NYC-based readers: On June 19-20, check out the CLMP’s Lit Mag Marathon Weekend, an annual celebration, showcase, and discount extravaganza of literary magazines and journals.
– Events kick off on Saturday at 4 PM with The Magathon at the New York Public Library (main branch: Fifth Ave @ 42nd Street). For 2.5 hours, a number [...]

I frequently happen upon Selected Shorts on NPR midway through a story and go through a predictable course of thinking: I’ve missed the first part of the story. I should just download the podcast and hear it from the top. Wow, that sentence was brilliant. What the heck is going on here? And then I [...]

Next Monday, March 22, at 7:30 PM, Brooklyn’s Greenlight Bookstore continues their Blogger/Author Pairings series, wherein lit bloggers host and talk with authors whose books they love, and the authors read from their work. Next up is Brooklyn’s own blogger/critic Maud Newton (of MaudNewton.com, one of the finest lit blogs, exclamation point) and award-winning author [...]

In her moving debut novel, Sima’s Undergarments for Women (Overlook, 2009), Ilana Stanger-Ross renders her title character so startlingly real, and with such empathy, that we cannot help but root for her. In the Jewish neighborhood of Boro Park, Brooklyn, Sima and her husband, Lev–both in shuffling middle age–have long accepted (but are forever marked by) the disappointment of not being able to have children. Sima has withdrawn into the world of her shop, away from the shroud of tragedy cast over her marriage. The story begins when a vivacious young Israeli woman, Timna, enters Sima’s shop and changes everything. The story begins when a vivacious young Israeli woman, Timna, enters Sima’s shop and changes everything.

In my old (and much-missed) neighborhood of Fort Greene in Brooklyn, the fabulous Greenlight Bookstore is doing its part to raise money for Haiti. NYC-based readers, shop at Greenlight today and tomorrow to help! Via the store’s newsletter:
A lot has been given to us at Greenlight Bookstore. It’s high time for us to give [...]

On Saturday, August 22 at 3 PM, come to the monument in Fort Greene Park (Brooklyn, NY) for the (FREE) fifth annual Summer Literary Festival; the event is presented by the New York Writers Coalition (NYWC), Akashic Books, GTHQ, the Fort Greene Park Conservancy, and the Walt Whitman Project. Brooklyn-based authors Colson Whitehead, Toure, and [...]

NY-based (or visiting) writers:
More short story love, this time with actors: Symphony Space presents “Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story,” in which “spellbinding short stories by established and emerging writers take on a new life when they are performed by stars of the stage and screen.”
Hosted by Isaiah Sheffer, performances [...]

This is courtesy of The Millions, who gave us the first incarnation of this tour in 2007. This updated, expanded map and itinerary is also a eulogy for the bookshops we’ve lost and those that won’t be with us for much longer…
And, as of today, you can edit and update the map to include the [...]

New Yorkish writers, take note: Where Edith Wharton grew up on 23rd St., there is now a Starbucks.
On the one hand, I picture a quiet afternoon writing in this shop, imagining that Wharton once shared my same view of a (much changed) street.
And on the other…I’m envisioning a new walking tour for NYC: “Starbucks [...]