Reading the City
April 8 to 14
Welcome back to Reading the City, a weekly newsletter of bookish events in and around NYC.
This week we have Mona Award at NYU, Garrard Conley in conversation with Marlon James, an event to celebrate the reissue of Memory at Unnameable Books, and a fun-sounding variety show for Amanda Montell’s The Age of Magical Overthinking. Also, me! I’m reading at the Must Love Memoir series and I’d love to see some of you there.
As ever, send feedback, send help, send events I should have on my radar, say hi! And please share the love with your bookish friends.
Monday, April 8
Franklin Park Reading Series
Celebrating new fiction coming out this month, Franklin Park features readings from a great lineup, including Lisa Ko (Memory Piece), Clare Beams (The Garden), Vanessa Chan (The Storm We Made), Rachel Lyon (Fruit of the Dead), Alexandra Tanner (Worry), and Allen Bratton (Henry Henry). Hosted by founder Penina Roth, expect drink specials and a raffle for the readers' latest books.
Free; 8-10pm; 766 Franklin Avenue, 618 St Johns Pl, Brooklyn
Becca Rothfeld: All Things Are Too Small
Literary critic Becca Rothfeld launches All Things Are Too Small—an essay collection with topics ranging from decluttering and mindfulness to David Cronenberg and sadomasochism—in conversation with Jon Baskin, the founding editor of The Point.
$10.89, redeemable in-store; 7-8pm; Books Are Magic, Montague 122 Montague Street, Brooklyn, and livestreamed free
Tuesday, April 9
Must Love Memoir
Must Love Memoir is a monthly reading series for lovers of creative nonfiction, hosted by Krystal Orwig (then Krystal says). This month features: Nina St. Pierre (Love is a Burning Thing); Aimée Mackovic (Contains Recycled Parts); Sam Rappaport (
); Colin Lubner (); and me, Tyler Wetherall (No Way Home).Free; 7.30pm; Jake's Dilemma, Oak Cellar Room, 430 Amsterdam Avenue, New York
Jen Silverman: There's Going to Be Trouble
Jen Silverman (We Play Ourselves) presents There's Going to Be Trouble—about a woman pulled into a love affair with a radical activist, unknowingly echoing her family’s dangerous past and risking the foundations of her future—in conversation with Emily Ratajkowski (My Body).
$5 for RSVP, redeemable in-store; 7pm; McNally Jackson Seaport, 4 Fulton St, New York
Garrard Conley: All the World Beside with Marlon James
Garrard Conley, author of memoir Boy Erased, celebrates his first novel All the World Beside—an 18th-century love story between two men in Puritan New England—in conversation with Marlon James (A Brief History of Seven Killings).
$7.50; 7pm; The Center for Fiction, 15 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, or livestreamed
Nell Freudenberger: The Limits
Author of The Newlyweds, Nell Freudenberger presents her new novel, The Limits, set in French Polynesia and New York City, about three characters who undergo massive transformations over the course of a single year. Nell is joined by Julie Orringer (How to Breathe Underwater).
Free, registration required; 6-7.30pm; Brooklyn Public Library - Brooklyn Heights Branch, 286 Cadman Plaza West, Brooklyn
Second Tuesday presents: Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag in New York City
The LGBT Community Center presents a lecture and conversation with Elyssa Goodman, the author of Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag in New York City and creator of the Miss Manhattan Nonfiction Reading Series.
Free; 6.30-9pm; The Center, 208 W 13 St, New York
The Tell, Vol. 77
A glamorous live storytelling event curated by writer and photographer Michael Leviton (To Be Honest), with stories tending towards the chaotic and bizarre, interspersed by musical interludes, and followed by some revelry.
$20 in advance; 8-11pm; Georgia Room, Freehand NY, 2nd Floor, 23 Lexington Ave., New York
Wednesday, April 10
Clare Beams: The Garden
Clare Beams (The Illness Lesson) presents The Garden—the discovery of a secret garden with unknown powers fuels this novel about women yearning to become mothers and the ways the female body has always been controlled and corralled—in conversation with Rachel Lyon (Fruit of the Dead).
$10, redeemable in-store; 7-8pm; Books Are Magic Montague 122 Montague Street, Brooklyn, and livestreamed free
Thursday, April 11
Crisis and Desire
Co-presented by Book Culture and Columbia School of the Arts Writing Program, Leslie Jamison (Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story), Chloé Cooper Jones (Easy Beauty), Eliza Barry Callahan (The Hearing Test), and Emmeline Clein (Dead Weight) discuss their new books, as well as the difficulties and thrills of writing into pain, curiosity, oddity, cultural scripts, female archetypes, and daily life.
Free; 6.30pm; Columbia University: Lenfest Center for the Arts615 West 129th Street
New York
An Evening with 2024 Whiting Award Winners hosted by Parul Sehgal
Since 1985, the Whiting Awards have been given annually to ten of the most promising emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. Hear the 2024 winners read from their work the day after they’re announced at an evening hosted by New Yorker staff writer Parul Sehgal. Drinks and light refreshments will be served. Space is limited, RSVP is encouraged.
Free; 6.30-9pm; McNally Jackson Seaport, 4 Fulton St, New York
Distinguished Writers Series: Terrance Hayes
A reading and discussion with National Book Award Winner Terrance Hayes (So To Speak) as part of Hunter Creative Writing Program’s Distinguished Writer Series, which invites notable writers for intimate class visits. The events are open to students and the public. Non-students should arrive early to get a day pass from security.
