On September 27, the event of a lifetime will land all over NYC(and Brooklyn)’s streets. All readings will last 35 minutes.
Events in the Lower East Side will begin at 6 p.m.
Events in the East Village will begin at 7:15 p.m.
Events in Williamsburg will begin at 8:30 p.m.
Lower East Side
1. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (6 p.m.)
R Bar, 218 Bowery Ave. (at Prince St.)
Since 1946, Farrar, Straus and Giroux has published tremendous fiction with international reach and is home to an enviable stable of new and old talent. Farrar, Straus and Giroux authors have won extraordinary acclaim over the years, including numerous National Book Awards, Pulitzer Prizes, and twenty-one Nobel Prizes in literature.
Four gifted young writers will take turns reading from each other’s work:
Rivka Galchen received her MD from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, having spent a year in South America working on public health issues. Galchen recently completed her MFA at Columbia University, where she was a Robert Bingham Fellow. Atmospheric Disturbances is her first novel.
Sarah Manguso is the author of the memoir The Two Kinds of Decay (FSG, 2008), the story collection Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape (McSweeney’s, 2007), and the poetry collections Siste Viator and The Captain Lands in Paradise. She recently completed Joseph Brodsky Rome Fellowship in Literature at the American Academy in Rome.
Wells Tower’s short stories and journalism have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, The Washington Post Magazine, and elsewhere. He received two Pushcart Prizes and the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review. FSG will publish Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned in March 2009.
John Wray is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Right Hand of Sleep and Canaan’s Tongue. He was named one of Granta magazine’s Best of Young American Novelists in 2007. His latest novel, Lowboy, will be published in March 2009.
2. The Genius Salon v. The Thorstein Foundation (6 p.m.)
Home Sweet Home, 131 Chrystie St (at Delancey)
James J. Williams III is an artist, curator and director of the Thorstein Foundation. He spends the better part of the day mooching .nspiration from those closest to him. A native Brooklynite, James despises Robert Moses and his preferred form of birth control is a vasectomy. His memoir, I Was Going to Change the World, appears this January in conjunction with his solo show “I love everything” at envoy.
Ellen Frances is a NY based artist who has worked on projects for DKNY, Atlantic Records / WMG, Fuse TV, Madison Square Garden, Smuggler Films, Melville House, Worlds Fair and more. She has been in several group shows which showcased her large scale paintings and experimental films.
Catherine Foulkrod studied Semiotics at Brown University, and is currently enrolled in the MFA program for fiction writing at the New School. She has worked as the Editor-at-Large of KGB Bar Lit, and as
an Associate Editor of Ballyhoo Stories. The Bruichladdich Valinch 1983 Oloroso Cask might just be her favorite single malt.
John O’Hara is an artist and a member of the band FRAGILE. He lives an occasionally quiet life in Greenpoint with his blind cat Alma. They enjoy hamburger helper, vintage prosthetics, smoking in the shower and illustrating a new mythology. John O’Hara is currently working on a solo exhibition that applies visual applications that record the distance between stowed-away thoughts and orphaned forms, to include:
a deviant form of the children’s game ‘Memory’, and a collection entitled Now That I Have You By The Throat Again: 102 Things I Meant To Say.
Daniel Cassady is a musician and writer living in brooklyn, new york. he is currently working on a new record with his main project, the bedrooms. he is six feet tall and has relatively poor eyesight.
3. Barack Obama: Fact or Fiction (6 p.m.)
Envoy Gallery, 131 Chrystie (at Delancey)
Presented by Tao Lin’s All-Star Players
Host Tao Lin is the author of COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY (Melville House, 2008) and three other books.
Zachary German is the author of EAT WHEN YOU FEEL SAD which is forthcoming from FSG.
Ellen Kennedy has been published by Bear Parade and Harper’s, she lives in Massachusetts.
4. The New Yorker’s Ben Greenman presents: Against the Grain (6 p.m.)
Happy Ending, 302 Broome St. (at Forsyth)
Ben Greenman is an editor at the New Yorker and the author of several acclaimed books of fiction, including Superbad, A Circle is a Balloon and Compass Both, and the forthcoming Correspondences. He lives in Brooklyn.
Rebecca Curtis‘ first book, Twenty Grand, came out in 2007 and was a New York Times notable book of the year, an L.A. Times best book of the year, and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. She’s written for The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, The Huffington Post, and elsewhere.
