Around Town: New York City Book Events

It’s Tuesday, WNBA-ers, and that means more author, book, and publishing events in and around New York City! Enjoy!

Sunday, April 14, 2013, 10:00am – 5:00pm
A Downtown Literary Festival
Bookstores McNally Jackson and Housing Works Bookstore Cafe are hosting their first annual festival to celebrate the literary culture of New York City. The full day of events will take place at both book stores and feature topics all about downtown New York City. Hear from chefs and food bloggers. Attend a literary recital. Listen to readings of Jim Carroll’s The Basketball Diaries and the poetry of Anne Waldman. Events will be followed by a happy hour at Housing Works and end with an after party at Pravda (281 Lafayette St. New York, NY 10012), sponsored by HarperCollins. For more information, visit the websites for Housing Works and McNally Jackson.

Saturday, April 27, 2013, 12:30 – 2:30pm
Author Luncheon with Fuminori Nakamura
The Japan Society is hosting a luncheon in recognition of Fuminori Nakamura’s  LA Times Book Prize nomination for his novel, The Thief. Attendees will have a chance to interact with the author. Allison Markin Powell, who translated Hiromi Kawakami’s novel The Briefcase, will be interviewing Nakamura. Nakamura is a Noma Literary Prize for New Writers winner, and was awarded the Akutagawa Prize. The Thief is his first novel to be published in English. The first 50 people to arrive at the event will receive a free advance copy of Nakamura’s second novel Evil and the Mask, which will be released this coming June. Registration starts at 12pm.

Tickets are $25; $20 for members, seniors, and students. RSVP here.
The Japan Society
333 East 47th Street
New York, NY

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Around Town: This Week’s Book Events

Happy Tuesday, WNBA-ers! Check out these events happening this week around the New York City area.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Media Bistro is hosting a Book Club Party and reading, from 6:30-8:30pm at The Stand (228 Third Avenue, New York, NY). The event is free and will feature book giveaways and literary conversation!
The featured authors include:

Carole DiSanti, The Unruly Passions of Eugénie R.

Riva Froymovich, End of The Good Life

Paul LaRosa, Leaving Story Avenue

Mary Sue Welsh, One Woman in a Hundred: Edna Phillips and the Philadelphia Orchestra

Wednesday, April 3, 2013
The New York Public Library is hosting an event to celebrate 50 years of The New York Review of Books. The panel discussion will feature many noted Review contributers, including:

Robert Silvers, Founding Editor

Alma Guillermoprieto, Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of Revolution

Zoë Heller, Notes on a Scandal

Joseph Lelyveld, former executive editor of the New York Times

The event will take place from 7-8pm in the Celeste Bartos Forum.

Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street
New York, NY 10018-2788

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WNBA Wednesday – WNBA Blog Wants You (to Contribute)

Hello WNBA-NYC Members!

This is your new blog editor, Tqwana, reaching out to you asking for your participation in our blog. How can you contribute?

You can:

• Add a link to your personal blog or website to our blog roll.  Many members have already added their links – check them out to see what your fellow WNBA-ers are up to.
• Write a piece and be a guest blogger.  If you have a timely piece that would be interesting to members, send it in for consideration.  For an idea of what we’re looking for, check out these great guest blogs by members Betsy Bird, Deborah Batterman, and Pauline Hsia.
• Be the Member Monday feature! Volunteer to participate in a Member Monday interview. Here’s your chance to introduce yourself to all of our members and get the word out about your current projects.  Check out these interviews with Rita Rosenkranz, Olga Segura, and yours truly!
• Write a book review.  If you have read a recently published or soon-to-be published book and would like to share your opinions, send your review in for consideration.  For an example, see this review by Rachel Weiss-Feldman. Be sure to join and  follow our Goodreads account for what the WNBA-NYC is currently reading.
• If you’ve heard of any great publishing events, the blog is always looking for Around Town posts as well.

To contact the blog, feel free to email me at blog@wnba-nyc.org.

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Around Town: Grolier Club Exhibit

Now through April 27th, the Grolier Club is hosting the “American Little Magazines of the 1890s: A Revolution in Print” exhibit.

The exhibition “will bring viewers into the world of these magazines, and explore the role they played in the aesthetic and cultural revolts of the fin de siècle. Curated by Dr. Kirsten MacLeod, the items on show will illustrate the relationship of these little magazines to the rise of mass-market periodicals; the Arts and Crafts movement and the work of William Morris; Decadence and Symbolism; and the transatlantic poster revolution that brought fame to artists including Aubrey Beardsley, Toulouse-Lautrec, Will Bradley, and Ethel Reed. While it focuses on the aesthetics of these magazines, the exhibition will also highlight their connection to the era’s major literary, cultural, and social fads and trends, including crazes for the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the “poster girl,” and for bicycling; feminism and the New Woman controversy; the New and Free Thought movements; Tolstoyan socialism; Utopian communities; and health and diet enthusiasms.”

For more on the Grolier Club and Jean Grolier de Servières, his love of books and the history of his library, visit the The Grolier Club website.

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Around Town: This Week’s Author Events

Be sure to check out some of these events in and around New York City this week!

March 19, 2013, 7:00pm

Ayana Mathis

Author Ayana Mathis will be promoting her book The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, an Oprah’s Book Club selection, at McNally Jackson Books
52 Prince Street, Manhattan.
The event is free and open to the public.

March 20, 2013, 7:30pm

Jonathan Lethem in Conversation with Jessica Hagedorn

New York author Jonathan Lethem will sit down with fellow author Jessica Hagedorn to discuss his previous works, as well as his expected fall release Dissident Gardens. The event is being held at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University and is free to the public.
1 University Plaza, New York

March 22, 2013, 2:00pm

He Said, She Said

The NYC Teen Author Festival will kick off with the He Said, She Said symposium at the New York Public Library (42nd Street and 5th Avenue). The panel of eight authors includes Ted Goeglein, Gordon Korman, Lucas Klauss, Michael Northrop, Susane Colasanti, E. Lockhart, Carolyn Mackler, and Sarah Mlynowski, and will be moderated by David Levithan.  The event is free and open to the public.

 If any of our members attend any of these events and would like to write a guest blog, please contact Tqwana at the WNBA-NYC blog email.

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