In a production similar to The Luxe Radio Theatre of old, journey back to Victorian England and the world of Sherlock Holmes in vintage radio style. Actors portray 1940's stars, bringing The Speckled Band to life by creating live sound effects and playing multiple characters in this highly theatrical radio performance.

The event features readings by poets Jericho Brown and Khadijah Queen, novelist Rachel Sherman and the presentation of work from multimedia artists eteam. Artists are invited to read or perform pieces that explore the collective voice. They may also read from other recent work. Special guest DJ Lady DM will open and close the event with thirty minute sets starting at 6:30 pm. Admission is free.

Shrine is located at 2271 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd., between 134th and 133rd in Harlem. Take the 2/3 trains to 135th and walk one avenue block west to Adam Clayton Powell, turn left. Or take B/C to 135th and walk two avenue blocks east to Adam Clayton Powell, turn right. For more information: http://www.firstpersonpluralharlem.com/

Sekou Sundiata was writer-in-residence and professor at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts for 20 years. As an educator, he embraced multiple, contradictory identities and insisted on the integration of art, activism, and personal voice both as a critical citizen and engaged teacher.

This conversation will explore how he successfully crossed social, civic, and educational boundaries to "create dangerously." The panel discussion will be moderated by David Scobey, Executive Dean, The New School for Public Engagement. Panelists include Julie Ellison, Professor of American Culture, English, and Art and Design at the University of Michigan; Richard Harper, Assistant Professor, The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music; Gladstone Fluney Hutchinson, Associate Professor of Economics at Lafayette College; and Brian Lewis, former student of Sundiata and current New School professor.

Presented by The New School for Public Engagement and Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts and produced by MAPP International Productions.

Writer/Teacher/Artist/Activist – Dialogue is presented as part of BLINK YOUR EYES: Sekou Sundiata Revisited, a New York City-wide retrospective produced by MAPP International Productions. Lead support for BLINK YOUR EYES has been provided by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation New York City Cultural Innovation Fund. Major funds have been provided by Surdna Foundation, the Lambent Foundation Fund of the Tides Foundation, Leveraging Investments for Creativity and the Ford Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the Axe- Houghton Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

For the complete schedule of BLINK YOUR EYES: Sekou Sundiata Revisited events, visit www.sekousundiata.org.

Writer and musician Elijah Wald — co-author of Dave Van Ronk: The Mayor of MacDougal Street, a memoir that serves as source material for the upcoming Coen Brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis — presents a history of Greenwich Village in the 1950s and 1960s. This program will also include a performance by Wald and rare audio recordings from the NY Folk Singers Guild archive. Part of the series Rhapsodic City: Music of New York.

A rare, intimate evening with reunited ’90s darlings Spacehog. Tickets $15.

New York City’s 1990s darlings Spacehog make their triumphant return having just completed their long awaited new album As It Is On Earth with original producer Bryce Goggin. The Evolution in the band’s soundscape can only be described as epic and transcendary for the band. They are prepared to reinvade our collective conscious to transform our reality and better our listening universe. As It Is On Earth will be released in April of 2013 independently.

Spacehog is a band with a rich origin story: A vortex of happenstances occurred in 1994 when four expats from Leeds collided to become Spacehog. Brothers Royston Langdon (Vocals and Bass Guitar) and Anthony Langdon (Guitar and Vocals), Jonny Cragg, (Drums) and Richard Steel (Lead Guitar) found themselves gathering the force that occurs when stars properly align.

The band became quickly infamous: their situationist concerts were legendary in the East Village. With their sound so very different from the neo-grunge movement of the early 90’s, within a short time, after the signing of a cocktail napkin deal with the prolific Seymour Stein, Spacehog entered the airspace of nineties rock stardom on the Sire label.

$15 tickets guarantee admission but not seating. Seating is limited, and is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Doors will open at 7:30PM. Show begins at 8:00PM.

All ticket sales benefit the Housing Works mission of fighting to end AIDS and homelessness

Join Fred Waitzkin, author of the moving non-fiction book Searching for Bobby Fisher, as he candidly discusses his new novel, The Dream Merchant.

His compelling new book tells the story of a good man who is drawn to pursuing the bad – a true tale of redemption and human fragility.

Buy a copy of The Dream Merchant or a $10 Strand gift card in order to attend this event. All options admit one person. Please note that payment is required for all online event orders at the time of checkout.

The event will be located in the Strand's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at our store at 828 Broadway at 12th Street

A screening of several short films on the social adaptations of American Folk Music.

Discovering American Folk Music (1969)

Directed by Bernard Wilets, 22 min.

A brief review of the development of American folk music from its African and English roots, as demonstrated by tracing the history of one ballad from its original British version, through its journey across America.



Village Sunday (1960)

Directed by Stewart Wilensky, 13 min.

A docudrama that captures the spirit of Greenwich Village on a Sunday afternoon, featuring musicians, poets, and artists in and around Washington Square Park.


The Last Rally (1976)

Directed by Shridhar Bapat, Mark Brownstone, Karen Edwards, and Joe Loguidice, 31 min.

Shot in Central Park on May 11, 1975, this film captures the activists who staged a free concert to recognize the end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, including Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, Richie Havens, and Patti Smith.

A conversation with Ian Buruma, Andrew Delbanco, Alma Guillermoprieto, and Zoë Heller, moderated by Robert Silvers and Joseph Lelyveld about the future of literary journalism.

Noted contributors to the Review honor its essential place in contemporary culture. This event, a co-presentation with the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library, will take place in the Celeste Bartos Forum.

“Fever” is a great song with a fascinating history.