Sasha Frere-Jones joined The New Yorker as a staff writer and pop-music critic in 2004. Prior to that, he was a critic for the Village Voice, beginning in 1995. He has also written for Pretty Decorating, the New York Times, the New York Post, The Wire, and Time Out New York.
5. Restless Legs (6 p.m.)
Lolita Bar, 266 Broome St. (at Allen St.)
A reading series for those stricken with wanderlust, Restless Legs Reading Series shares humorous, poignant, and/or rollicking tales about the adventure and agony we experience and the wisdom and worldliness we gain through travel.
Marry Morris is a novelist, memoirist, and travel writer who has traveled from the Great Wall to the Berlin Wall (”Wall to Wall: from Beijing to Berlin”), trekked solo through Latin America (”Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone”), penned several novels and short story collections, and, most recently, drifted down the Mississippi River in a house boat (”The River Queen”).
Ayun Halliday is the chief primatologist (of her family of primates), creator of the East Village Inky, the writer of several laugh-out-loud books (”The Big Rumpus,” “No Touch Monkey,” “Job Hopper,” and “Dirty Sugar Cookies”).
East Village
6. Guerilla Lit (7:15 p.m.)
Solas, 232 E 9th St (at 3rd St.)
Tao Lin is the author of the poetry-collections COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY and YOU ARE A LITTLE BIT HAPPIER THAN I AM and two other books. He has been published in NOON and VICE.
Nicole Audrey Spector, originally from L.A, has lived in New York for the past 8 years. She holds a B.A from the New School. Her writing has appeared or is scheduled to appear in KGB’s on-line lit mag, Flavorpill, and various travel, music and trade publications. She is currently working on her first collection of short stories.
7. Canteen Cavalcade (7:15 p.m.)
Telephone Bar, 149 2nd Ave (at 9th St.)
Canteen’s LitCrawl Readers:
Porochista Khakpour (Issue #3) is the author of the novel Sons and Other Flammable Objects, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and California Book Award winner.
Alan D. Miller (Issue #4, in production) is an author, film director, founder of the NY Salon, and co-founder of the Truman Brewery in London, an 11 acre site that has become the creative hub of London’s East End.
Garth Risk Hallberg (Issue #1) is the author of the novella A Field Guide to the North American Family, and has been selected by Richard Bausch as one of 2008’s “Best New American Voices.”
8. Best of Literary Upstart (7:15 p.m.)
Common Ground, 206 Ave. A (at 13th St.)
The L Magazine, New York’s event guide, presents their annual Literary Upstart reading, in Best of form.
Debora Kuan is a poet, writer, and art critic. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Art in America, Boston Review, New American Writing, and elsewhere. Her book XING, was most recently the runner-up for the BOA Editions First Book Award. She lives in New Jersey farm country.
Sarah Harris lives in New Haven and teaches freshman writing within earshot of Yale. Before that she lived in Pittsburgh, where they put french fries on salad, and Nashville, where they put tears in your beer.
Lincoln Michel is a young writer from Virginia. He likes bourbon and skinny dipping. His work appears in Mississippi Review, Mid-American Review, McSweeneys.net, Pindeldyboz and elsewhere.
Lauren Wilkinson earned her B.A. at Sarah Lawrence College and now lives in Brooklyn. She is currently working on a full-length novel.
9. Brit Lit (7:15 p.m.)
Boxcar Lounge, 168 Avenue B (at 11th St.)
Bloomsbury and Penguin present an evening of British humor.
John Reed is a creative writing professor at the New School and author of several novels including the 2004 bestseller, Snowball’s Chance (Roof). He will read from All The World’s A Grave: A New Play by William Shakespeare, a literary trick in which Reed has cobbled together bits from the Bard’s classics to create an entirely new play.
Luke Dempsey is the Editor in Chief of Hudson Street Books. He will read from A Supremely Bad Idea: Three Mad Birders and Their Quest to See It All (Bloomsbury USA, 2008), his account of an epic journey around America, all in search of the rarest and most beautiful birds the country has to offer. Hilarity ensues.
10. Listen to the Tyrants (7:15 p.m.)
Arrow Bar, 85 Avenue A (at 5th St., downstairs)
New York Tyrant contributors Leigh Newman and Michael Kimball read from recent work, plus a screening of a short film by Luca Dipierro based on Dear Everybody, Kimball’s latest novel.
Leigh Newman’s writing has appeared in One Story, Tin House, Fiction, Opium, and NPR’s The Sound of Writing. She teaches creative writing at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
Michael Kimball has published three novels, and many pieces in many literary magazines, including Open City, Prairie Schooner, Post Road, and of course New York Tyrant.
