Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘recommended events’

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NYC's first Independent Bookstore Week: Nov. 15-22

by Anne Stameshkin

New York-based writer-readers: next week, the NYCIB is hosting the very first Independent Bookstore Week, featuring day and evening events in indie bookstores across all five boroughs! For a (still-growing) list of events–readings, signings, meals, lectures, discussions, book launch parties, a master class, a midnight costume party, and more–visit the NYCIB’s website. This double-launch party at Unnameable Books sounds particularly insane/intriguing: November 17 MIDNIGHT A never-before-seen, new publication from the posthumous Vladimir N. AND A we’ve-seen-it-all-before, new publication from the maverick Sarah P. THE ORIGINAL OF LAURA by V. Nabokov & GOING ROGUE by S. Palin Dress as your favorite […]


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Boston Book Festival – This Weekend!

by Celeste Ng

Boston-area FWR readers, check out the Boston Book Festival THIS Saturday, October 24, 10:00 am to 6:00 pm at Copley Square. The festival features readings, lectures, and discussions such as: Keynote speaker Orhan Pamuk “Ties That Bind”: novelists Richard Russo, Michael Thomas, and Elinor Lipman on the family in fiction John Hodgman interviewed by Tom Perrotta “Book Worms and Net Crawlers”: thoughts on “the ubiquitous internet and the explosion of social media” by authors Ben Mezrich and Ethan Gilsdorf and New York Times technology columnist David Pogue. (Read the FWR review of Ethan’s book, Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, here.) […]


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Banned Books Week = An Act of Censorship? Say what?

by Celeste Ng

It’s currently Banned Books Week, an event sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA), the American Booksellers Association, and other book- and writing-related organizations. The purpose, according to the ALA website, is “highlighting the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.” To celebrate Banned Books Week, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed piece by Mitchell Muncy entitled “Finding Censorship Where There Is None,” which asserts that Banned Books Week is, basically, a time for overzealous First-Amendment freaks to […]


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West Hollywood Book Fair: Sunday, Oct. 4

by Anne Stameshkin

L.A.-based writer-readers: On Sunday, October 4th, check out the West Hollywood Book Fair from 10 AM – 6 PM in Hollywood Park (647 N. San Vicente Blvd). In addition to the book fair itself, there will be more than 400 authors and artists in attendance, more than 100 panels and book signings, live performances/events on 15 stages, writing workshops, programs for children, and the presentation of the annual Algonquin West Hollywood Literary Award. At 3:45 on the Salon Stage, be sure to attend the 2009 Emerging Voices reading; presented by PEN USA, it will feature Erika Ayon, John Boucher, Rachelle […]


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Ryan Adams and Mary-Louise Parker at the NYPL

by Anne Stameshkin

NYCers, head to the New York Public Library this Friday for an exciting LIVE from the NYPL/Askashic event: Singer-songwriter Ryan Adams will discuss his new book, a collection of short fiction and poems called Hello, Sunshine, with that Weedstastic actress of stage-and-screen, Mary-Louise Parker. The details: When: Friday, September 25, 2009, 6:00pm Where: Celeste Bartos Forum, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (5th Avenue & 42nd St.) What it costs: $25 general admission; $15 library donors, seniors and students with valid identification. For more information, and to buy tickets, click here. Via Akashic’s website, here is Parker on Adams: “Ryan Adams writes […]


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Happy 30th Birthday, Square Books!

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Square Books, the famed independent bookstore in Oxford, Mississippi, celebrates three decades in business this month. Festivities began last Thursday, September 10th, with a special program on Thacker Mountain Radio, which broadcasts a live show made up of “literary readings and an eclectic mix of musical performances” each week from Off Square Books. This most recent one featured musical guests King Curly and Sanders Bohlke, as well as a reading by John Brandon, the current John Grisham writer in residence at Ole Miss. John received his MFA from Washington University, in St. Louis. His first novel, Arkansas, was recently published […]


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Miles from Nowhere's Paperback Tour

by Anne Stameshkin

The paperback edition of Nami Mun‘s Orange Prize-nominated debut novel-in-stories, Miles from Nowhere, will publish Tuesday, September 1, 2009. And Chicago magazine just named Nami Best New Novelist in their “Best of Chicago” feature. Here’s my own reviewlet of the hardcover: Miles from Nowhere began as a collection of linked stories (two of which I had the pleasure to read in workshop at Michigan). As a novel, the chapter-stories work together beautifully; Miles remains episodic, but breaks between chapters feel hauntingly like lost years…perfect for this particular story. Set in New York City in the 1980s, the book follows a […]


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Margaret Atwood's book tour / fundraiser / theatre piece

by Anne Stameshkin

To promote her new novel, The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood will be touring five countries and thirty-five cities, performing staged readings with trios of local actors who will also sing some of the book’s original hymns (set to music). A number of these events will also serve as fundraisers for BirdLife International. Here’s the author’s own take on the project (via the Times Online), and you can follow the tour’s progress on her blog and Twitter. Atwood gracefully owns “book tour overkill,” joking that “[t]wittering, or is it tweeting?” is actually quite “appropriate for a bird-saving project!” In […]


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Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival

by Anne Stameshkin

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 Stacey Ann Chin will share the reading podium with young writers (ages 7-17) from the NYWC’s free creative writing workshops in the park. Visit the NYWC’s website for more details. Sadly I just moved away from Fort Greene, but I highly recommend a visit to […]


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"I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy."

by Anne Stameshkin

In a single day — June 16, 1904 — Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus walked the streets of Dublin and the pages of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Today in cities across the globe, fans of the novel are celebrating with races, walking tours, pub crawls, readings, and performances. If you’re in Dublin itself, events began on June 13 and culminate today with a walking tour, Bloomsday breakfasts at the James Joyce Centre, readings and songs in Meetinghouse Square, and a screening of John Huston’s The Dead at the Irish Film Institute. New Yorkers, if you haven’t experienced Bloomsday on Broadway (at […]




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