitalist accumulation. These processes are founded on the destruction of people’s most basic means of reproduction. Like at the dawn of capitalism, the factors behind today’s violence against women are processes of enclosure, land dispossession, and the remolding of women’s reproductive activities and subjectivity. Silvia Federici is a feminist writer, teacher, and militant. In 1972 she was co-founder of the International Feminist Collective that launched the campaign for Wages for Housework internationally. Her previous books include Caliban and the Witch and Revolution at Point Zero. She is a professor emerita at Hofstra University, where she was a social science professor.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Feb 25
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, February 25, 2019, 02/25/2019, Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women: Today's Violence Against Women

Author Reading | 111 Museums in New York City You Must Not Miss: From Gaugin to Gangsters


Author Wendy Lubovich and photographer Ed Lefkowicz will be in conversation with Lauren Glassberg, WABC-TV reporter, about 111 Museums in New York City You Must Not Miss. New Yorkers love their museums. From Gauguin to gangsters, finance to food, New York City has the richest museum culture in the world. For New Yorkers, simply finding the best museums is an urban sport itself, a personal quest to seek out the cool, the curious and the uncanny. Consider this book your little cheat sheet--a treasure guide to the secret corners of the iconic museums, a field guide to the little museums you never dreamed existed.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Feb 26
6:00 pm
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Author Readings, February 26, 2019, 02/26/2019, 111 Museums in New York City You Must Not Miss: From Gaugin to Gangsters

Author Reading | Don't Label Me: An Incredible Conversation for Divided Times


Irshad Manji's book equips us to engage our Other in a way that’s both authentic and strategic. Irshad Manji holds a scrappy conversation with her real-life Other: a dog named Lily. Raised in a culture that deemed dogs evil, Manji overcame the fear of her fur elder and experienced the transformative power of moving beyond labels, be they racial, sexual, religious, or partisan. Irshad Manji is founder of the Moral Courage Project at the University of Southern California and the bestselling author of The Trouble with Islam Today, translated into more than thirty languages and later adapted into the Emmy-nominated PBS film Faith Without Fear.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Feb 26
6:00 pm
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Author Readings, February 26, 2019, 02/26/2019, Don't Label Me: An Incredible Conversation for Divided Times

Author Reading | Dead Men's Trousers: The Latest from the Author of Trainspotting


A spectacular return of the wild, dissolute gang from Trainspotting, from the author Irvine Welsh, who the The New York Times called "Blisteringly funny.... " The gang from Trainspotting have mostly cleaned up their act ... until they are drawn back together to Scotland for one last scheme -- a scheme one of them won't survive. It's an action-packed, hilarious and rollicking trip, as well as a moving elegy to the crew. Mark Renton is finally a success. An international jet-setter, he now makes significant money managing DJs, but the constant travel, airport lounges, soulless hotel rooms and broken relationships have left him dissatisfied with his life. He's then rocked by a chance encounter with Frank Begbie, from whom he'd been hiding for years after a terrible betrayal and the resulting debt. But the psychotic Begbie appears to have reinvented himself as a celebrated artist and - much to Mark's astonishment - doesn't seem interested in revenge. Sick Boy and Spud, who have agendas of their own, are intrigued to learn that their old friends are back in town, but when they enter the bleak world of organ-harvesting, things start to go so badly wrong. Lurching from crisis to crisis, the four men circle each other, driven by their personal histories and addictions, confused, angry - so desperate that even Hibs winning the Scottish Cup doesn't really help. One of these four will not survive to the end of this book. Which one of them is wearing Dead Men's Trousers? Restrictions apply. Call store for details.
   New York City, NY; NYC
Tue, Feb 26
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 26, 2019, 02/26/2019, Dead Men's Trousers: The Latest from the Author of Trainspotting

Author Reading | Life Admin: How I Learned to Do Less, Do Better, and Live More


Life Admin will give you many hours of your life back. Every day an unseen form of labor creeps into our lives—stealing precious moments of free time, placing a strain on our schedules and our relationships, and earning neither appreciation nor compensation in return. This labor is life admin: the kind of secretarial and managerial work necessary to run a life and a household. Life Admin tackles the problem of admin in all its forms, from everyday tasks like scheduling doctors appointments and paying bills, to life-cycle events like planning a wedding, a birth, a funeral. Elizabeth Emens explores how this labor is created, how it affects our lives, and how we might avoid, reduce, and redistribute admin whenever possible—as individuals and as a society.
   New York City, NY; NYC
Tue, Feb 26
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, February 26, 2019, 02/26/2019, Life Admin: How I Learned to Do Less, Do Better, and Live More

Author Reading | Premonitions: Selected Essays on the Culture of Revolt


Bringing together a decade of AK Thompson’s essays on the culture of revolt, Premonitions offers an engaged assessment of contemporary radical politics. Inspired by Walter Benjamin, Thompson combines scholarship and grassroots grit to disabuse readers—and rebels—of cherished certainties. Whether uncovering the unrealized promise buried in mainstream culture or tracing our course toward the moment of reckoning ahead, the essays in Premonitions are both practical investigations and prescient provocations.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Feb 26
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, February 26, 2019, 02/26/2019, Premonitions: Selected Essays on the Culture of Revolt

Author Reading | Savage Feast: Three Generations, Two Continents, and a Dinner Table


The acclaimed author of A Replacement Life shifts between heartbreak and humor in this gorgeously told, recipe-filled memoir. A family story, an immigrant story, a love story, and an epic meal, Savage Feast explores the challenges of navigating two cultures from an unusual angle. A revealing personal story and family memoir told through meals and recipes, Savage Feast begins with Boris’s childhood in Soviet Belarus, where good food was often worth more than money. He describes the unlikely dish that brought his parents together and how years of Holocaust hunger left his grandmother so obsessed with bread that she always kept five loaves on hand. She was the stove magician and Boris’ grandfather the master black marketer who supplied her, evading at least one firing squad on the way. These spoils kept Boris’ family—Jews who lived under threat of discrimination and violence—provided-for and protected. Despite its abundance, food becomes even more important in America, which Boris’ family reaches after an emigration through Vienna and Rome filled with marvel, despair, and bratwurst. How to remain connected to one’s roots while shedding their trauma? The ambrosial cooking of Oksana, Boris’s grandfather’s Ukrainian home aide, begins to show him the way. His quest takes him to a farm in the Hudson River Valley, the kitchen of a Russian restaurant on the Lower East Side, a Native American reservation in South Dakota, and back to Oksana’s kitchen in Brooklyn. His relationships with women—troubled, he realizes, for reasons that go back many generations—unfold concurrently, finally bringing him, after many misadventures, to an American soulmate. Boris Fishman was born in Minsk, Belarus, and immigrated to the United States in 1988 at the age of nine. His journalism, essays, and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. His first novel, A Replacement Life, won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the American Library Association’s Sophie Brody Medal, was one of The New York Times' 100 Notable Books, and was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick. He lives in New York.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Feb 26
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, February 26, 2019, 02/26/2019, Savage Feast: Three Generations, Two Continents, and a Dinner Table

