Kingston’s beloved bar-bookstore is turning seven. Come out and celebrate with me. I’ll be DJing and high-fiving all comers.

Thrilled to be returning to the Brooklyn Book Festival on their official festival day, paneling with Hari Kunzru (Blue Ruin) and fellow upstater Adelle Waldman (Help Wanted).

Here’s the official event info:

“Not All That Glitters Is Gold”
Borough Hall Courtroom, 209 Joralemon St

Hari Kunzru’s Blue Ruin, Adelle Waldman’s Help Wanted, and Ryan Chapman’s The Audacity probe the dynamics of class in our ever-modernizing world. Blue Ruin follows an art school graduate whose promising future comes crashing down during the pandemic. Help Wanted follows the low-wage employees of Team Movement, whose lives cycle through grueling days of few hours, multiple jobs, and early shifts—until the store manager announces he’s leaving. In The Audacity, the implosion of a multibillion-dollar health startup provides insight into life for the .0001% under late-stage capitalism. Join these three authors for a conversation on class, race, the modern American workplace, and the trials and tribulations of trying to make a living. Moderated by Kate Tuttle, past president of the National Book Critics Circle and an editor at the Boston Globe.

I’m thrilled to be in conversation with my friend Nora Lange for her debut novel Us Fools (Two Dollar Radio). She’s already garnered quite a bit of pre-publicity buzz, as is deserved. Join us at Oblong, and please RSVP in advance.

Playing records at my beloved Darlings. Think Panda Bear, Prince, & Prince Buster.

I’m chatting with Julian Tepper (Cooler Haads) at the esteemed Salmagundi Club about art, the allure of members clubs, and financial catastrophes. Should be a fine time! RSVP at the link.

Aaron Hicklin of One Grand Books has assembled New York’s most exciting literary festival. Excited to be a part of this year’s edition. The theme: Another Eden.

Other authors include Jamaica Kincaid, Masha Gessen, Lydia Millet, Nell Painter, and Vivian Gornick.

Justin’s repping Reboot, I’m flogging The Audacity. We’ll chat a bit and toast our return to beautiful Sewanee.

I’m participating in my friend Stephen Cummings’s new event series. RSVP for location.

ABOUT SALAD: This multimedia concert, exhibition, and performance is curated to showcase the work of artists spanning multiple genres and disciplines. The next Salad will feature:

• performances by Emily Foley and Taurean Parker

• music by Chammeili and Alden Muller

• photography by Tahmid Alam

• artwork by Amy Osika

• reading by Ryan Chapman from his new novel, “The Audacity”

Doors open at 6:30pm and performances begin at 7:00.

… And yes, there will be Salad. Salad is designed to facilitate connections between artists and across artistic practices, and to encourage cross-pollination and collaboration. So join us to revel in the work of these talented performers and creators and stick around after the show to find your next inspiration.

$15 entrance fee will help cover costs of the show for artists and curators. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Soak your Friday night in negronis with the New York launch of The Audacity. I’ll be in conversation with Amitava Kumar, whose own novel My Beloved Life publishes this spring. There will be plenty of surprises and at least one after-party.

RSVP here; your $5 ticket cost can be put toward a copy of the book or a drink at the bar.

AMITAVA KUMAR is a writer and journalist. He was born in Ara, and grew up in the nearby town of Patna, famous for its corruption, crushing poverty and delicious mangoes. Kumar is the author of several books of non-fiction and four novels. For 2023-24, he is a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library. In 2016, Kumar was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (General Nonfiction) as well as a Ford Fellowship in Literature from United States Artists. He has also been awarded writing residences by Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio, the Norman Mailer Writing Center, Writers Omi at Ledig House, and the Lannan Foundation.

Kumar lives in Poughkeepsie, in upstate New York, where he is the Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College. He serves on the board of the Corporation of Yaddo.

Kumar’s new novel, My Beloved Life, will be published in February, 2024 by Knopf. His last novel, A Time Outside This Time, was published in October, 2021 by Knopf. It was published by Hamish Hamilton in Canada, Aleph in India, and  by Picador in the UK. The New Yorker described it as “a shimmering assault on the Zeitgeist.” His earlier novel Immigrant, Montana: A Novel, published by Faber in the UK, Knopf in the US, and in translation by other publishers worldwide, was named a notable book of the year by The New York Times, a book of the year by The New Yorker, and listed by President Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of 2018. The book came out in India under the title The Lovers: A Novel.

Get ready for the most fun Tuesday of 2024. We’ll mark publication day with a big party at Darlings. Literature! Cocktails! Music! Scams!