It made the journey from R&B (Little Willie John) to mainstream pop (Peggy Lee) and then, surprisingly, into rock & roll (Elvis Presley). But, as audio and video excerpts show, the song’s trajectory and history also make for a fascinating look at what the popular song is, what a standard is and what the blues are—and how they all affect and interact with each other.



Brief Bio

Will Friedwald writes about jazz and nightlife for The Wall Street Journal and is the author of A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers and Jazz Singing. He has written over 600 liner notes for CDs and received eight Grammy nominations.

Amy Herzog’s The Great God Pan will premiere at Playwrights Horizons this fall and her play Belleville will open at the New York Theatre Workshop in early 2013. “She has a great, great facility for dialogue,” wrote Richard Nelson. “It’s clean, it’s simple, it’s evocative, it’s witty. It’s alive.” Will Eno’s Thom Pain (based on nothing) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and his Title and Deed was produced by the Signature Theatre in 2012. “He strikes me as being the real thing, a real playwright. He takes every chance,” wrote Edward Albee. “And he keeps the voice his own.”

A boot-stompin’, down-home edition of our happy hour, featuring music from Odetta Hartman, Toot Sweet!, and the Cricket Tell the Weather. Plus our regular Friday Night Happy Hour specials and pizza. Presented by Two Boots pizza, Americana Jamboree is the first Friday of every month.

For a band that includes vocals, accordion, ukulele, bass, clarinet and percussion, one would expect a lineup of more than just two musicians. But Mary Spencer Knapp and Benjamin Marx, two halves of the new Brooklyn-based duo Toot Sweet!, are extraordinarily versatile performers who bring a wide range of talents and repertoire to all of their performances. Both alums of the Bard College music program, this pair showcases Greek folk tunes, French chansons, 60s soul music and originals by Ms. Knapp with an authenticity, virtuosity and sincerity that is sure to delight any crowd.

Husband and wife writers - both currently published by Dalkey Archive Press - the prolific Marie Chaix and Harry Mathews will read from and discuss their work. Mathews has translated both of Chaix's novels published with Dalkey (with a third to be released this summer).

Whether you've been reading them for decades, or aren't yet familiar their books - we invite you to spend this fascinating evening with 192 Books and two beloved authors. While Mathews has translated Chaix's novels in a way that perfectly evokes her beautiful, lyrical writing style, deeply sensitive to internal experience, his own style is very different. As the first American member of the French literary group Oulipo (the "workshop of potential literature"), his writing often experiments with language and narrative through "play with games, puzzles, arcana, and stories within stories." We think you'll be pleased to discover that they accomplish exactly what we look forward to when picking up both types of novels.

Join us for a celebration of the publication of Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America by scholar and documentary filmmaker Vivek Bald. Bald will read from his book, which traces out the early histories of Indian Muslim men who settled in places like Tremé in New Orleans and Black Bottom in Detroit. Additionally, East Harlem actor/playwright Alaudin Ullah will perform an excerpt from his one-man show "Dishwasher Dreams,” which focuses on the story of his father Habib, one of the first Bengali men to settle in Harlem. The event will also include an excerpt from “In Search of Bengali Harlem,” the documentary film on which Bald and Ullah are collaborating, followed by a panel discussion and community forum with children and descendants of some of the Bengali men who settled in Harlem in the mid-twentieth century. Plus a special guest DJ set by Himanshu Suri, aka Heems, formerly of the rap group Das Racist.

Tickets - $25 General Admission; $15 FRIENDS, Seniors (60+), and Students with valid ID. A limited number of tickets may be available to purchase at the door (cash only).

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek joins Nathaniel Rich for an exploration of worst-case scenarios, a subject at the heart of Rich's new novel Odds Against Tomorrow. Set in Manhattan's not-too-distant future, Odds Against Tomorrow tells the tale of Mitchell Zukor, a gifted young mathematician hired by a mysterious new consulting firm operating out of the Empire State Building. Zukor's job? Calculate worst-case scenarios for high-end corporations to indemnify them against future catastrophes. Yet when one of his own nightmarish predictions becomes a reality, Zukor finds himself in a uniquely profitable (if morally questionable) position — and readers find themselves immersed in a story that explores the nature of fear, and the truly terrifying possibilities of our civilization's future.

Keaton Henson is a virtual stranger whose anonymity is no accident. He has never toured, posted on social networks, and rarely leaves his hometown or his bedroom.

As a boy Keaton's heroes were artists and illustrators like Edward Gorey; his heroes now are songwriters like Randy Newman and Loudon Wainwright. All three reveal the kind of artist Keaton strives to be: someone who understands the power of honesty, even when it is heartless, and how only that can make one's art truly heartfelt.

Shortly after leaving school Keaton fell in love hard and got his heart smashed to pieces. He became even more of a hermit in his solitary world. Keaton didn't even leave home to work - instead, he started selling art online. Eventually he uploaded a few songs and other people started listening – and talking. Keaton Henson’s debut album, Dear..., was released quietly in late 2010, in a limited edition run, hand-made by Keaton. Amidst a growing audience and critical acclaim, Keaton chose not to perform or promote his record in a conventional manner – he was simply compelled to write the next album. Birthdays sees Keaton Henson removed from his comfort zone. Relocating to L.A., Keaton set up a temporary cave in the studio, recreating his bedroom’s isolation, but allowed others into the fray this time, including members of Band of Horses (Tyler Ramsey), The Raveonettes (Sune Rose Wagner), Alberta Cross (Sam Kearney), as well as French horns and a ten-piece string section.