Author Reading | The English Wife


New York Times bestselling author Lauren Willig, will talk on her scandalous novel, The English Wife,  set in the Gilded Age, full of family secrets, affairs, and even murder. Annabelle and Bayard Van Duyvil live a charmed life in New York: he's the scion of an old Knickerbocker family, she grew up in a Tudor manor in England, they had a whirlwind romance in London, they have three year old twins on whom they dote, and he's recreated her family home on the banks of the Hudson and renamed it Illyria. Yes, there are rumors that she's having an affair with the architect, but rumors are rumors and people will gossip. But then Bayard is found dead with a knife in his chest on the night of their Twelfth Night Ball, Annabelle goes missing, presumed drowned, and the papers go mad. Bay's sister, Janie, forms an unlikely alliance with a reporter to uncover the truth, convinced that Bay would never have killed his wife, that it must be a third party, but the more she learns about her brother and his wife, the more everything she thought she knew about them starts to unravel. Who were her brother and his wife, really? And why did her brother die with the name George on his lips? Lauren Willig is the author of historical novels. She is best known for her Pink Carnation series, which follows a collection of Napoleonic-Era British spies. 
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Feb 27
5:30 pm
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Author Readings, February 27, 2019, 02/27/2019, The English Wife

Author Reading | Italian author discusses her writing


Join professor and author Maria Laurino as she discusses her writing. In her book, Were You Always Italian?, Maria Laurino sifts through the stereotypes bedeviling Italian Americans to deliver a penetrating and hilarious examination of third-generation ethnic identity. With "intelligence and honesty" (Arizona Republic), she writes about guidos, bimbettes, and mammoni (mama's boys in Italy); examines the clashing aesthetics of Giorgio Armani and Gianni Versace; and unravels the etymology of southern Italian dialect words like gavone and bubidabetz. Her second book is Old World Daughter, New World Mother: An Education in Love and Freedom. In the second-generation immigrant home where Maria Laurino grew up, “independent” was a dirty word and “sacrifice” was the ideal and reality of motherhood. But out in the world, Mary Tyler Moore was throwing her hat in the air, personifying the excitement and opportunities of the freedom loving American career woman. How, then, to reconcile one’s inner Livia Soprano—the archetypal ethnic mother—with a feminist icon? Combining lived experience with research and reporting on our contemporary work-family dilemmas, Laurino brews an unusual and affirming blend of contemporary and traditional values.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Feb 27
5:30 pm
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Author Readings, February 27, 2019, 02/27/2019, Italian author discusses her writing

Author Reading | BFF’s: The First in the Alex’s Dreams Trilogy


A fascinating story of teenager Alex and her friends, BFFs captures the everyday lives of a colorful cast of characters moving into young adulthood and experiencing dating, relationships, and academic and social pressures. This memorable novel also delves into highly intriguing, more complicated territory. With author Alexander Rutherford.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Feb 27
6:00 pm
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Author Readings, February 27, 2019, 02/27/2019, BFF&rsquo;s: The First in the Alex&rsquo;s Dreams Trilogy

Author Reading | Demos Assembled: Democracy and the International Origins of the Modern State 1840-1880


Previous studies have covered in great detail how the modern state slowly emerged from the early Renaissance through the seventeenth century, but we know relatively little about the next great act: the birth and transformation of the modern democratic state. Demos Assembled (University of Chicago Press, 2018) provides a fresh, transatlantic understanding of that political order’s genesis, and sheds new light on the subsequent reciprocal influence that American thinkers and politicians had on the establishment of post-revolutionary regimes in France.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Feb 27
6:30 pm
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Author Readings, February 27, 2019, 02/27/2019, Demos Assembled: Democracy and the International Origins of the Modern State 1840-1880

Author Reading | Modern HERstory


From the civil rights movement and Stonewall riots to Black Lives Matter and beyond, Blair Imani features seventy champions of progressive social change in Modern HERstory, a colorfully illustrated collection of profiles suitable for all ages. The featured trailblazers come from backgrounds and communities that are traditionally overlooked and under-celebrated: not just women, but people of color, queer people, trans people, disabled people, young people, and people of faith. These powerful stories of the leaders and movements that are changing the world as we know it will inspire readers to become change-makers themselves. Blair Imani, founder and Executive Director of Equality for HER, a nonprofit educational platform, will be joined in conversation by Jamia Wilson, director of the Feminist Press at CUNY, author of Young, Gifted, and Black and contributor to Together We Rise: Behind the Scenes at the Protest Heard Around the World. 
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Feb 27
6:30 pm
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Author Readings, February 27, 2019, 02/27/2019, Modern HERstory

Author Reading | Too Much and Not The Mood: Poetic Essays


Durga Chew-Bose is the author of Too Much and Not The Mood (FSG, 2017). Her writing appears on websites such as Hazlitt, The Hairpin, BuzzFeed, Grantland and Papermag. She has contributed articles to The Guardian and The Globe and Mail, and to the magazines GQ, Interview, n+1 and Adult. Born in Montreal, Chew-Bose now lives in Brooklyn.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Feb 27
6:30 pm
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Author Readings, February 27, 2019, 02/27/2019, Too Much and Not The Mood: Poetic Essays

Author Reading | Good Kids, Bad City: A Story of Race and Wrongful Conviction in America


Good Kids, Bad City is the true story of the longest wrongful imprisonment in the United States to end in exoneration, and a critical social and political history of Cleveland, the city that convicted them. Award-winning journalist Kyle Swenson discusses his first book, the true story of the longest wrongful imprisonment in the United States to end in exoneration, and a critical social and political history of Cleveland, the city that convicted them. In an immersive exploration of race in America, Swenson investigates this disgraceful miscarriage of justice, and how the corruption and decay of Cleveland led to their wrongful imprisonment. In the early 1970s, three African-American men—Wiley Bridgeman, Kwame Ajamu, and Rickey Jackson—were accused and convicted of the brutal robbery and murder of a man outside of a convenience store in Cleveland, Ohio. The prosecution’s case, which resulted in a combined 106 years in prison for the three men, rested on the more-than-questionable testimony of a pre-teen, Ed Vernon. The actual murderer was never found. Almost four decades later, Vernon recanted his testimony, and Wiley, Kwame, and Rickey were released. But while their exoneration may have ended one of American history’s most disgraceful miscarriages of justice, the corruption and decay of the city responsible for their imprisonment remain on trial. Interweaving the dramatic details of the case with Cleveland’s history—one that, to this day, is fraught with systemic discrimination and racial tension—Swenson reveals how this outrage occurred and why. Good Kids, Bad City is a work of astonishing empathy and insight: an immersive exploration of race in America, the struggling Midwest, and how lost lives can be recovered.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Feb 27
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, February 27, 2019, 02/27/2019, Good Kids, Bad City: A Story of Race and Wrongful Conviction in America

