From the Archives: We celebrate Valentine’s Day with an homage to the living dead: Colson Whitehead’s Zone One. Don’t fancy a date with scary slavering? No matter. Michael Rudin finds the novel reads like an existential valentine to New York City, and that’s something even a zombie can love.
“I wanted to be in dialogue with the literary tradition of ‘young artist comes of age in the city,'” Kyle McCarthy tells Brad Wetherell. “I wanted to write a version of that, a bent and twisted version.” Everyone Knows How Much I Love You is out next week from Ballantine Books.
“In a sense, the 21st century of Demolition Night is an outdated future, since its political satire was conceived before late 2016. These days, everything before that year’s November feels like ancient history. In the Trump era, satire has become increasingly difficult, if not impossible.”
Lots of people read on the subway. But how about writing on the subway? The NY Writers Coalition recently offered many the chance to do just that–by transforming a subway car into a free writing workshop! With pens and paper in hand, a group of writers on the #7 train wrote from Times Square to Flushing, reports the New York Times: After leaving Manhattan, the train emerged from its tunnel and rose along elevated tracks into the bright sunlight in western Queens. It was an unconventional writer’s space, with the train rumbling into a new station every few minutes 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 often focus on a theme; for example, “Living Life to the Fullest” included Neil Patrick Harris reading “The Canoeists” by Rick Bass and Mia Dillon reading Pam Houston’s “How To Talk to Hunter.” And the series features plenty of stories by young/emerging writers, too, including Karen […]
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 independent bookstores and bookish places you love anywhere in the world. Follow these instructions to help create The Millions’ Collaborative Atlas of Bookstores and Literary Places. Who will add Shaman Drum to the Atlas? Do so, let me know you did, and I’ll order […]
Filled with wonder and a sense of infinite possibility, Samantha Hunt’s second novel, The Invention of Everything Else, celebrates the boundless human creativity suggested in its title.
