The Magathon: Saturday, June 11th, 4-6:30 PM
New York Public Library’s DeWitt Wallace Periodical Room, 5th Ave. at 42nd St.

In this “marathon” reading, editors of lit journals will present selections from their first issues.

The GIANT Lit Mag Fair at Housing Works: Sunday, June 12th, 11-4PM
Housing Works Used Book Café, 126 Crosby Street in Soho

Lucky you, New Yorkers—you can pick up tons of lit mags for only $2 a copy! Magazines from all over the country will be represented, and many of their editors will be there to meet and greet as well. Says the newsletter, “Proceeds go to Housing Works, a nonprofit organization serving homeless people living with AIDS, and to The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, a nonprofit organization serving independent literary publishers.”

Both events are free and open to the public.

Kostova’s new novel is centered on Andrew Marlow, a psychiatrist and amateur painter, who recounts one of the greatest challenges of his career: a patient named Robert Oliver. Oliver, a talented and influential painter, is delivered to Marlow’s care after attacking a painting at the National Gallery of Art. Unwilling to speak to his doctor, Oliver spends his days in silence, painting a mysterious women over and over. Confounded by this reticence, and driven by both personal reasons and professional pride, Marlow allows himself to become obsessed with this particular case. And in an effort to uncover the mystery of Oliver’s life and art, he embarks on a quest that will cross not only professional boundaries but also ones of place and time.

Like her previous book, which has now been translated into more than forty languages, The Swan Thieves is rich in history (in this case, the Impressionist Movement) and language. It is a wonderful portrayal of loyalty and obligation, as well as the many types of obsession that intersect with art.

Kostova is not only an avid supporter of independent bookstores, but also a great reader. So we hope that you’ll join her at one of these events if you’re in Chicago, Madison, or Milwaukee the next few days. Here’s the schedule:

She’ll also be at Zingerman’s Roadhouse in Ann Arbor on Wednesday (10/27), hosting Vampire’s Ball: A Fundraiser for Food Gatherer’s. Food Gatherer’s is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping eliminate hunger in Washtenaw county. Kostova helped found this charity event five years ago as a way to give back to her community. Zingerman’s writes:

Every year, we’ve collaborated with Kostova on a “spooky” theme and a corresponding menu. With lots of help from Food Gatherer’s we make this one fun fundraiser. We typically raise about $10,000 for Food Gatherers each year, which translates to about 26,000 meals that can be provided to hungry individuals. Please help us fight hunger where we live!

This year the theme is Day of the Dead with a traditional menu reflecting the Latin American holiday. Elizabeth Kostova will be reading from traditional Mexican literature and James Beard nominated Chef Alex Young will create the menu.

For more information on the event, or to make a reservation, please visit the Zingerman’s Website.

The event is on Tuesday, October 19 at 7 pm at BookCourt. You can find full details, and directions to the store, at www.bookcourt.org. Hope to see some of you there!

not only akin to that of all good literary magazines–to showcase some of the most vibrant writers working today–but also to help provide these writers with a vehicle to market their books. This is why we provide links to authors’ websites and sales pages: to help directly connect the writers we love with their audience–TNB’s large, loyal and growing readership.

But don’t worry; you will not be bombarded with sales pitches. There’s plenty of good old-fashioned content here. TNB, as it refers to itself, offers short stories from recent collections (like “Where We Must Be,” from Laura van den Berg’s What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us) as well as new stories from emerging writers. For those who prefer the longer form, there are novel excerpts (such as the prologue to Greg Olear’s Totally Killer), and weekly installments of a novel by J. E. Fishman, Cadaver Blues.

In addition to fiction, the site has interviews, essays, opinion pieces, and appreciations on everything from Infinite Summer to the family fridge. Lest “appreciations” seem too positive, there are also plenty of rants. Several columns address writerly concerns: for example, LitPark runs interviews with writers, agents, publicists, and the like, and will feature a “Question of the Month (involving everything from obsessions to rejection letters)” for reader discussion, while Three Guys One Book provides “short reviews of stories and novels, publishing news, photography, and the popular 3G1B group discussion.” Podcasts feature readings and author interviews.

But TNB’s most original offering is author “self-interviews,” in which writers, well, write both questions and answers. So far, there are only three, but I’m excited to read more of this unusual format.