Poetry Reading | Invasive Species: Searing, Politically Charged Poems


Marwa Helal's searing politically charged poems touch on our collective humanity and build new pathways for empathy, etching themselves into memory. This work centers on urgent themes in our cultural landscape, creating space for unseen victims of discriminatory foreign (read: immigration) policy: migrants, refugees--the displaced. Helal transfers lived experiences of dislocation and relocation onto the reader by obscuring borders through language. Marwa Helal is the author of the chapbook I Am Made To Leave I Am Made To Return and winner of BOMB Magazine's Biennial Contest. Born in Al Mansurah, Egypt, Helal currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Feb 27
7:00 pm
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Poetry Readings, February 27, 2019, 02/27/2019, Invasive Species: Searing, Politically Charged Poems

Author Reading | Psychopomps: Family and Queer Community


Psychopomps a book of essays from trans writer Alex DiFrancesco. This essay collection tackles topics of family, queer community, transition, and the queer spirituality.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Feb 27
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Author Readings, February 27, 2019, 02/27/2019, Psychopomps: Family and Queer Community

Author Reading | Securing Europe after Napoleon: 1815 and the New European Security Culture


After the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, the leaders of Europe aimed to establish a new balance of power. The 1815 Congress of Vienna ushered in the emergence of a genuinely European security culture. Securing Europe after Napoleon offers new insights into the military cooperation, ambassadorial conferences, transnational police networks, and international commissions that helped produce stability. Ido de Haan, a co-editor of the book, is Professor of Political History at Utrecht University and Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor at Columbia University. Beatrice de Graaf is Professor of History of International Relations & Global Governance at Utrecht University. Brian Vick is Associate Professor of History, Emory University. Adam Tooze, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History & Director of the European Institute.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Feb 27
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, February 27, 2019, 02/27/2019, Securing Europe after Napoleon: 1815 and the New European Security Culture

Author Reading | Mother Winter: Searching for a Missing Parent


Russian sentences begin backward, Sophia Shalmiyev tells us on the first page of her striking, lyrical memoir. To understand the end of her story we must go back to her beginning. Born to a Russian mother and an Azerbaijani father, Shalmiyev was raised in the stark oppressiveness of 1980s Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). An imbalance of power and the prevalence of antisemitism in her homeland led her father to steal Shalmiyev away, emigrating to America, abandoning her estranged mother, Elena. At age eleven, Shalmiyev found herself on a plane headed west, motherless and terrified of the new world unfolding before her. Now a mother herself, Shalmiyev depicts in urgent vignettes her emotional journeys as an immigrant, an artist, and a woman raised without her mother. She tells of her early days in St. Petersburg, a land unkind to women, wayward or otherwise; her tumultuous pit-stop in Italy as a refugee on her way to America; the life she built for herself in the Pacific Northwest, raising two children of her own; and ultimately, her cathartic voyage back to Russia as an adult, where she searched endlessly for the alcoholic mother she never knew. Braided into her physical journey is a metaphorical exploration of the many surrogate mothers Shalmiyev sought out in place of her own—whether in books, art, lovers, or other lost souls banded together by their misfortunes. Mother Winter is the story of Shalmiyev’s years of travel, searching, and forging meaningful connection with the worlds she occupies—the result is a searing observation of the human heart and psyche’s many shades across time and culture. As acclaimed author Michelle Tea says, “with sparse, poetic language Shalmiyev builds a personal history that is fractured and raw; a brilliant, lovely ache.” Sophia Shalmiyev emigrated from Leningrad to NYC in 1990. An MFA graduate of Portland State University, she was the nonfiction editor for The Portland Review and is a recipient of the Laurels scholarship and numerous Kellogg’s fellowship awards. She has a second master’s degree in creative arts therapy from The School of Visual Arts, where she worked with survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking. Her work has appeared in Vela Magazine, Bellows American Review, Electric Lit, The Seattle Review of Books, Ravishly and The Literary Review, among others; all with a feminist lens. She is also at work on a novel and an essay collection. She lives in Portland.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Feb 27
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, February 27, 2019, 02/27/2019, Mother Winter: Searching for a Missing Parent

Author Reading | Is Shame Necessary?


Professor and author Jennifer Jacquet discusses her book, Is Shame Necessary?. "A trenchant case for the use of public shaming as a nonviolent form of resistance, Is Shame Necessary? explores how one of society’s oldest tools can be used to promote large-scale political change and social reform. Examining how we can retrofit the art of shaming for the age of social media, Jennifer Jacquet shows that we can challenge corporations and even governments to change policies and behaviors that are detrimental to the environment. Urgent and illuminating, Is Shame Necessary? offers an entirely new understanding of how shame, when applied in the right way and at the right time, has the capacity to keep us from failing our planet and, ultimately, from failing ourselves." “Powerful. . . . An incisive argument. . . . [Jacquet’s] results are fascinating.” —Chicago Tribune “A sharp dissection. . . . [Jacquet] exposes the ways shame plays into collective ideas of punishment and reward, and the social mechanisms that dictate the ways we dictate our behavior.” —The Boston Globe “Thought-provoking.” —The Economist
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Feb 28
5:30 pm
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Author Readings, February 28, 2019, 02/28/2019, Is Shame Necessary?

Poetry Reading | 2 poets read their work


Grave illness, profound disability, and stunning cruelty and betrayal are Jennifer Franklin’s catalysts in No Small Gift: turning the chaos of her trauma into meaning, rediscovering a voice embedded under sutures and scars, making a whole from rent parts. "As a series, the poems in Bliumis-Dunn’s Echolocation swing back and forth from the natural world keenly observed—rain, birds, sunflowers, even a clam— to the contortions of the human heart, mostly caused by hurt and loss. And isn’t that where the best poetry resides, between the thing and the emotion, the swan and the grief?" —Billy Collins
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Feb 28
6:00 pm
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Poetry Readings, February 28, 2019, 02/28/2019, 2 poets read their work

Poetry Reading | Be With: Named 2018's Best Poetry Book by Publishers Weekly


Author Forest Gander’s books of poetry include Eye Against Eye, Torn Awake, and, most recently, Be With (New Directions), named the Best Poetry Book of 2018 by Publishers Weekly. Gander is also a translator, novelist, essayist, and the editor of two anthologies. His own poetry has been translated into several languages, and his novel, As a Friend, was published in 2008. He lives in Rhode Island, where he teaches at Brown University.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Feb 28
7:00 pm
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Poetry Readings, February 28, 2019, 02/28/2019, Be With: Named 2018's Best Poetry Book by Publishers Weekly