His debut graphic novel, Gloaming, addresses spirits lost in a city, seeking escape, taking us from folklore and magic to a new kind of mystery. Further new mysteries await Henson: for he has taken tentative steps in returning to the live arena, firstly performing one-on-one for fans from within a dollhouse, as part of an art gallery exhibiting his work. Incredibly, Keaton recently played two debut live gigs, both located in a dusty old cinema museum in South London. Unannounced, tickets sold out in little over an hour, and were greeted with 5-star reviews. Now he is playing live in the USA for the first time, at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe.

From bestselling author Meg Wolitzer a dazzling, panoramic novel about what becomes of early talent, and the roles that art, money, and even envy can play in close friendships. The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge. The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age fifteen is not always enough to propel someone through life at age thirty; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence. Jules Jacobson, an aspiring comic actress, eventually resigns herself to a more practical occupation and lifestyle. Her friend Jonah, a gifted musician, stops playing the guitar and becomes an engineer. But Ethan and Ash, Jules’s now-married best friends, become shockingly successful—true to their initial artistic dreams, with the wealth and access that allow those dreams to keep expanding. The friendships endure and even prosper, but also underscore the differences in their fates, in what their talents have become and the shapes their lives have taken.

Wide in scope, ambitious, and populated by complex characters who come together and apart in a changing New York City, The Interestings explores the meaning of talent; the nature of envy; the roles of class, art, money, and power; and how all of it can shift and tilt precipitously over the course of a friendship and a life.

Nearly twenty years ago, the New York Times-bestselling essayist and novelist Anne Lamott published a memoir of her son’s first year called Operating Instructions, which has since become a classic of new-parent literature. Now Lamott has become a grandmother, and she describes the experience as only she can, with all its wonder, humor, frustration, and grace, in SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED: A Journal of My Son’s First Son (Riverhead Trade Paperbacks; April 2, 2013).


Together with her son, Sam Lamott, she delivers what is not only a brilliant companion to that earlier book, but a rich, funny, and thoughtful exploration of the evolving American family and what it means for both her and Sam to assume new and unexpected roles. In SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED, Lamott continues to investigate the themes that have made her one of America’s most beloved writers: family, commitment, faith, and the transforming power of love.

Come to the Rare Book room and listen to three time Oscar nominated actress Diane Ladd read from her new book of stories, A Bad Afternoon for A Piece of Cake.

A Southern and a cousin of Tennessee Williams, Diane Ladd has an ear for dialogue and story. She’ll read and talk about her new book and then discuss her legendary career with one of film’s most famous critics Rex Reed.

Buy a copy of A Bad Afternoon for A Piece of Cake or a $15 Strand gift card in order to attend this event. All options admit one person. Please note that payment is required for all online event orders at the time of checkout. The event will be located in the Strand's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at our store at 828 Broadway at 12th Street

Join partners Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio and Charles Renfro of Diller Scofidio + Renfro along with a special guest to discuss the redesign of Lincoln Center, one of the most challenging and innovative civic projects in recent urban history. Other projects, including the High Line, are also addressed.

Join us in celebrating the release of Issue Five of The Coffin Factory with readings from contributors Joshua Cohen and Kathleen Alcott.

The new issue features: John Banville, Noam Chomsky, Jorge Luis Borges, Joshua Cohen, José Ángel Valente, Kathleen Alcott, László Krasznahorkai, Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Santiago Roncagliolo, Jeremy Schmall, Elvis Bego, and Twelve.

Spend a special night in the rare books room with two of today’s most fascinating writers – Andrew Solomon and Tony Kushner.

Andrew Solomon is the author of such books The Irony Tower, Identity Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression and most recently the provocative, Strand bestseller Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity.

Tony Kushner, a prolific playwright, author Angels In America and most recently the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln.

Buy a copy of Far From the Tree or a $20 Strand gift card in order to attend this event. Both options admit one person. Please note that payment is required for all online event orders at the time of checkout.

The event will be located in the Strand's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at our store at 828 Broadway at 12th Street

Join us for a memorable night as Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz talks about work, his inspiration, and what a year it has been with The New Yorker Staff writer Hilton Als.

Buy a copy of This is How You lose Her or a $20 Strand gift card in order to attend this event. Both options admit one person. Please note that payment is required for all online event orders at the time of checkout.

The event will be located in the Strand's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at our store at 828 Broadway at 12th Street

McNally Jackson and Housing Works Bookstore Cafe are collaborating on the inaugural Downtown Literary Festival, a daylong celebration of the literary culture of New York City. The festival will take place at both bookstores simultaneously throughout the day on Sunday, April 14, 2013, followed by a happy hour mingle at Housing Works Bookstore and an after-party at Pravda, featuring Russian literature–themed cocktails.

Why a Downtown Literary Festival? The goal of DLF is to showcase the literature and writers of New York City. We will aim to reflect the diversity and creativity that characterizes downtown NYC with a day of the non-traditional events for which McNally Jackson and Housing Works Bookstore each have become known.

More information on schedule and participants coming very soon. Info also over at McNally Jackson.

The 13 Theatre Troupe is an ensemble of NYC artists living with or affected by HIV. Based on the real-life experiences of the performers, The Just-Us System investigates racism in the criminal justice system as well as domestic abuse and neglect. Join us in theatrical brainstorming around these issues.

Let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action. To mark the publication of Living With Shakespeare: Actors, Directors, Writers on Shakespeare in Our Time, contributors to this new anthology gather to read from their favorite plays and poems.

Come celebrate the Bard and show your support for the Poetry Center at an exclusive post-show reception with the actors in 92Y's elegant Art Gallery. Select "Special Access" upon check-out to take advantage of this special offer. Within the limits prescribed by law, $53 is tax deductible.