Hosted by Chris March, from Season 4 of Project Runway. Don’t worry, nobody gets kicked off.
11. Paragraph Member’s Reading (7:15 p.m.)
KGB, 85 E 4th St. (at 2nd Ave.)
Presented by Paragraph Workspace for Writers
Hosted by Terry Selucky.
Anne Pelletier is a Research Arts student in the MFA Program in Fiction Writing at Columbia University. There she has developed a collection of short fiction, Meat and Meat Byproducts, thematically-linked stories about all kinds of hunger. She has taught a writing workshop to a group of lovely, talented and super-smart undergraduates whom she loves. She conjugates the verb ‘to lie’ in her sleep and reads Fowler’s to relax. Anne lives in New York City and is at work on a novel.
Lisa Ebersole writes, directs and acts. Her feature film Brother recently premiered at Tribeca Cinemas and her short film Puddin’ has screened at festivals nationwide. Lisa’s playsBrother, People Die That Way, rethinks, and Mouth Pieceshave been produced off off Broadway in New York. Her newest play, Mother, will open in late 2009. Lisa is a founding member of the kids educational website, BrainPOP, for which she currently edits videos. She is the co-author of The Popular Science Almanac for Kids, and the Riviera chapter of Frommer’s Travel Guides Hanging Out in Europe 2001, which she does not recommend using for your trip to Europe. Lisa graduated from NYU and studied acting with Tom Noonan and Austin Pendleton.
Williamsburg
12. Cracker Barrel: Southern Writers From the South (8:30 p.m.)
Sound Fixx, 110 Bedford St. (at North 11th St.)
Laura Bonner presents poetry, fiction, Southern music and a television pilot.
Amanda Petrusich is the author of “It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music” and “Pink Moon,” an installment in Continuum Books’ 33 1/3 series. She’s a staff writer for Pitchforkmedia.com and a senior contributing editor at Paste. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Spin, the Oxford American, the Onion A.V. Club, and elsewhere. She lives and works in Brooklyn.
Hilary Howard is an actress and writer who never wants to live in the south again. Ever. Well, maybe Charleston. Or Asheville. Or Bluffton. She’s worked on several independent films and on many off and off off broadway stages, but her current gig is at the New york Times as a researcher and travel columnist. She lives in Manhattan with her husband Jy and daughter Stella (and yes, the inspiration for the name was the Tennessee Williams character).
Ben Bolling grew up in Big Stone Gap, Virginia. He graduated from the University of Virginia and worked for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Planned Parenthood in Nashville, Tennessee. Ben is currently a PhD candidate in Southern Literature at the University of North Carolina and shares his home in Chapel Hill with a man named Jon and a beagle named Lyle.
Kristin Damrau was born, raised and is now planning a wedding in Texas. She will be reading some poetry inspired by that great big state.
With special musical guest Andrew Gregory of the The Gregory Brothers
13. First Impressions (nonfiction) (8:30 p.m.)
El Beit Café, 158 Bedford Ave. (at N 8th St.)
The Crier presents First Impressions (evening of nonfiction).
Doree Shafrir is a founding editor of The Crier and an editor at the New York Observer.
Alexander Provan is a writer living in Brooklyn, and the editor of the online magazine Triple Canopy.
Moe Tkacik is an editor at Gawker.
Christine Smallwood (host) is a founding editor of The Crier.
14. Globe-O-Rama Fruit Salad (8:30 p.m.)
The Abbey, 536 Driggs Ave. (at N 8th St.)
The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) presents a pageant of international readings by indie editors from Fence, Habitus, Open Letter and Ugly Duckling Presse, each of whom will contribute to a global fruit salad to be served to an audience of readers hungry for world literature!
Jamie Schwartz is a writer and editor, as well as the Programs Director at the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses.
Declan Spring is Senior Editor at New Directions and serves on the Board of Open Letter. He has edited works by Julio Cortazar, H.D., Forrest Gander, Gustaw Herling, Gregory Rabassa, and Paul West.
Jennifer Hayashida is the translator of Fredrik Nyberg’s A Different Practice, published by Ugly Duckling Presse, a nonprofit art & publishing collective.
Aaron Hawn works at Fence and drunkenboat.com, reviews Spanish literature for Harcourt, and is finishing a novel about anarchists, Barcelona, and the Catalan Romanesque.