Author Reading | Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State


Our cities are changing. Global real estate is now a $217 trillion dollar industry, 36 times the value of all the gold ever mined. It makes up 60 percent of the world's assets, and the most powerful person in the world - the president of the United States - made his name as a landlord and real estate developer. As Samuel Stein makes clear in this tightly argued book, its through seemingly innocuous profession of city planners that we can best understand the transformations underway. Planners provide a window into the practical dynamics of urban change: the way the state uses and is used by organized capital, and the power of landlords and developers at every level of government. But crucially, planners also possess some of the powers we must leverage if we ever wish to reclaim our cities from real estate capital. Samuel Stein studies geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and teaches urban studies at Hunter College. His writing on planning politics been published by Jacobin, The Journal of Urban Affairs, Metropolitics, and many other magazines and journals. In addition to studying and teaching urban geography, he worked as a researcher, organizer, and planner on numerous New York City union campaigns, tenant mobilizations, and public policy initiatives.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Feb 28
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, February 28, 2019, 02/28/2019, Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State

Author Reading | Intellectual Philanthropy: The Seduction of the Masses


What's in a nineteenth-century philanthropist? Fear of an uprising. But the frightened philanthropist has a remedy. Aware that the urban surge of the working-class masses in Spain would create a state of emergency, he or she devises a means to seduce the masses away from rebellion by taking on himself or herself the role of the seducer: the capitalist intellectual hero invested in the caretaking of the unpredictable working class. Intellectual Philanthropy examines cultural practices used by philanthropists in modern Iberia. It explains the meaning and role of intellectual philanthropy by focusing on the devices and apparatuses philanthropists devised to realize their projects. Intellectual philanthropists considered themselves activists in that they aimed to impact social structures and deployed a rhetoric of the affect to convince the workers to join their philanthropic enterprise. Author Aurélie Vialette is an Assistant Professor at Stony Brook University. She specializes working-class culture, social movements, gender studies and prison reform. She has published her research in Spanish, English, Catalan and French.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Fri, Mar 1
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, March 01, 2019, 03/01/2019, Intellectual Philanthropy: The Seduction of the Masses

Author Reading | We the Resistance: Documenting a History of Nonviolent Protest in the United States


Michael Long presents his new anthology, a first-person history of nonviolent resistance in the U.S., from pre-Revolutionary America to the Trump years. This alternate history of the formation of our nation—and its character—is one in which courageous individuals and movements have wielded the tools of nonviolence to resist unjust, unfair, and immoral policies and practices.
   New York City, NY; NYC
Fri, Mar 1
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 01, 2019, 03/01/2019, We the Resistance: Documenting a History of Nonviolent Protest in the United States

Open Mike | Poetry reading


Poets reading their favorite poems.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Sat, Mar 2
3:00 pm
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Open Mikes, March 02, 2019, 03/02/2019, Poetry reading

Author Reading | Foucault in California: A True Story Wherein the Great French Philosopher Drops Acid in the Valley of Death


In The Lives of Michel Foucault, David Macey quotes the iconic French philosopher as speaking "nostalgically...of 'an unforgettable evening on LSD, in carefully prepared doses, in the desert night, with delicious music, and nice people'." This came to pass in 1975, when Foucault spent Memorial Day weekend in Southern California at the invitation of Simeon Wade-ostensibly to guest-lecture at the Claremont Graduate School where Wade was an assistant professor, but in truth to explore what he called the Valley of Death. Led by Wade and Wade's partner Michael Stoneman, Foucault experimented with psychotropic drugs for the first time; by morning he was crying and proclaiming that he knew Truth. Foucault in California is Wade's firsthand account of that long weekend. Felicitous and often humorous prose vaults readers headlong into the erudite and subversive circles of the Claremont intelligentsia: parties in Wade's bungalow, intensive dialogues between Foucault and his disciples at a Taoist utopia in the Angeles Forest (whose denizens call Foucault "Country Joe"); and, of course, the fabled synesthetic acid trip in Death Valley, set to the strains of Bach and Stockhausen.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Mar 4
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, March 04, 2019, 03/04/2019, Foucault in California: A True Story Wherein the Great French Philosopher Drops Acid in the Valley of Death

Poetry Reading | Kill Class: Training for War


Poet and an anthropologist Nomi Stone launches her new collection based on her fieldwork conducted in war trainings in mock Middle Eastern villages erected by the US military around America.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Mar 4
7:00 pm
Free
Poetry Readings, March 04, 2019, 03/04/2019, Kill Class: Training for War

Author Reading | This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism


Author, activist, and TED speaker Ashton Applewhite has written a rousing manifesto calling for an end to discrimination and prejudice on the basis of age. In our youth obsessed culture, we’re bombarded by media images and messages about the despairs and declines of our later years. Beauty and pharmaceutical companies work overtime to convince people to purchase products that will retain their youthful appearance and vitality. Wrinkles are embarrassing. Gray hair should be colored and bald heads covered with implants. Older minds and bodies are too frail to keep up with the pace of the modern working world and olders should just step aside for the new generation. Ashton Applewhite once held these beliefs too until she realized where this prejudice comes from and the damage it does.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Mar 4
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 04, 2019, 03/04/2019, This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism

Author Reading | Reno 911! actor Thomas Lennon discusses his children's book Ronan Boyle and the Bridge of Riddles


Ronan Boyle and the Bridge of Riddles is the first novel in the debut middle-grade series from Hollywood actor and writer Thomas Lennon with illustrations by John Hendrix. Lennon is best known for playing Lieutenant Jim Dangle on Reno 911! and as the coauthor of the Night at the Museum film series. He has appeared in 38 feature films and numerous television series. He’s written four of IFC’s ’50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time’ and was an original member of the influential sketch comedy group The State. He will be in conversation with Michael Ian Black, a writer, comedian, and actor who currently appears on Another Period, The Jim Gaffigan Show, and Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp. Black is the bestselling author of several children’s books and currently lives in Connecticut with his wife and two children.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Mar 5
6:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 05, 2019, 03/05/2019, Reno 911! actor Thomas Lennon discusses his children's book Ronan Boyle and the Bridge of Riddles

Author Reading | Hungry Girl Simply 6: All-Natural Recipes with 6 Ingredients or Less


Thanks to bestselling author Lisa Lillien, eating healthy, delicious and satisfying foods has never been easier.
   New York City, NY; NYC
Tue, Mar 5
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 05, 2019, 03/05/2019, Hungry Girl Simply 6: All-Natural Recipes with 6 Ingredients or Less