Come hear iconoclastic talent, Tamara Shopsin, New York Times illustrator, artist and chef discuss her touching memoir about her adventures aboard with author, humorist John Hodgman, known most widely for his correspondence work on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show.

Buy a copy of Mumbai New York Scranton or a $15 Strand gift card in order to attend this event. All options admit one person. Please note that payment is required for all online event orders at the time of checkout.

The event will be located in the Strand's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at our store at 828 Broadway at 12th Street

Join beloved cartoonist Gilbert Hernandez (Love & Rockets) as he launches his new D+Q graphic novel Marble Season, his first semiautobiographical story of his childhood. Hernandez will present a fascinating slide show “From Funnybooks to Graphic Novels” featuring the comics of his childhood, in addition to a Q+A and signing. These silver age comics not only influenced Marble Season, but also set the course for Gilbert, as well as his brothers Jaime and Mario, to become the legendary comics creator they are today.

Marble Season is the first ever semi-autobiographical novel by acclaimed cartoonist Gilbert Hernandez of Love & Rockets, and is also his first graphic novel for Drawn & Quarterly. Meet Huey. He’s the middle child of a big family, growing up in a California suburb in the 1960s. He stages Captain America plays in the backyard and treasures his older brother’s comic-book collection almost as much as his approval. Set against the golden age of the American dream and the silver age of comics, Marble SEason is a subtle and deft rumination on the redemptive and timeless power of storytelling and worldbuilding in childhood.

Author Petra Giloy-Hirtz appears with Marin Hopper, daughter of legendary actor, director and artist Dennis Hopper, to discuss the stunning new book Dennis Hopper: The Lost Album - Vintage Prints from the Sixties. They explore Dennis Hopper’s incredible and diverse career, delving into the recently rediscovered photographs which are the subject of the book.

Translator Edith Grossman joins Spanish novelist Carlos Rojas to discuss Rojas' The Ingenious Gentleman Federico Garcia Lorca Ascends to Hell.

“The richness of Rojas’s writing isn’t random creativity; it’s rooted in a deep and insightful knowledge of his subject, making the book exceptional.” – Publishers Weekly, starred review

In Carlos Rojas’s imaginative novel, the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, murdered by Francoist rebels in August 1936, finds himself in an inferno that somehow resembles Breughel’s Tower of Babel. He sits alone in a small theater in this private hell, viewing scenes from his own life performed over and over and over. Unexpectedly, two doppelgängers appear, one a middle-aged Lorca, the other an irascible octogenarian self, and the poet faces a nightmarish confusion of alternative identities and destinies.

Enjoy an evening in the rare books room with award winning screenwriter and author Robert Seidman while he discusses his newest novel, Moments Captured with New Yorker journalist and author Judith Thurman.

Moments Captured, is loosely based on the life and adventures of 19th century photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Like the Wright Brothers are to flying, Muybridge was to the movie projector. This is not a biography, but a thrilling novel that looks at the West at a crucial time in its history, and at a man who unknowingly shaped centuries to come.

Buy a copy of Moments Captured or a $15 Strand gift card in order to attend this event. All options admit one person. Please note that payment is required for all online event orders at the time of checkout.

The event will be located in the Strand's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at our store at 828 Broadway at 12th Street.

In 1975, on the brink of widowhood for the second time, the woman who had always been overshadowed and defined by powerful men took a less familiar, riskier path.

Join Tina Cassidy as she draws from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ personal archives and remembrances of close friends, to explore how she transformed from a devoted wife and grieving widow into an independent woman—a writer, editor, preservationist and activist.



Brief Bio

Tina Cassidy, a former reporter and editor at The Boston Globe, is the author of Jackie After O, as well as Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born.

A young soldier dons Napoleon’s hat. An out-of-work man wanders Berlin, dreaming he is Peter the Great. The famous exile Dante finally returns to his native city to “hang his crown of laurels up.” Familial and historical apparitions haunt this dazzling collection of poems by Will Schutt, the 2012 recipient of the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets award.

Coupled with Schutt’s own voice are the voices of some of Italy’s most prominent nineteenth- and twentieth-century poets including Giacomo Leopardi, Alda Merini, Eugenio Montale, and Edoardo Sanguineti. Subtle, discerning, restrained, the poems in Westerly probe a vast emotional geography, with its contingent pleasures and pains, “where the door’s always dark, the sky still blue.”

Come and join us for a fascinating discussion from the creator and writer of Archie’s first gay character Kevin Keller.

The creator, Dan Parent will discuss with Kevin’s writer Paul Kupperberg’s the impetus for creating Kevin to his controversial sold out wedding to the adversity the character has drummed up among anti-gay groups and to the embrace he has received from GLAAD and other organizations.

Buy a copy of Kevin or a $15 Strand gift card in order to attend this event. All options admit one person. Please note that payment is required for all online event orders at the time of checkout.

The event will be located in the Strand's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at our store at 828 Broadway at 12th Street

Co-presented with GreenHouse and Joe's Pub at the Public Theatre.

In an industry presumed to be dominated by men, many of New York City's most prestigious and innovative arts programmers are women. Noteworthy brings four of NYC's most influential Artistic Directors together to discuss their path to success, the nuts and bolts of their work, their vision for the future of the New York performance scene, the prejudices they've overcome and recommendations for those who would like to break into the industry as either programmers or performers.

Featuring:

RACHEL CHANOFF (Artistic Director, Celebrate Brooklyn!)