I’ll be in conversation with the great Halimah Marcus, executive director of Electric Literature, followed by a vinyl set by DJ Harlan and general revelry. Books will be available for sale via Rough Draft Bar & Books.

HALIMAH MARCUS is the Executive Director of Electric Literature, a nonprofit digital publisher, and the editor of its weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading. She is also the editor of Horse Girls (Harper Perennial, 2021), an anthology that reclaims and recasts the horse girl stereotype, which was a New York Times “New and Noteworthy” pick. Her short stories have appeared in Indiana Review, Gulf Coast, One Story, BOMB, The Literary Review and elsewhere. Andrew Sean Greer selected her short story, “The Party Goers,” from the The Southampton Review as a distinguished story in Best American Short Stories 2022. Halimah has an MFA from Brooklyn College, and lives in Kingston, New York.

I’m DJing the best costume party in all of literary New York.

From Electric Literature:

This year we’re paying homage to Edgar Allan Poe’s story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” by celebrating novels that feature houses—haunted, alive, or just plain creepy—as characters. Join us for an evening of drinks and dancing in support of Electric Literature!

Early bird tickets are on sale now for $50 before September 30. The ticket price will increase to $75 on October 1. EL members receive a 10% discount.

We’ll have free cocktails all night and a curated book giveaway table featuring In the Dream House, The Haunting of Hill House, The Shining, Bluebeard’s Castle, and more!

Get Your Ticket Here

I’ll be interviewing the wonderful Jai Chakrabarti about his new story collection at The Golden Notebook’s annex in Bearsville. (NB: We’ll be at 297 Tinker St., not at the bookstore itself.) Come for the brain tingling, stay for the revelry.

About the Author:
Jai Chakrabarti is the author of the novel A Play for the End of the World (Knopf), which won the National Jewish Book Award for debut fiction, was the Association of Jewish Libraries Honor Book, was short-listed for the Rabindranath Tagore Prize, and was long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He is also the author of the story collection A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness (Knopf, Feb 2023). His short fiction has appeared in One Story, Electric Literature, A Public Space, Conjunctions, Gulf Coast, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Short Stories, and awarded a Pushcart Prize and also performed on Selected Shorts by Symphony Space. His nonfiction has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Writer’s Digest, Berfrois, and LitHub. He was an Emerging Writer Fellow with A Public Space and received an MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College and is a trained computer scientist. Born in Kolkata, India, he now lives in New York with his family. 

Every year the good people at Catapult program Don’t Write Alone, a conference-community-marathon of literary goodness. And no marathon of literary goodness would be complete without some book trivia.

So! Join us for a zoom’ified round of everyone’s favorite game show, without any of the shadiness around host replacement or workplace harassment. If you want to play, join the weeklong festivities and sign in on Friday night. (Did I mention the conference includes Deeshaw Philyaw, Hilary Leichter, and Nadia Owusu?)

Brazos Bookstore, the jewel of Houston, is hosting a book club discussion for Riots I Have Known. Anyone can join! I’m especially excited about this one, as Mark Haber (Reinhardt’s Garden) will be leading the discussion.

The Resort LIC is a Queens-based community hub run by the great Catherine LaSota and Karl Jacob. They’re programming an online series of craft talks for writers of all backgrounds and skill sets. Join us on zoom!

Official Description: The first-person perspective brings the reader directly into the narrator's consciousness, and in this craft talk we'll share strategies, exercises, and revision tactics to create a memorable "I" on the page. Including examples from Garth Greenwell, Paul Beatty, and Kazuo Ishiguro.

A COAST-TO-COAST VARIETY SHOW

The paperback for Riots I Have Known is here! The perfect gift for friends, acquaintances, and house pets.

Instead of a reading, let’s have a zoom party. A loose version of “The Tonight Show,” with booze tips for lockdown, ribald stories, writing advice, cooking segments, psychedelics, and a few surprises. We’ll even have a house band. Spread the word! We’ll bend zoom until it breaks.

music by SARI BOTTON & BRIAN MACALUSO
and special guests:

If you want to buy a book, please use my local indie Rough Draft. You can get a signed and personalized copy of Riots through this link.

DE’SHAWN CHARLES WINSLOW was the 2019 winner of the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize for In West Mills. He holds an MFA and BFA in creative writing, and an MA in English literature. De'Shawn has received scholarships from the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He lives in the New York City area.

GEOFF DYER is the award-winning author of many books, including But Beautiful, Out of Sheer Rage, Zona (on Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker), and the essay collection Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism). A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dyer lives in Los Angeles, where he is writer-in-residence at the University of Southern California. His books have been translated into twenty-four languages.