Author Reading | The Volunteer: a novel by National Book Award Finalist


Salvatore Scibona talks with Joan Acocella about his new novel, The Volunteer, the epic story of a restless young man captured during the Vietnam War and pressed into service for a clandestine branch of the United States government. Salvatore Scibona is the Sue Ann and John Weinberg Director of the Cullman Center. His novel The End was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. His fiction has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers' Award, and an O. Henry Award, and in 2010 The New Yorker named him one of its "20 Under 40" writers. He completed The Volunteer during his 2016-17 Fellowship at the Cullman Center. Joan Acocella is a staff writer for the New Yorker, where she reviews dance and books. Her own books include Mark Morris; Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism; and, most recently, the essay collection Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints, which won the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Acocella edited the first unexpurgated edition of The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky. She worked on her forthcoming biography of Mikhail Baryshnikov during her 2017-18 Fellowship at the Cullman Center.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Mar 5
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, March 05, 2019, 03/05/2019, The Volunteer: a novel by National Book Award Finalist

Author Reading | They Fought Alone: The True Story of the Starr Brothers, British Secret Agents in Nazi-Occupied France


From Charles Glass, the bestselling author of Americans in Paris and The Deserters, comes the astounding story of Britain's Special Operations Executive, one of World War II's most important secret fighting forces. As far as the public knew, Britain's Special Operations Executive did not exist. After the defeat of the French Army and Britain's retreat from the Continent in June 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill created the top-secret espionage operation to "set Europe ablaze." The agents infiltrated Nazi-occupied territory, parachuting behind enemy lines and hiding in plain sight, quietly but forcefully recruiting, training, and arming local French résistants to attack the German war machine. SOE would not only change the course of the war, but the nature of combat itself. Of the many brave men and women conscripted, two Anglo-American recruits, the Starr brothers, stood out to become legendary figures to the guerillas, assassins, and saboteurs they led.
   New York City, NY; NYC
Tue, Mar 5
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 05, 2019, 03/05/2019, They Fought Alone: The True Story of the Starr Brothers, British Secret Agents in Nazi-Occupied France

Poetry Reading | An Evening with 3 Poets


Aan evening of poetry with Charlie Bondus, Rachel Hadas, and Gardner McFall on their new collections,  Divining Bones (Bondus), Poems for Camilla (Hadas), Iphigenia Plays (Hadas) and On The Line (McFall).
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Mar 5
7:00 pm
Free
Poetry Readings, March 05, 2019, 03/05/2019, An Evening with 3 Poets

Author Reading | Blaming Immigrants: Nationalism and the Economics of Global Movement


Neeraj Kaushal's book investigates the core causes of rising disaffection towards immigrants globally and tests common complaints against immigration. She has authored or co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed scientific articles and book chapters on immigrants and other vulnerable populations. She writes a monthly column in the Economic Times, India’s largest financial daily, and she is currently working on a documentary on tribesfolk in India.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Mar 6
4:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 06, 2019, 03/06/2019, Blaming Immigrants: Nationalism and the Economics of Global Movement

Author Reading | H.G. Adler: A Life in Many Worlds


The biography of H.G. Adler (1910-88) is the story of a survivor of Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and two other concentration camps who not only lived through the greatest cataclysm of the 20th century, but someone who also devoted his literary and scholarly career to telling the story of those who perished in over two dozen books of fiction, poetry, history, sociology, and religion. And yet for much of his life he remained almost entirely unknown. Author Eric Banks is a writer and editor and the director of the New York Insitute for the Humanities. A former senior editor of Artforum, Banks relaunched Bookforum in 2003 and served as the publication’s editor in chief until 2008.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Mar 6
6:30 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 06, 2019, 03/06/2019, H.G. Adler: A Life in Many Worlds

Author Reading | Black Leopard, Red Wolf: Myth, Fantasy, and Hiistory


In the stunning first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Mar 6
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, March 06, 2019, 03/06/2019, Black Leopard, Red Wolf: Myth, Fantasy, and Hiistory

Author Reading | On Thomas Merton: Celebrating a Modern Thinker


From the best-selling novelist and memoirist Mary Gordon, a deeply personal view of her discovery of the celebrated modern monk and thinker through his writings. This is a probing, candid exploration of the man who became the face and voice of mid-twentieth-century American Catholicism. Approaching Merton “writer to writer,” Gordon illuminates his life and work through his letters, journals, autobiography, and fiction. Pope Francis has celebrated Merton as “a man of dialogue,” and here Gordon shows that the dialogue was as much internal as external—an unending conversation, and at times a heated conflict, between Merton the monk and Merton the writer. Rich with excerpts from Merton’s own writing, On Thomas Merton produces an intimate portrait of a man who “lived life in all its imperfectability, reaching toward it in exaltation, pulling back in anguish, but insisting on the primacy of his praise as a man of God.” Mary Gordon is the author of eight novels, including There Your Heart Lies, The Company of Women, and The Love of My Youth; six works of nonfiction, including Joan of Arc: A Life and the memoirs The Shadow Man and Circling My Mother; and three collections of short fiction, including The Stories of Mary Gordon, which was awarded the Story Prize. She has received many other honors, including a Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Academy Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She teaches at Barnard College and lives in New York City.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Mar 6
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, March 06, 2019, 03/06/2019, On Thomas Merton: Celebrating a Modern Thinker

Reading | Literature Workshop: What's New in American Poetry 2018-19


Do you want to find time for literature in your busy life? Join to celebrate literature in bite-size servings! Read aloud, enact, and discuss passages of classic and contemporary literature from across the globe. This month's theme is Contemporary American Poetry. This session the class will discuss how poetry published within the last year reflects upon our culture and society as it happens. All literary enthusiasts are welcome.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Mar 7
1:00 pm
Free
Readings, March 07, 2019, 03/07/2019, Literature Workshop: What's New in American Poetry 2018-19

Author Reading | 2 Authors: Darryl Pinckney / Gary Shteyngart


Darryl Pinckney is the author of two novels, High Cotton and Black Deutschland, and two works of nonfiction, Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature, part of the Alain Locke Lecture Series, and Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy. Gary Shteyngart is the author of the novels Super Sad True Love Story, Absurdistan, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, and, most recently, Lake Success (Random House, 2018). He is also the author of the memoir Little Failure.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Mar 7
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, March 07, 2019, 03/07/2019, 2 Authors: Darryl Pinckney / Gary Shteyngart

Author Reading | The Altruists: A Professor Unravels


Arthur Alter is in trouble. A middling professor at a Midwestern college, he can't afford his mortgage, he's exasperated his much younger girlfriend, and his kids won't speak to him. And then there's the small fortune his late wife Francine kept secret, which she bequeathed directly to his children. Andrew Ridker was born in 1991. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review Daily, Guernica, Boston Review, The Believer, and St. Louis Magazine; and he is the editor of Privacy Policy: The Anthology of Surveillance Poetics. He is the recipient of an Iowa Arts Fellowship from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. The Altruists is his first novel.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Mar 7
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, March 07, 2019, 03/07/2019, The Altruists: A Professor Unravels