ERIKA ELLIOTT (Artistic Director, SummerStage)

YOKO SHIOYA (Artistic Director, Japan Society)

SHANTA THAKE (Director, Joe's Pub at The Public Theater)

Moderated by ELISABETH VINCENTELLI (New York Post)

Anyone curious about the process of venue curation, festival administration, the current state of NYC's live stages and the role gender plays in arts institutions today will find ample opportunity to learn.

Tickets - $25 General Admission; $15 FRIENDS, Seniors (60+), and Students with valid ID. A limited number of tickets may be available to purchase at the door (cash only).

What are the costs of assimilation into American society? And what happens when we become someone other than the person we thought we would be? In his new novel, Harvard Square, André Aciman explores these and other questions in a tale of friendship between a Jewish student and an Arab cab driver, set amid the bars and cafés of late 1970s Cambridge. Aciman is joined in conversation by novelist Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love, to talk about themes which haunt them both, identity,exile, fiction, and memory.

Edward O. Wilson, two-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, father of the field of sociobiology, and professor emeritus in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, discusses his life, career, and his new book, "The Social Conquest of Earth," with Graduate Center president Bill Kelly.

In his home country of Croatia, Robert Perisic is a bestselling novelist, critic, journalist, and poet. He is oft-proclaimed as an essential voice of his generation, and his work came to prominence during the 1990s when he began writing with a clear anti-war sentiment. The novel Our Man in Iraq, available this April from Black Balloon Publishing, is the first of Robert's works to be translated into English. Named one of The Millions "Most Anticipated Books of 2013," Our Man in Iraq features Perisic's characteristic humor and insight, and examines the heart of lives made and remade by war.

Co-sponsored by Croatian Consular General of New York & Black Balloon Publishing.

Acclaimed graffiti artist turned tattooist Michael “Kaves” McLeer discusses his groundbreaking new book Skin Graf. He explores the relationship between graffiti and tattoo art, delving into their deep connection and highlighting some of the most cutting-edge artists in the community today. Fellow experts Billy Burke and Sacha Jenkins also join Kaves for a conversation.

"Bulgarian Fiction Night"

Presented with The Elizabeth Kostova Foundation and Open Letter Press


Two Bulgarian novelists published by Open Letter Press this year will talk about their work, Bulgarian literature, and their experiences with translation - and will be joined by their shared translator.


The event will feature novelists:

ZACHARY KARABASHLIEV (author of 18% Gray)

and ANGEL IGOV (author of A Short Tale of Shame)


along with the translator of both novels, ANGELA RODEL.

Part mad manifesto, part revolutionary love letter, part freight train adventure story, “Maps to the Other Side: The Adventures of a Bipolar Cartographer” is a twist on the classic punk rock travel narrative that searches for authenticity and connection in the lives of strangers and in underground community. Sascha will discuss his work as co-founder of The Icarus Project, a community support network and media project redefining the language and culture of mental health and illness. Sascha Altman Dubrul has been a pioneer in urban farming and mental health advocacy.

Celebrate Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy with Ophira Eisenberg. Wine and cheese will be served!

Believing she could outsmart and out-bed them all, Ophira Eisenberg approached dating like a science experiment. She traveled from futon to futon, gathering data, figuring one day she’d put it all together and build her own perfect Frankenmate. As it turns out, she finds that the secret to finding true love is an open heart and a very large sample size.

Ophira Eisenberg is a stand-up comedian, writer and host of NPR’s new weekly trivia show, Ask Me Another, and has appeared on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Comedy Central, VH-1, E! and the TV Guide Network. And in her first book, Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy (Seal Press / April 2013) she bares all: saying yes to everyone and everything, and eventually finding the “real thing”—one promiscuous encounter at a time.

Learn more about celebrity chef Alex Guarnascelli as she sits down with top food writer Melissa Clark.

The two will discuss Guarnascelli's delicious new book Old-School Comfort Food: The Way I learned to Cook, as well as many other fascinating and tasty tales about cooking and eating in New York City. Wine & Bites served!

Buy a copy of Old-School Comfort Food: The Way I learned to Cook or a $15 Strand gift card in order to attend this event. All options admit one person. Please note that payment is required for all online event orders at the time of checkout.

The event will be located in the Strand's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at our store at 828 Broadway at 12th Street.

The Thief brings to mind Highsmith, Mishima and Doestoevsky... [it is] a chilling philosophical thriller leaving readers in doubt without making them feel in any way cheated. —The Wall Street Journal

In celebration of Fuminori Nakamura's (中村文則) nomination for the 2013 LATimes Book Prize for his existential thriller The Thief (邦題: 掏摸[スリ]), Japan Society hosts a special interactive Author Luncheon during which the audience can participate in a dialogue with the author. Nakamura will be interviewed by Allison Markin Powell, translator of The Briefcaseby Hiromi Kawakami, which was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize. In 2002, Nakamura won the prestigious Noma Literary Prize for New Writers (野間文芸新人賞) for his first novel, A Gun, and in 2005 he was awarded the Akutagawa Prize (芥川賞) for The Boy in the Earth. The Thief, his first novel to be published in English, won the 2010 Oe Prize (大江健三郎賞), Japan's most important literary award.

The first 50 attendees to arrive at this event will receive a free advance copy of Evil and the Mask, Nakamura's second novel to be published in English, which will be released in June 2013.

*registration starts at 12pm

TICKETS

$25/$20 Japan Society members, seniors & students

ticket price includes lunch and wine

Published now for the first time is an edition of the letters of Willa Cather, tracking the writer’s life and work in her own words.

From her teenage years in Red Cloud to her career as a journalist and novelist in Pittsburgh and New York to her thoughts on the outbreak of World War II. Janis Stout is author of Willa Cather: The Writer and Her World, and Andrew Jewell is editor of the Willa Cather Archive.