REBECCA MAKKAI is the Chicago-based author of the novels The Great Believers, The Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower, as well as the short story collection Music for Wartime. The Great Believers was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and received the ALA Carnegie Medal and the LA Times Book Prize, among other honors. Makkai is on the MFA faculties of Sierra Nevada College and Northwestern University, and she is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.

KRISTEN ARNETT is the NYT bestselling author of the debut novel Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019) which was listed as one of The New York Times top books of 2019 and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction. She is a queer fiction and essay writer. She was awarded Ninth Letter's Literary Award in Fiction and is a columnist for Literary Hub. Her story collection, Felt in the Jaw, was published by Split Lip Press and was awarded the 2017 Coil Book Award. She was a Spring 2020 Shearing Fellow at Black Mountain Institute. She has a Masters in Library and Information Science from Florida State University and currently lives in Miami, Florida.

MARIS KREIZMAN is the host of The Maris Review, a literary podcast from Literary Hub. She’s the creator of Slaughterhouse 90210, a blog and book (Flatiron Books, 2015). Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, BuzzFeed, Publishers Weekly, The Ringer, The Toast, The Hairpin, The Cut, Vulture, Glamour, Esquire, GQ, OUT Magazine, and more. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, her dog, and her books.

JOSH GONDELMAN is a comedian and writer who has earned two Peabody Awards, three Emmys, and two WGA Awards for his work on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on HBO. He is currently a writer/producer for Desus & Mero on Showtime. In the past, Josh has written for Billy on the Street. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, New York magazine, and the New Yorker. He lives in New York City with his wife and pug.

ROB DOYLE is the author of Threshold, published by Bloomsbury USA in March. His debut novel, Here Are the Young Men, was selected as one of Hot Press magazine’s “20 Greatest Irish Novels 1916-2016,” and has been made into a film starring Dean Charles Chapman and Anya Taylor Joy. This Is the Ritual, a collection of short stories, was published in 2016 to widespread acclaim. He has written for the Guardian, TLS, Vice, Sunday Times, Dublin Review, Observer and many other publications, and throughout 2019 he wrote a weekly column on cult books for the Irish Times. He lives between Ireland and Berlin.

SARI BOTTON is a writer and editor living in Kingston, NY. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times and many other publications. She edited the award-winning anthology Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving & Leaving NY and its New York Times bestselling follow-up, Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for NY and for five years served as Essays Editor at Longreads. She teaches creative nonfiction courses at Catapult and in the MFA program at Bay Path University.

I’m thrilled to be October’s Writer in Residence at the James Merrill House. I’ll be giving a virtual reading as part of the residency, and be joined by novelist Joanna Scott for a conversation about… TBD. Definitely not the election.

You can watch on their YouTube channel. In the meantime I encourage you to check out the James Merrill House’s shelf at Bank Square Books.

Joanna Scott is the author of ten novels, including Arrogance, a PEN-Faulkner finalist, The Manikin, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Follow Me, a New York Times Notable Book. Her most recent novels are De Potter's Grand Tour (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Careers for Women (Little, Brown). She has also published two collections of short fiction, Various Antidotes and Everybody Loves Somebody​. Awards include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Ambassador Book Award from the English-Speaking Union, and the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Scott is the Roswell Smith Burrows Professor of English at the University of Rochester.

I’m moderating an online panel with three greats at this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival. Here’s the official festival description:

LIVE WEBINAR - OUTCASTS AND OUTSIDERS
Children required to be mature beyond their years, adults seeking lives worth writing about, and other fascinating characters populate the exciting novels and stories of these award-winning authors. Join Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet (A Children’s Bible), Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and novelist Héctor Tobar (The Last Great Road Bum), and best-selling author Lidia Yuknavitch (Verge) to learn about the challenges and possibilities of life on the margins. Moderated by Ryan Chapman, author of Riots I Have Known.

Lydia Millet has written more than a dozen books of literary fiction, including, most recently, A Children’s Bible. Her story collection Fight No More received an Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019. Other titles include the novels Sweet Lamb of Heaven (2016) and Mermaids in Paradise (2014). Millet has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction and various other honors and works as a writer and editor at the Center for Biological Diversity, an organization dedicated to fighting climate change and species extinction.

Héctor Tobar is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and novelist. He is the recent author of The Last Great Road Bum, the New York Times bestseller Deep Down Dark, and more. Tobar has also written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, L.A. Noir, and more. The son of Guatemalan immigrants, he is a native of Los Angeles, where he lives with his family. Visit his website at https://www.hectortobar.com/ or follow him on Twitter @TobarWriter.