Poetry Reading | Extra Hidden Life, Among the Days: Award-Winning Poetry


Brenda Hillman is the author of ten collections of poetry, including Practical Water, for which she won the LA Times Book Award for Poetry;and Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire, which received the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Northern California Book Award for Poetry; and most recently Extra Hidden Life, Among the Days (Wesleyan Poetry Series, 2018).
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Fri, Mar 8
5:00 pm
Free
Poetry Readings, March 08, 2019, 03/08/2019, Extra Hidden Life, Among the Days: Award-Winning Poetry

Author Reading | Psychoanalysis in the Barrios: Race, Class, and the Unconscious


Features co-editors Patricia Gherovici and Christopher Christian and contributor Carlos Padrón. Among other things, this path-breaking volume argues that the clinical is political and listens for Freud with a Spanish accent in Latin America and beyond. This panel discussion will not only ask what happens when psychoanalysis goes to the Barrios, but — reversing direction — it will consider how clinical work and psychoanalytic theories can be transformed by bringing the Barrios into psychoanalysis.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Fri, Mar 8
5:00 pm
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Author Readings, March 08, 2019, 03/08/2019, Psychoanalysis in the Barrios: Race, Class, and the Unconscious

Poetry Reading | The Plant of Dreaming: Italian Poetry in Translation


Poetry and Conversation with Elisa Biagini, introduced by Alicia Ostriker, 11th New York State Poet. Biagini lives in Florence, Italy. She has published 7 poetry collections. Her most recent book The Plant of Dreaming, appeared in 2017. She curates community poetry installations with words and images. Her poems have been translated into multiple languages.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Fri, Mar 8
5:30 pm
Free
Poetry Readings, March 08, 2019, 03/08/2019, The Plant of Dreaming: Italian Poetry in Translation

Author Reading | Unhappy Silences: Activist Feelings, Feminist Thinking, Resisting Injustice


Reading from her new book, Berenice Malka Fisher shares her own and other women activists’ stories about both speaking out and remaining silent in numerous peace and justice movements from the 1950s to the present. Through analyzing these accounts with the help of many feminist authors, she shows how closer attention to the feelings contained in these silent moments can strengthen collective resistance.
   New York City, NY; NYC
Fri, Mar 8
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 08, 2019, 03/08/2019, Unhappy Silences: Activist Feelings, Feminist Thinking, Resisting Injustice

Author Reading | A Matter of Chance


Julie Maloney will be present to talk on her new thriller A Matter of Chance. A Matter of Chance tells the story of an 8-year-old girl’s disappearance from a New Jersey shore town and her mother’s relentless search for her child. Research for the novel took Julie to Germany, where she visited the Kathe Kollwitz Museum, curator of the largest collection of work by the country's most revered artist— the muse for her story. Julie also had several interviews with a former undercover DEA agent from Brooklyn, who answered questions on the topic of underworld crime.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Sat, Mar 9
1:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 09, 2019, 03/09/2019, A Matter of Chance

Author Reading | Sentinel: The Unlikely Origins of the Statue of Liberty


Francesca Lidia Viano speaks about her new book. Few structures have become as iconic, for the city and nation, as the Statue of Liberty. Yet its own history remains obscure. In this new work, “the fullest account yet of the people and ideas that brought the lady of the harbor to life,” Viano, a Fellow at Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, discusses the contradictory mix of ideologies and values behind it. 
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Mar 11
6:30 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 11, 2019, 03/11/2019, Sentinel: The Unlikely Origins of the Statue of Liberty

Author Reading | Novel Sounds: Southern Fiction in the Age of Rock and Roll


The 1950s witnessed both the birth of both rock and roll and the creation of Southern literature as we know it. Around the time that Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley put their electric spin on Southern vernacular ballads, a canonical group of white American authors native to rock's birthplace began to write fiction about the electrification of those ballads, translating into literary form key cultural changes that gave rise to the infectious music coming out of their region. Florence Dore tells the story of how these forms of expression became intertwined and shows how Southern writers turned to rock music and its technologies--tape, radio, vinyl--to develop the "rock novel."
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Mar 11
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, March 11, 2019, 03/11/2019, Novel Sounds: Southern Fiction in the Age of Rock and Roll

Author Reading | Sleeping with Strangers: How the Movies Shaped Desire


Film can make us want things we can not have. But, while sometimes rapturous, the interaction of onscreen beauty and private desire speaks to a crisis in American culture, one that pits delusions of male supremacy against feminist awakening and the spirit of gay resistance. Combining criticism, his encyclopedic knowledge of film history, and memoir, David Thomson examines how film has found the fault lines in traditional masculinity and helped to point the way past it toward a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be a person desiring others. Ranging from advertising to pornography, Rudolph Valentino to Moonlight, Rock Hudson to Call Me By Your Name, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant to Phantom Thread, Thomson shows us the art and the artists we love under a new light.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Mar 11
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, March 11, 2019, 03/11/2019, Sleeping with Strangers: How the Movies Shaped Desire

Poetry Reading | Wheeling & Healing: Poems of Resilience


Ashley C. Ford hosts the launch of the anthology Wheeling & Healing, edited by the Reality Poets. The Reality Poets invited residents of their long-term care facility, neighbors on Roosevelt Island, mentors and friends to contribute poems toward a message of realness, resilience and healing.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Mar 11
7:00 pm
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Poetry Readings, March 11, 2019, 03/11/2019, Wheeling & Healing: Poems of Resilience

Author Reading | Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland


The New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe’s latest book explores the secretive and violent culture of the Provisional IRA. Radden Keefe will discuss the legwork and detailed reporting which enabled him to write this gripping narrative history, which David Grann (Killers of the Osage Flower Moon) calls “a work of revelation.”
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Mar 11
8:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 11, 2019, 03/11/2019, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

Author Reading | King of Joy: One Woman’s Quest for Survival 


Corvus has always had an overactive imagination. Growing up, she develops a unique coping mechanism: she can imagine herself out of any situation, no matter how terrible. To get through each day, Corvus escapes into scenes from fantasy novels, pop songs, and action/adventure movies, and survives by turning the everyday into just another role to play in the movie of her life. After a tragic loss, Corvus finds a sadness so great she cannot imagine it away. Instead, she finds Tim, a pornographer with unconventional methods, who offers her a new way to escape into movies. But when a sinister plot of greed and betrayal is revealed, Corvus must fight to reclaim her independence, and discovers she is stronger than even she could have imagined. Written in Richard Chiem’s singular style, this debut novel is equal parts sledgehammer and sweet song, a neon, pulsing portrait of grief. King of Joy tells the triumphant, electrifying story of one woman’s quest for survival against all odds, and serves as a reminder that resilience can be found even in our most hopeless moments.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Mar 12
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 12, 2019, 03/12/2019, King of Joy: One Woman&rsquo;s Quest for Survival&nbsp;