The Italian Red Brigades kidnap factory owners. A university threatens a group of students and faculty with more than a decade in jail following the closure of a campus bank. Twitter concedes to a subpoena of posts. Anarcho-punks find “four grab-n-go rotisserie chickens” in a Gainesville, Florida dumpster. Four writers whose lives and work intersect with radical politics assemble at Bookcourt.

Joshua Clover is a poet, scholar, and a professor at University of California Davis. Clover is the author of two books of cultural criticism, 1989: Bob Dylan Didn't Have This to Sing About, which traces the year in music from the rise of the cassingle to the fall of the Berlin wall, and The Matrix, as well as two books of poems, The Totality for Kids and Madonna anno domini. His current and recent work, including the ongoing poetry collection Tranche/Syntagma, concerns militant politics and economic crisis. As part of ongoing anti-privatization protests, Clover and a group of students blockaded a branch of U.S. Bank for nearly two months until the branch closed. In legal dispute with the bank and anxious to foreclose further protest. the campus charged the protestors with crimes that carry a possible 11 years in jail. Their trial is scheduled for June.

Rachel Kushner's new novel, The Flamethrowers, accelerates through the Bonneville Salt Flats motorcycle land speed record competition, labor revolts of 1970s Italy, the remnants of lower East side anarchist street gang The Motherfuckers, and the power politics of the New York art scene. Kushner’s debut novel, Telex from Cuba, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, winner of the California Book Award, and a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Believer, Artforum, Bookforum, Fence, Bomb, Cabinet, and Grand Street.

Malcolm Harris is a writer and the senior editor at The New Inquiry, an online journal that has quickly gained wide following, an off-putting New York Times style section profile, and praise from Jonathan Lethem among others. Harris was arrested when Occupy Wall Street protestors crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and was at the center of a legal case over whether a search warrant was required in order for Twitter to release Harris' tweets. (Short answer: no) He was also responsible for pranking Occupy and the media with the rumor of a Radiohead performance at Liberty Plaza.

Justin Taylor is the author of the novel The Gospel of Anarchy and the story collection Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever. With the poet Jeremy Schmall, he co-edits The Agriculture Reader, a limited-edition arts annual now in its sixth year. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Columbia University and the Pratt Institute.

A conversation and performance with Marty Ehrlich, Erica Hunt, Vijay Iyer, and Tracie Morris.

Triangulations pairs authors and musicians to consider the work of a selected writer. Writer and critic Erica Hunt and musician Marty Ehrlich will respond to the work of Césaire, while poet and critic Tracie Morris and musician Vijay Iyer will consider the work of Baraka.

Cosponsored by the Initiative on Humanities and Difference, Advanced Research Collaborative.

Free and open to the public.

The event will take place in Elebash Recital Hall at the CUNY Graduate Center, located at 365 Fifth Ave @ 34th Street.

Nearby subways: 4/5/6, N/Q/R, B/D/F.

Visually Speaking Is a photographic talk-series highlighting the works of selected photographers who have been contributing to the realm of photography through their analytical documentation of the history and culture of African American landscape and on a larger spectrum. Join photographers Lauri Lyons, Delphine Fauwndu and Layla Amautallah Barryn in conversation. The series is moderated by Grace Anezia Ali, founder, Of Note Magazine (www.ofnotemagazine.com) and curated by photographer Terrence Jennings (www.terrencejennings.com).

Richard Ford’s new novel is Canada. It is “a superlatively good book, richly imagined and beautifully fashioned,” wrote John Banville. “One is tempted to acclaim it a masterpiece. It catches movingly the grinding loneliness at the heart of American life—of life anywhere.” James Salter’s new novel is All That Is. “Reading Salter taught me to boil down my writing to its essence,” wrote Jhumpa Lahiri. “To insist upon the right words, and to remember that less is more. That great art can be wrought from quotidian life.”

It’s spring, take a walk over to the Strand and laugh uproariously for an hour as actor/writer Fred Stoller shares many a story from his touchingly funny memoir, Maybe We’ll Have You Back: The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star.

He’ll then chat with veteran actor Jerry Stiller (father of Ben Stiller) about the various ups and downs and ins and outs of the acting world.

Buy a copy of Maybe We’ll Have You Back: The Life of A Perennial TV Guest Star or a $15 Strand gift card in order to attend this event. All options admit one person. Please note that payment is required for all online event orders at the time of checkout.

The event will be located in the Strand's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at our store at 828 Broadway at 12th Street.

Her Royal Highness Princess Norodom Buppha Devi, Cambodia’s esteemed prima ballerina of the 1960s and a genuine pioneer in the revival and preservation of Cambodian classical court dance talks candidly about her art form, its mercilessly demanding training, and its warn-torn history with path-breaking theater and opera director Peter Sellars.

There will also be screenings of excerpts of the Library’s archival videotapes of the Royal Ballet of Cambodia and preview excerpts from the Khmer Dance Project, a program created by Anne H. Bass in conjunction with the Center for Khmer Studies and the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center.

This program is presented in conjunction with Season of Cambodia, an initiative of Cambodian Living Arts and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The White Swallow Reading Series

Reading featuring Fiona Maazel, David McConnell, Melinda Moustakis

Event Type: Reading; $8 cover includes house drink

The White Swallow Reading Series featuring Fiona Maazel, David McConnell, and Melinda Moustakis

Fiona Maazel is the author of the novels Last Last Chance (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008; Picador Paperback, 2009) and Woke Up Lonely (Graywolf, 2013). She is winner of the Bard Prize for Fiction and a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35″ honoree. Her work has appeared in Boston Book Review, Conjunctions, Fence, GQ, Glamour, The New York Times, The NY Times Sunday Book Review, Salon, This American Life, Tin House, The Village Voice, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at Brooklyn College, New York University, Columbia, and Princeton, and was appointed the Picador Guest Professor at the University of Leipzig, Germany, for the spring of 2012.