Free; 7:30pm; Hunter West, 8th Floor Faculty Dining Room, New York
Lydia Millet: We Loved it All: A Memory of Life
We Loved it All is a lucent anti-memoir from Lydia Millet, the Pulitzer finalist and author of A Children's Bible, that explores the pain and joy of being a parent, child, and human at a moment when the richness of the planet’s life is deeply threatened. Lydia discusses her work with Jenny Offill (Weather).
Free; 7.30pm; Greenlight bookstore, 686 Fulton Street, Brooklyn
James Hannaham: Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta – A Remaindering Party
I’ve never heard of a remaindering party but I love this. If you don’t know, remaindering is the painful moment when a publisher decides to pulp or sell off in bulk the unsold copies of an author’s work. It sucks. James Hannaham is, brilliantly, celebrating the remaindering of hardcovers for his novel Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta—about a Blatina trans woman who returns from an upstate New York prison after 21-ish years in a men’s prison to find everything has been turned upside down in her family and her neighborhood since she left. Admission covers the cost of a book to be donated to LGBT Books to Prisoners: a trans-affirming, racial justice-focused, prison abolitionist project sending books to incarcerated LGBTQ-identified people across the United States. James will be joined by Moira Marquis from PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program.
$8, redeemable in store; 7pm; P&T Knitwear, 180 Orchard Street, New York
Helen Benedict: The Good Deed
Helen Benedict (Map of Hope and Sorrow) celebrates the release of The Good Deed—set in 2018 against the backdrop of an overcrowded refugee camp on the Greek island of Samos, it follows the stories of four women living in the camp and an American tourist who comes to Samos to escape her own dark secret. Helen is joined by Joan Silber (Secrets of Happiness).
Free, register online; 7pm; Book Culture, 536 W 112th St, New York
Friday, April 12
Brave, Unbodied Scheme—a McNally Jackson poetry reading series
An evening of poetry in McNally Jackson Seaport’s bar, named after a line from Herman Melville’s poem “Art,” featuring poets Brian Teare, Mónica de la Torre, Shin Yu Pai, and Wayne Koestenbaum. Hear poems, drink wine, and enjoy the “pulsed life”.
$5 for RSVP, redeemable in-store; 7pm; McNally Jackson Seaport, 4 Fulton St, New York
The Big Magical Cult Show with Amanda Montell: The Age of Magical Overthinking
Amanda Montell, author of Cultish and host of the podcast Sounds Like a Cult, hosts “The Big Magical Cult Show” featuring Petty Crimes podcasters Ceara O’Sullivan and Griff Stark-Ennis, and drag burlesque performances from special guests, in celebration of her new book, The Age of Magical Overthinking—part cultural criticism, part personal narrative, exploring our cognitive biases and the power, disadvantages, and highlights of magical thinking.
$35, including book; 7.30-9.30pm Littlefield, 635 Sackett Street Brooklyn
Emerging Writers Reading Series: Fiction Headliner Mona Awad
The Emerging Writers Reading Series features NYU MFA students from a mix of genres reading alongside a headlining author. Tonight features headliner Mona Awad (Bunny) and graduate students Lucy Ackman, Zoe Briscoe, Ross Green, Rachel Stone, and Layhannara Tep. The reading will be followed by a reception.
Free, RSVP required; 7-9pm; Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, 58 West 10th Street, New York
Saturday, April 13
Readings from Memory
In 1971, Bernadette Mayer embarked on an experiment: During the month of July she shot a roll of 35mm film each day and kept a journal. The result was a conceptual work that investigates the nature of memory, its surfaces, textures and material. In 2020, siglio published Memory, bringing together the full sequence of images and text for the first time in book form. It sold out in less than a year. (Read about it here and its uncanny relevance to that moment in time). Now, a new printing makes it available again, and to celebrate, Unnameable Books hosts a reading of excerpts by Brenda Coultas, Phil Good, Laura Henrickson, Bob Holman, Paolo Javier, Shiv Kotecha, Dorothea Lasky and Max Warsh. (Note: the reading is outdoors.)
Free; 6pm; Unnameable Books, 615 Vanderbilt Ave, Brooklyn
Sunday, April 14
The Café & Bar Presents Drink & Draft Night
Hosted by Josh Krigman, Drink & Draft is a night to get you unstuck and inspired in your writing through a series of visual prompts and style experiments. Optional sharing; all genres welcome; no experience necessary.
$25 incl. first drink from the Cafe & Bar (beer, wine, or speciality cocktail); 6-7.30pm; Center for Fiction, 15 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn
Second Sunday Sit 'N Sip
P&T’s Read-In series: bring a book from home or buy one (the $10 admission is redeemable in-store), grab a drink, and claim a cushion on the amphitheater stairs for an afternoon of quiet reading or bookish friend-making.
$10, redeemable in-store; 7pm; P&T Knitwear, 180 Orchard Street, New York
Booking Ahead…
Brooklyn Poetry Festival
The second annual Brooklyn Poets Poetry Festival, from May 24 to 26, offers an amazing multi-day lineup for writers, including workshops with Kamelya Omayma Youssef and Jay Deshpande, a craft talk with Victoria Chang, a panel on “The Future of the Creative Writing Classroom” with Dorothy Chan, Deshpande, Annie Finch, and Dorothea Lasky, and readings at night. Single-day and 3-day passes available for both in-person or virtual attendance. Register by April 15 for early-bird discounts.
Tickets start from $65; Brooklyn Poets, 144 Montague Street, Brooklyn
NB. Please check all details before attending, the fact checker went awol.
I’m a Brooklyn-based writer, editor, and teacher, and the author of No Way Home: A Memoir of Life on the Run and Amphibian (forthcoming, August 2024). I’m here and here on Instagram. Get in touch with any bookish events you’d like me to include!