Author Reading | The Absent Hand: Reimagining Our American Landscape


This engrossing work of literary nonfiction is a deep dive into our surroundings--cities, countryside, and sprawl--exploring change in the meaning of place, and reimagining our American landscape Following her bestselling The Architect of Desire, Suzannah Lessard returns with a remarkable book, a work of relentless curiosity and a graceful mixture of observation and philosophy. This intriguing hybrid will remind some of W. G. Sebald's work and others of Rebecca Solnit's, but it is Lessard's singular talent to combine this profound book-length mosaic--a blend of historical travelogue, reportorial probing, philosophical meditation, and prose poem--into a work of unique genius, as she describes and reimagines our landscapes. In this exploration of our surroundings, The Absent Hand contends that to reimagine landscape is a form of cultural reinvention.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Mar 12
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, March 12, 2019, 03/12/2019, The Absent Hand: Reimagining Our American Landscape

Author Reading | Truth in Our Times: Inside the Fight for Press Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts


David E. McCraw recounts his experiences as the top newsroom lawyer for The New York Times during the most turbulent era for journalism in generations.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Mar 12
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, March 12, 2019, 03/12/2019, Truth in Our Times: Inside the Fight for Press Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts

Author Reading | Evidence of Being: The Black Gay Cultural Renaissance and the Politics of Violence


Darius Bost's book is a cultural history of black gay artistic and activist movements during the early era of AIDS, focusing on Washington, D.C. and New York City.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Mar 13
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, March 13, 2019, 03/13/2019, Evidence of Being: The Black Gay Cultural Renaissance and the Politics of Violence

Poetry Reading | Binomio: A Dialogue Between 2 Poets


Spanish poet Esther Ramón and Chilean narrator Lina Meruane have been friends for more than twenty years. For the first time they are featured together: they will read their work, talk about their creative processes, about their visions of prose and poetry and the relationships between both genres and other artistic forms. Esther Ramón (Madrid, 1970) is a poet, critic, and professor of creative writing and comparative literature at the Autonomous University of Madrid. She has published the poetry collections Tundra (Igitur, 2002), Reses (Trea, Critical Eye Award 2008), Grisú (Trea, 2009), Sales (Amargord, 2011), and en flecha (Ediciones La Palma, 2017). Selections of her work have been included in many anthologies. Born in Santiago, Chile, Lina Meruane is of Palestinian and Italian descent. She started writing as a storyteller and cultural journalist. In 1997 she received a writing grant from the National Fund for Cultural Development and the Arts (FONDART) to finish her first book of stories. The following year she published Las infantas.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Mar 13
7:00 pm
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Poetry Readings, March 13, 2019, 03/13/2019, Binomio: A Dialogue Between 2 Poets

Author Reading | My Butch Career: An Anthropologist's Memoir


Anthropologist Esther Newton reads from her new memoir followed by a discussion with Ann Pellegrini (Professor, Performance Studies). Moderated by Faye Ginsburg (Professor, Anthropology).
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Mar 14
6:30 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 14, 2019, 03/14/2019, My Butch Career: An Anthropologist's Memoir

Author Reading | Hollywood Godfather: My Life in the Movies and the Mob


Hollywood Godfather is Gianni Russo's over-the-top memoir of a real-life mobster-turned-actor who helped make The Godfather a reality, and his story of life on the edge between danger and glamour.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Mar 14
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, March 14, 2019, 03/14/2019, Hollywood Godfather: My Life in the Movies and the Mob

Poetry Reading | Magical Negro: New Poetry


Morgan Parker is the author of the poetry collections There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, and Magical Negro (Tin House, February 2019). Her debut young adult novel Who Put This Song On? will be published by Delacorte Press in late 2019, and her debut book of nonfiction is forthcoming from One World.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Mar 14
7:00 pm
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Poetry Readings, March 14, 2019, 03/14/2019, Magical Negro: New Poetry

Author Reading | The Island of Sea Women: Female Friendship on a Small Korean Island


A new novel from Lisa See, the bestselling author of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, about female friendship and family secrets on a small Korean island. Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends that come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Mar 14
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, March 14, 2019, 03/14/2019, The Island of Sea Women: Female Friendship on a Small Korean Island

Author Reading | Spending Time: The Most Valuable Resource


Time is the ultimate scarce resource and thus a topic for economics, which studies scarcity. Since our time is limited by the number of hours in a day, days in a year, and years in our lives, we face constraints and thus choices that involve trade-offs. Spending Time provides engaging insights into how people use their time and what determines their decisions. Daniel S. Hamermesh explores people’s use of their time across countries, regions, cultures, class, and gender to create a comprehensive study of time.
   New York City, NY; NYC
Sun, Mar 17
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 17, 2019, 03/17/2019, Spending Time: The Most Valuable Resource

Author Reading | Solitude & Company: A True Account of the Life of Gabriel Garcia Marquez


Irreverent and hopeful, Sylvana Paternostro 's Solitude & Company recounts the life of a boy from the provinces who decided to become a writer. This is the story of how he did it, how little Gabito became Gabriel García Márquez, and of how Gabriel García Márquez survived his own self-creation.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Mar 18
6:30 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 18, 2019, 03/18/2019, Solitude & Company: A True Account of the Life of Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Author Reading | Psychoanalysis in the Barrios: Race, Class, and the Unconscious


Patricia Gherovici and Christopher Christian discuss their latest book which demonstrates that psychoanalytic principles can be applied successfully in disenfranchised Latino populations, refuting the misguided idea that psychoanalysis is an expensive luxury only for the wealthy.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Mar 18
7:00 pm
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Author Readings, March 18, 2019, 03/18/2019, Psychoanalysis in the Barrios: Race, Class, and the Unconscious

Author Reading | Run Away: A Perfect Family Shattered


A perfect family is shattered in the new thriller from the master of domestic suspense, Harlan Coben. You've lost your daughter. She's addicted to drugs and to an abusive boyfriend. And she's made it clear that she doesn't want to be found. Then, by chance, you see her playing guitar in Central Park. But she's not the girl you remember. This woman is living on the edge, frightened, and clearly in trouble. You don't stop to think. You approach her, beg her to come home. She runs. And you do the only thing a parent can do: you follow her into a dark and dangerous world you never knew existed. Before you know it, both your family and your life are on the line. And in order to protect your daughter from the evils of that world, you must face them head on.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Mar 19
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 19, 2019, 03/19/2019, Run Away: A Perfect Family Shattered