Joshua Ellison is the founding editor of Habitus: A Diaspora Journal, a new, international journal of Diaspora literature and culture.
15. Cheryl B. Presents…PVC: The Poetry Vs. Comedy Variety Show (8:30 p.m.)
The Lucky Cat 245 Grand St (at Roebling)
The Poetry Vs. Comedy Variety Show is a monthly competition between performance poets and comedians at the Bowery Poetry Club.
Host Carolyn Castiglia loves hosting the fantastic Poetry vs. Comedy variety show! You may recognize her as “Miss CKC” from VH1/ego trip’s White Rapper Show and Miss Rap Supreme, or from MTV2, NBC’s Last Comic Standing and Nick-at-Night’s Funniest Mom in America. Her favorite television appearance to date was on The Maury Show. (But she still don’t know who her Baby Daddy is! Shit.)
Comedians
Elon James White has performed through out NYC and has been featured in the Underground Zero Festival, New York Underground Comedy Festival, DC Comedy Festival 2007 + 2008 and is a regular on Sirius Satellite Radio.
Becky Yamamoto is a New York based performer. In October she will be in the A.N.T festival at Ars Nova performing her show “The Story of America”. She also performs in the band Stickerbook and has toured with Young Jean Lee’s “Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven”.
Poets
Cheryl B. is a writer and performance poet. She is the creator and producer of PVC: The Poetry vs. Comedy Variety Show. Her website is.
Bakar Wilson’s poetry has appeared in The Vanderbilt Review, three Cave Canem anthologies and The Lumberyard. A native of Tennessee, Bakar lives in New York City and is Professor of English at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn.
Judges
Abbi Crutchfield is a comedy virtuoso and keeps her plate full in New York city with writing, performing stand-up, improvisational comedy, creating sketches, starring and directing in short films and producing a live comedy hour called The Living Room Show. www.curlycomedy.blogspot.com.
Shawn Hollenbach is a stand up comedian, improv actor and songwriter. Shawn is the host of here! TV’s Busted and the producer of Closet Cases, a Critics’ Pick from Time Out NY.
16. Literary Death Match (8:30 p.m.)
Supreme Trading, 213 N. 8th St. (at Roebling)
Opium’s Literary Death Match is a competitive, humor-centric reading series that features four literary publications, presses or concerns (both online and in print) in an edge-of-your-seat read-off. This special Lightning Edition will feature five-minute readings from Tim Mucci (Slice Magazine), Jensen Whelan (Hobart), Christina Kallery (Failbetter) and Timmy Waldron (Word Riot) judged hastily by Ben Greenman (New Yorker), Cicily Janus (Opium’s .com editor), and Aussie writer Lee Bob Black.
17. Bomb-aoke (8:30 p.m.)
Pete’s Candy Store, 709 Lorimer St. (at Richardson St.)
Join the editors of BOMB Magazine, authors Donald Breckenridge and Nicole Steinberg, for the last stop in the first-ever New York LitCrawl. Featuring BOMB-aoke! Help us re-enact classic interviews from BOMB’s 27 years in a karaoke-style format. Be Jonathan Safran Foer interviewing Jeffrey Eugenides (BOMB #81), or play Paula Fox from Lynne Tillman’s conversation (BOMB #95). The best performance wins a free vintage issue of BOMB worth lots of dough!
Donald Breckenridge is the author of more than a dozen plays as well as the novella Rockaway Wherein (Red Dust, 1998), and the novel 6/2/95 (Spuyten Duyvil, 2002). His novel YOU ARE HERE is forthcoming from Starcherone Books (May 09) and his novel Arabesques for Sauquoit is forthcoming from Autonomedia (Summer 2009). In addition, he is the fiction editor of The Brooklyn Rail, co-editor of the Intranslation website and editor of The Brooklyn Rail Fiction Anthology (Hanging Loose Press, 2006).
Nicole Steinberg is co-editor of LIT, an Associate Editor for Entertainment Weekly, and a contributing editor to BOMB. Her poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, No Tell Motel, Eleven Eleven, Barrelhouse, Barrow Street, RealPoetik, Spooky Boyfriend, and elsewhere. She hosts and curates EARSHOT, a Brooklyn-based reading series dedicated to emerging writers of all genres. She’s at work on an anthology about Queens, New York, where she currently resides.
18. Litcrawl After Party (9:30 p.m.-close)
Supreme Trading, 213 N. 8th St. (at Roebling)