David McConnell is the author of The Silver Hearted, a novel, 2010, a finalist for the Lammy and Ferro-Grumley Awards. His novel The Firebrat came out in 2004. His short fiction and journalism have appeared widely in journals and anthologies. His latest book is American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage among Men, a literary take on "True Crime" non-fiction (Akashic, 2012). Sebastian Junger calls it "A stunning exploration of Manhood in America." Publishers Weekly describes it as a "Journalistic tour de force." And Evan Wright, author of Generation Kill, praises it as "A masterpiece of reportage."



Melinda Moustakis is the author of the debut collection Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories, which won the Flannery O' Connor Award. She was named a 2011 5 Under 35 writer by the National Book Foundation and is currently a Hodder Fellow at The Lewis Center of the Arts at Princeton University.


Hosted by Angelo Nikolopoulos

Details- $10 Members

$12 General Admission*

Free to Members of CFA

Purchase at www.centerforfiction.org or call (212) 755-6710

LOCATION: The Center for Fiction, 17 E 47th St between Fifth and Madison Aves (212-755-6710, www.centerforfiction.org).

Subway: B, D, F, M to 47-50th Sts-Rockefeller Center; 6, E, V to Lexington-Third Ave-51st St; 7, B, D, F, V to 42nd St-Fifth Ave-Sixth Ave.

As part of the Center's Crime Fiction Academy, acclaimed author, Lorenzo Carcaterra, will offer practical writing tips to budding authors while also giving insight to readers about his work.


Number-one New York Times bestselling author Lorenzo Carcaterra’s highly successful career spans more than thirty years of writing in the diverse fields of fiction, non-fiction, television, and film.

*There are no physical tickets available for events. The ticket purchaser's name will be at the door.

Number one New York Times bestselling author Lorenzo Carcaterra's highly successful career spans more than twenty years of writing for the diverse fields of fiction, non-fiction, television, and film.

Born and raised in New York's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood, Carcaterra landed his first job in the newspaper business as a copy boy for The New York Daily News in 1976. He worked his way up to entertainment reporter before leaving the paper in 1982, heading for the green pastures of then-Time Inc. and TV-Cable Week, as senior writer. Nine months later, the magazine folded, leaving him unemployed. A four-month stint at People Magazine was followed by an odyssey of writing for a string of start-up publications - Picture Week, Entertainment Tonight Magazine, Special Reports Magazine - and freelancing for dozens of others - The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Newsday Sunday Magazine, Family Circle, Ladies Home Journal, and Twilight Zone Magazine, among them.

Marilynne Robinson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and essayist and longtime faculty member at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, in a rare public appearance, speaking about her life and career. Robinson is one of the country’s most powerful literary voices. With her first novel, Housekeeping (1980), Robinson established herself as a commanding artistic and intellectual figure. Her subsequent work includes the novels Home and Gilead, which won the Pulitzer Prize. She has also received a National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the Orange Prize for Fiction, and the Grawemeyer Award in Religion.

$12 tickets online:

https://tix.smarttix.com/Modules/Sales/SalesMainTabsPage.aspx?ControlState=1&DateSelected=&DiscountCode=&SalesEventId=2088&DC=

or by phone: 212.868.4444

Join us in the Rare Book Room for an evening hosted by both the Strand Book Store and Bomb Magazine. Get away from the hustle-bustle of the city and relax while listening to three gifted writers, Rachel Kushner, Hari Kunru and Rivka Galchen have an engaging and provocative conversation about their writing and the state of the literary world.

Buy a $15 gift card in order to attend this event. All options admit one person. Please note that payment is required for all online event orders at the time of checkout. The event will be located in the Strand's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at our store at 828 Broadway at 12th Street.

Lili White will screen and discuss her film Fool’s Gold: California Roadtrip in an Election Year (2012).

Meet the Maker and Meet the Scholar series curated by David Callahan, Principal Librarian, Reserve Film and Video Collection.

THIS PROGRAM WILL TAKE PLACE ON THE 3RD FLOOR, SCREENING ROOM.

A mixed-genre novel, with science fiction elements - by an esteemed literary author.


Equilateral is an intellectual comedy set just before the turn of the century in Egypt. A British astronomer, Thayer, has come to believe that beings more highly evolved than us are alive on Mars. He gets the support and funding for a massive project to build the Equilateral, a triangle with sides hundreds of miles long, to signal to them that we are here too. But as work progresses, the Egyptian workers, less "evolved" than the British, are also less than cooperative, and a bout of malaria that seems to activate at the worst moments makes it all much more confusing and complex than Thayer ever imagined.

Ken Kalfus is the author of the short story collections, Thirst and PU-239 and Other Russian Fantasies,

as well as two previous novels, The Commissariat of Enlightenment and A Disorder Peculiar to the Country.

Keith Gessen is a Russian-born American novelist (All the Sad Young Literary Men) and translator. He is co-editor of n+1 magazine.

Widely acclaimed author Claire Messud will read from and discuss her latest novel, The Woman Upstairs.


About The Woman Upstairs

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Emperor's Children, a brilliant new novel: the riveting confession of a woman awakened, transformed, and betrayed by passion and desire for a world beyond her own.