Author Reading | Charles James: The Couture Secrets of Shape


Dorothea Mink, professor of fashion design at the University of Arts in Bremen, and Homer Layne offer a presentation of their fascinating book on Charles James, the English-American fashion designer best known for his ballgowns and considered one of the most influential designers of the 20th century. Layne -- James’s assistant for almost a decade -- and Mink analyze the great designer’s remarkable innovations, revealing what made his designs so special, and suggest how designers today can apply James’s principles to their own work.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Mar 20
6:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 20, 2019, 03/20/2019, Charles James: The Couture Secrets of Shape

Poetry Reading | Every Word You Cannot Say: New Poems


A new collection by Iain S. Thomas.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Fri, Mar 22
7:00 pm
Free
Poetry Readings, March 22, 2019, 03/22/2019, Every Word You Cannot Say: New Poems

Author Reading | Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance


Award-winning Native American funder Edgar Villanueva weaves a provocative analysis of the dysfunctional colonial dynamics at play in philanthropy and finance, and offers a prescription for restoring balance and healing our divides using the guidance of indigenous wisdom. Edgar Villanueva is a nationally-recognized expert on social justice philanthropy. Edgar currently serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of Native Americans in Philanthropy and is a Board Member of the Andrus Family Fund, a national foundation that works to improve outcomes for vulnerable youth.
   New York City, NY; NYC
Mon, Mar 25
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 25, 2019, 03/25/2019, Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance

Author Reading | What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays


From the cofounder of VerySmartBrothas.com, and one of the most read writers on race and culture at work today, a provocative and humorous memoir-in-essays that explores the ever-shifting definitions of what it means to be Black (and male) in America For Damon Young, existing while Black is an extreme sport. The act of possessing black skin while searching for space to breathe in America is enough to induce a ceaseless state of angst where questions such as “How should I react here, as a professional black person?” and “Will this white person’s potato salad kill me?” are forever relevant. What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker chronicles Young’s efforts to survive while battling and making sense of the various neuroses his country has given him.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Mar 25
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 25, 2019, 03/25/2019, What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays

Author Reading | Stolen Time: Black Fad Performance and the Calypso Craze


Celebrate the publication of Shane Vogel’s book at this showcase of the performances that shape the book. The first cultural history of the calypso craze, Stolen Time offers a new framework for understanding the cycles of repetition and difference that shape race, entertainment, and mass culture during the Jim Crow era and charts new forms of diasporic exchange between the US and the Caribbean. The informal discussion will feature performances by midcentury performers Maya Angelou, Geoffrey Holder, Carmen de Lavallade, Duke Ellington, Josephine Premice, and others.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Mar 26
6:30 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 26, 2019, 03/26/2019, Stolen Time: Black Fad Performance and the Calypso Craze

Author Reading | Blood Oath: Assaulted by the System


Bestselling author Linda Fairstein explores the depths of Manhattan's secretive Rockefeller University in this timely, captivating thriller about the deep—and often deadly—reverberations of past sins. Assistant DA Alexandra Cooper of the Manhattan Sex Crimes Unit is finally back at work following a leave of absence, and not a moment too soon. With more women feeling empowered to name their abusers, Alex is eager to return to the courtroom to do what she does best. But even she can't anticipate the complexity of her first case when she meets Lucy, a young woman who testified years earlier at a landmark federal trial . . . and now reveals that she was sexually assaulted by a prominent official during that time.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Mar 26
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 26, 2019, 03/26/2019, Blood Oath: Assaulted by the System

Author Reading | Kugel and Frijoles: Latino Jews in the United States


Laura Limonic of the College of Old Westbury of the State University of New York explores issues of ethnicity, race, class and religious community building among Latino Jewish immigrants in Boston, New York, Miami and Southern California.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Mar 27
4:30 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 27, 2019, 03/27/2019, Kugel and Frijoles: Latino Jews in the United States

Author Reading | The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences Working Toward Freedom


Hosted by Mariame Kaba, activist, organizer, and founder of Project NIA (which advocates the end of youth incarceration) editors and curators of The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences Working Toward Freedom will read and discuss the narratives of people surviving the effects of long-term incarceration. With Kathy Boudin, Victoria Law, Janos Marton, Sarah Ross, and more.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Mar 27
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 27, 2019, 03/27/2019, The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences Working Toward Freedom

Author Reading | House of Secrets: The Many Lives of a Florentine Palazzo


House of Secrets tells the remarkable story of Palazzo Rucellai from behind its celebrated façade. The house, beginning with its piecemeal assemblage by one of the richest men in Florence in the fifteenth century, has witnessed endless drama, from the butchering of its interior to a courtyard suicide to champagne-fueled orgies on the eve of World War I to a recent murder on its third floor. When author Allison Levy, an art historian, serendipitously discovers a room for let in the house, she lands in the vortex of history and is tested at every turn—inside the house and out. Her residency in Palazzo Rucellai is informed as much by the sense of desire giving way to disappointment as by a sense of denial that soon enough must succumb to truth. House of Secrets is about the sharing of space, the tracing of footsteps, the overlapping of lives. It is about the willingness to lose oneself behind the façade, to live between past and present, to slip between the cracks of history and the crevices of our own imagination. 
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Mar 28
6:30 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 28, 2019, 03/28/2019, House of Secrets: The Many Lives of a Florentine Palazzo

Author Reading | The Scar: A Personal History of Depression and Recovery


At the age of twenty-seven, married, living in New York, and working in book design, Mary Cregan gives birth to her first child, a daughter she names Anna. But it's apparent that something is terribly wrong, and two days later, Anna dies--plunging Cregan into suicidal despair. Decades later, sustained by her work, a second marriage, and a son, Cregan reflects on this pivotal experience and attempts to make sense of it. She weaves together literature and research with details from her own ordeal--and the still visible scar of her suicide attempt--while also considering her life as part of the larger history of our understanding of depression. In fearless, candid prose, Cregan examines her psychotherapy alongside early treatments of melancholia, weighs the benefits of shock treatment against its terrifying pop culture depictions, explores the controversy around antidepressants and how little we know about them--even as she acknowledges that the medication saved her life--and sifts through the history of the hospital where her recovery began. Perceptive, intimate, and elegantly written, The Scar vividly depicts the pain and ongoing stigma of clinical depression, giving greater insight into its management and offering hope for those who are suffering.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Mar 28
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 28, 2019, 03/28/2019, The Scar: A Personal History of Depression and Recovery

Author Reading | Illuminations on Market Street: On Sex and Loss


Benjamin Heim Shepard's story begins in San Francisco in the early 1990s: Cab is on the deep end of a losing streak. After having been dumped yet again, he moves to Haight-Ashbury fresh out of college. It is the middle of a recession, before the dot-com boom, and AIDS is an immediate and untreatable reality. A story about AIDS and sex, acting up and praying for the dead, this is a story about living and fighting in the face of insurmountable challenges.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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Sun, Mar 31
7:00 pm
Free
Author Readings, March 31, 2019, 03/31/2019, Illuminations on Market Street: On Sex and Loss
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