If you’re looking for somewhere to start, may I suggest the section of writing on writing, and the essay “It’s Kind of Like Creative Herpes”?

Orhan Pamuk / photo by Elena Seibert

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.)
• “Struggles in a Strange Land: The Power of Place,” a panel discussion with Anita Diamant, Anita Shreve, Elizabeth Nunez and Carolina De Robertis
• Free writing classes from Grub Street, Boston’s premier independent writing center

Click here for a full list of events and descriptions. There will also be lots of exhibitors, like 826Boston and One Story Magazine, with giveaways and goodies.

Admission is free and the festival happens rain or shine.

Break a leg, Brian and company!

Via NPR, don’t miss Alan Cheuse’s list of carefully chosen (and enthusiastically recommended) books you should read this summer, complete with compelling reviewlets and links to excerpts. If only all reviewers *loved* books the way Cheuse obviously does!

James Joyce, by Joel Isaacson

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 Symphony Space each year on June 16), please cancel tonight’s plans and let James Joyce — via a host of writers and actors like Malachy McCourt, Marian Seldes, and Colum McCann — work his magic from 6 PM until Molly Bloom says “Yes.” Back when this program was a shared venture with NPR/WNYC (and featured a day-long reading/Joyce love-in), I attended several times, my favorite being Bloomsday 2005, when Stephen Colbert movingly portrayed the part of Bloom. This 28th Bloomsday on Broadway will focus in particular on the use of food in Ulysses. A taste:

“Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.”

One of tonight’s readers, Colum McGann, offers a personal response to the novel in today’s NY Times (thanks to Kathryn for the link):

Vladimir Nabokov once said that the purpose of storytelling is “to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate in far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and festive in its own right: the times when a man who might put on the most ordinary jacket of today will be dressed up for an elegant masquerade.”

This is the function of books — we learn how to live even if we weren’t there. Fiction gives us access to a very real history. Stories are the best democracy we have. We are allowed to become the other we never dreamed we could be.

Join me this Saturday, June 13, at 3 PM on Central Park’s Great Lawn. I’ll be taking advantage of free cupcakes and the chance (also free) to hear Bridget McNulty read from her debut novel, Strange Nervous Laughter. (Check out Bridget’s blog tour post here on FWR.)

Nancy Sherrie

If there’s such a thing as an ordinary reading series, Gist Street is not it. For starters, the monthly readings–the hub of the Pittsburgh literary scene for over eight years now–are held as potlucks in the warehouse of sculptor and tai chi master James Simon, so readers and attendees spend the evening surrounded by Simon’s quirky sculptures (plant people, dogs with human heads…) and, in the summer, when the series sometimes moves outdoors, his chickens and his cats. Novelist Sherrie Flick’s homemade vegan pastries can be found at no other reading series, and the clawfoot bathtub full of ice and beer is also a nice touch. Another unusual detail: people pay $5/head to come hear emerging fiction writers and poets strut their stuff. As Salvatore Scibona said to the crowd at his reading last night, just after blowing out the candle on the birthday brownie Sherrie made him, “People PAY to come here?! What is in the WATER in Pittsburgh?” We’re not sure what’s in the water, but yes, we pay–and even so, Gist Street is always full. Officially the festivities kick off at 8p.m., but if you’re not there by 7:30, you are out of luck.

Salvatore Scibona

James Simon

Gist Street is usually the first Friday of every month, but July is special: it’s Gist Street’s Annual Cookout Extravaganza, held on Saturday July 18th under the stars in Jimmy’s plant and sculpture-filled back yard. Master grillers will be on hand to grill up whatever goodies you bring (or you can bring potato salad, pie, wine–it’s a potluck, after all). The cookout bash always spotlights a particular small publisher, and this year it’s Autumn House Press. Novelist Samuel Ligon will be in from Spokane to read fiction, and poet Mary Crockett Hill is coming up from Virginia.

Sometimes there’s a bonfire; sometimes the party lasts until 3 AM. For all this fun, we have Gist Street’s founders to thank: the aforementioned Sherrie Flick, poet Nancy Krygowski, and playwright Rick Schweikert. And Gist Street is easy to find: just go to Pittsburgh’s Uptown neighborhood and look for the giant gorilla. Or follow the directions at GistStreet.org.