Nora Eldridge, a thirty-seven-year-old elementary school teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who long ago abandoned her ambition to be a successful artist, has become the "woman upstairs," a reliable friend and tidy neighbor always on the fringe of others' achievements. Then into her classroom walks Reza Shahid, a child who enchants as if from a fairy tale. He and his parents—dashing Skandar, a Lebanese scholar and professor at the École Normale Supérleure; and Sirena, an effortlessly glamorous Italian artist—have come to Boston for Skandar to take up a fellowship at Harvard. When Reza is attacked by schoolyard bullies who call him a "terrorist," Nora is drawn into the complex world of the Shahid family: she finds herself falling in love with them, separately and together. Nora's happiness explodes her boundaries, until Sirena's careless ambition leads to a shattering betrayal. Told with urgency, intimacy, and piercing emotion, this story of obsession and artistic fulfillment explores the thrill—and the devastating cost—of giving in to one's passions.


Claire Messud was educated at Cambridge and Yale. Her first novel, When the World Was Steady, and her most recent book, The Hunters, were both finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award; her second novel, The Last Life, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and Editor's Choice at The Village Voice. All three of her books were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Radcliffe Fellowship, and is the current recipient of the Straus Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with her husband and children.

FREE - 1st Floor Corner Room doors open at 2:00 p.m.

Artist Tamara Gonzales and writer and artist Sharon Butler discuss the ideas behind Gonzales’s paintings and her pinkpurple Tumblr site pinkpurplefeeder.tumblr.com, her site-specific installation for Art in The Corner Room and the artists' books and zines by Brian Belott, Pam Butler, Tamara Gonzales, Maggie Lee, Craig Olson, and Elisa Soliven for Art in the Windows exhibition series. The zine party follows the dialogue.

Part love song, part howl, part incantation, “Inbetweenland” is the first book-length collection of Jacks McNamara’s poems, prose, and hybrid experiments in the neon vernacular of being alive. Mapping out radical trajectories through loss, violence, and queer desire, McNamara creates a luminous archive of survival and resilience in a self-destructing world. Jacks McNamara is a queer writer, artist, activist, educator, performer, and somatic healing practitioner living in Oakland, CA. Jacks is the co-founder of The Icarus Project and the subject of the poetic documentary film “Crooked Beauty.” Jacks is joined by queer femme liberationist artist Damien Luxe and writer, performer, arts educator and sex nerd Victor Tobar.

Join Biblioasis for the New York launch of Mia Couto’s The Tuner of Silences, recently hailed as “a true

tour-de-force of modern African writing” (Words Without Borders) and “the biggest event in international

literature this season” (L’Humanité). Couto, the first African author to receive the Latin Union Award

of Romance Languages and the best-selling author of 25 books, has been translated into 20 languages

worldwide. The evening will feature a reading and signing as well as an on-stage interview.

“To understand what makes António “Mia” Emílio Leite Couto special—even extraordinary—we have

to loosen our grip on the binary that distinguishes between “the West” and “Africa." Couto is “white”

without not being African, and as an “African” writer he’s one of the most important figures in a global

Lusophone literature that stretches across three continents.”

—THE NEW INQUIRY, April 2013

ABOUT MIA COUTO

Mia Couto, born in Mozambique in 1955, dropped out of medical school in his teens to join the

struggle against Portuguese colonialism. When Mozambique became independent in 1975, Couto

was named Director of Information in the revolutionary government, and served as editor of two

newspapers. In the 1980s he returned to university to study environmental biology. Two of Couto’s

novels have been made into feature films and his books have been bestsellers in Africa, Europe and

South America. In 2002, a committee of African literary critics named his novel Sleepwalking Land one

of the twelve best African books of the twentieth century. His novels have been awarded major literary

prizes in Mozambique, Portugal, Brazil and Italy.

ABOUT ANDERSON TEPPER

Anderson Tepper is on the staff of Vanity Fair and has written on books and authors for a variety of

publications, including the New York Times Book Review, Tin House, Words without Borders, and Paris

Review Daily. He is also on advisory committees for both the Brooklyn Book Festival’s international

stage and PEN World Voices, where he has moderated conversations with authors such as Nuruddin

Two contemporary literary masters—Aleksandar Hemon, novelist and MacArthur “genius grant” recipient, and the Graduate Center’s André Aciman, celebrated memoirist and novelist—discuss their forthcoming books.

Free; registration required.

Tickets online: https://community.gc.cuny.edu/hemon_aciman

or by phone: 212-817-8215.

Why is one piece of art more disturbing than another? Why is some sexual content too graphic? Where do we draw the line? And why do we draw it? Come to our panel of artists who’ve thought about this issue, and have pushed the envelope time and time again hoping to keep their work clear of imposed limitations. Joining us will be; Svetlana Mintcheva, the Program Director of the National Coalition Against Censorship and the author of Exposing the Censor Within; Jonathan Ames, known for his column about his sexual exploits in the New York Press, the author of eight books including Wake Up Sir! and The Alcoholic; Carolee Schneemann, an artist whose work has redefined discourse surrounding the body, sexuality and gender in art; Anthony Haden-Guest, who has written several books including True Colors: The Real Life of the Art World and The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco and The Culture of the Night; Heide Hatry, a visual artist and curator, whose work challenges our perceptions of organs and flesh. Her books include Heads and Tales, Skin, and Not A Rose; Gene Guberman is a practicing psychoanalyst who will take a more scientific approach to the subject of why we’re drawn to the illicit, the forbidden, and why we censor ourselves.

Buy a $15 Strand gift card in order to attend this event. All options admit one person. Please note that payment is required for all online event orders at the time of checkout. The event will be located in the Strand's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at our store at 828 Broadway at 12th Street