Lidia Yuknavitch is the National Bestselling author of the novels The Book of Joan and The Small Backs of Children, winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Award's Ken Kesey Award for Fiction as well as the Reader's Choice Award, the novel Dora: A Headcase, and a critical book on war and narrative, Allegories Of Violence (Routledge). Her widely acclaimed memoir The Chronology of Water was a finalist for a PEN Center USA award for creative nonfiction and winner of a PNBA Award and the Oregon Book Award Reader's Choice. The Misfit's Manifesto, a book based on her recent TED Talk, was published by TED Books. Her newest book is Verge.

We’re closing our run of zoom-enabled literary trivia with a grand finale. There will be THREE rounds, ACTUAL prizes, and UNNECESSARY capitalizations. Here’s a quick Nerd Jeopardy primer.

The zoom meeting ID is 846 6802 4187 with password “woolf.” Sign up here if you’d like an email reminder the afternoon of the 1st.

Not to be overly mysterious, but the prizes will include the following…

This will be our penultimate round of literary trivia, with the usual nobrow hijinks, puns, and revelry. New to Nerd Jeopardy? Check out our quick primer.

This week’s special guest is Téa Obreht, author of Inland and The Tiger’s Wife! Fun fact, I read Inland in two days. Second fun fact: Téa recently adopted a puppy, who may make a cameo.

The zoom meeting ID is 852 5414 6307, with password “woolf.”

Téa Obreht's debut novel, The Tiger's Wife, won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and was an international bestseller. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, and Zoetrope: All-Story, among many others. Originally from the former Yugoslavia, she now lives in New York with her husband and teaches at Hunter College.

Your new favorite literary trivia game is back! New to Nerd Jeopardy? Here’s a handy FAQ.

The zoom meeting ID for June 17th is 849 0030 3961 with password “woolf”. Want an email reminder? Sign up here.

This week’s guest authors include two Marie-Helene Bertino, whose latest novel is Parakeet, and Zaina Arafat, author of the debut novel You Exist Too Much!

Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of 2 A.M. at the Cat's Pajamas and the story collection Safe as Houses. She was the 2017 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Fellow in Cork, Ireland. Her work has received The O. Henry Prize, The Pushcart Prize, The Iowa Short Fiction Award, The Mississippi Review Story Prize, fellowships from MacDowell, Sewannee, and NYC's The Center for Fiction, and has twice been featured on NPR's Selected Shorts. Formerly the associate editor of One Story and Catapult, she now teaches at NYU, The New School, and Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.

Zaina Arafat is a Palestinian American writer. Her stories and essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Granta, The Believer, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, VICE, and NPR. She holds an MA in international affairs from Columbia University and an MFA from the University of Iowa and is a recipient of the Arab Women/Migrants from the Middle East fellowship at Jack Jones Literary Arts. She grew up between the United States and the Middle East and currently lives in Brooklyn.

Everyone’s favorite literary trivia game continues! Bring your A-game, because this week proves to be spectacular. Here’s a brief FAQ of the program.

The zoom meeting ID for June 10th is 862 5708 9785 with password “woolf.” Want an email reminder? Get it here.

This week’s special guest authors include Hilary Leichter, whose novel Temporary was published this spring!

Hilary Leichter is author of the novel Temporary. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the New Yorker, Harper's, n+1, Bookforum, Conjunctions, the Cut, and American Short Fiction. She teaches at Columbia University.

Your new favorite literary trivia game is back! New to Nerd Jeopardy? Here’s a handy FAQ.

The zoom meeting ID for May 27th is 847 9001 6728 with password “woolf”. Want an email reminder? Sign up here.

This week’s guest authors are the wonderful Edan Lepucki, who has edited the new anthology Mothers Before: Stories and Portraits of Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them, and Jazmina Barrera, author of On Lighthouses!

Edan Lepucki is the creator of the popular Instagram @MothersBefore. She is the New York Times-bestselling author of the novels California and Woman No. 17 and cohost of the podcast Mom Rage. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.

Jazmina Barrera was born in Mexico City in 1988. She was a fellow at the Foundation for Mexican Letters. Her book of essays Cuerpo extraño (Foreign Body) was awarded the Latin American Voices prize from Literal Publishing in 2013. She has published her work in various print and digital media, such as Nexos, Este País, Dossier, Vice, El Malpensante, Letras Libres and Tierra Adentro. She has a Master's Degree in Creative Writing in Spanish from New York University, which she completed with the support of a Fulbright grant. She was a grantee of the Young Creators program at FONCA. She is editor and co-founder of Ediciones Antílope. She lives in Mexico City.