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Michael Ondaatje on "Warlight: A Novel" at the 2018 Miami Book Fair interviewed by Jeffrey Brown.
From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of The English Patient: a mesmerizing new novel that tells a dramatic story set in the decade after World War II through the lives of a small group of unexpected characters and two teenagers whose lives are indelibly shaped by their unwitting involvement.
In a narrative as beguiling and mysterious as memory itself—shadowed and luminous at once—we read the story of fourteen-year-old Nathaniel, and his older sister, Rachel. In 1945, just after World War II, they stay behind in London when their parents move to Singapore, leaving them in the care of a mysterious figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and they grow both more convinced and less concerned as they come to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women joined by a shared history of unspecified service during the war, all of whom seem, in some way, determined now to protect, and educate (in rather unusual ways) Rachel and Nathaniel. But are they really what and who they claim to be? And what does it mean when the siblings' mother returns after months of silence without their father, explaining nothing, excusing nothing? A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all that he didn't know and understand in that time, and it is this journey—through facts, recollection, and imagination—that he narrates in this masterwork from one of the great writers of our time. 
The inimitable Paul Auster launches the limited edition manuscript of his New York Trilogy with fellow author Luc Sante at the Strand’s Rare Book Room. Paul will undoubtedly share never before seen or heard thoughts of The New York Trilogy's journey from infancy to publication.
Some words about the limited edition manuscript:
Specialized in the reproduction of major manuscripts, SP Books are happy to present three drafts from Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. In 2014 the publisher went to the New York Public Library to explore the papers of one of our greatest contemporary writers, Paul Auster. This colossal archive bears witness to the evolution of a novel, the generation of a publication through all its intermediary stages, from beginning to end.
After summarily sketching out the plot, he writes his first versions in notebooks which represent weeks, months, or years of his life. There are usually around ten handwritten and as many as three typewritten drafts of a single text, the latter containing numerous corrections in pen. The document he hands his publisher is the final version of a text that has gone through many incarnations.
A veritable time capsule, the book contains hand- and typewritten manuscripts of The New York Trilogy, carefully selected in cooperation with Paul Auster to shed light on this major work’s architecture. The first, a handwritten sketch of City of Glass, entitled New York Confidential, is followed by a nearly definitive typewritten version of Ghosts, initially called Black Outs, and a quite advanced manuscript of The Locked Room, whose first title was Ghosts. Like Mr. Auster’s enigmatic New York, this is “an inexhaustible space, a labyrinth of endless steps”.
Paul Auster is the bestselling author of “Winter Journal,” “Sunset Park,” “Invisible,” “The Book of Illusions,” and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. He has been awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, the Prix Médicis étranger, an Independent Spirit Award, and the Premio Napoli. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Luc Sante's books include “Low Life,” “Evidence,” “The Factory of Facts,” “Kill All Your Darlings,” and “The Other Paris.” He teaches at Bard. 
The Writers Studio, in partnership with The Strand Bookstore, is pleased to present The Pushcart Prize XLIII - Best of the Small Presses 2019. Published every year since 1976, The Pushcart Prize is the most honored literary project in America, featuring hundreds of presses and writers of short stories, poetry, and essays in its annual collections.
Come together and connect with our writers' community, with readings by:
Cortney Lamar Charleston
Rick Moody
Thylias Moss
Oliver de la Paz
Marisa Silver
Introduction by founder/editor Bill Henderson.
Cortney Lamar Charleston is the author of Telepathologies, selected by D.A. Powell for the 2016 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. He was awarded a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and he has also received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Conversation Literary Festival and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. His poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, New England Review, AGNI, TriQuarterly and elsewhere. He serves as a poetry editor at The Rumpus.
Rick Moody is the author of The Ice Storm, Demonology, Hotels of North America, and many other books. He writes about music at The Rumpus and has an advice column at LitHub.
Thylias Moss, prize-winning multiracial maker, has won a number of awards beginning in 1983 with her poem, “Coming of Age in Sandusky,” for which she received $25.00 from the Cleveland, Ohio Public Library. Since then, she has authored a total of 15 books, most of which have won awards, notably, a MacArthur Genius Fellowship, and two finalist awards from the National Book Critics Circle Award. She will be featuring her novel in verse, Slave Moth written by a literate slave girl, “Varl,” a collection she needed to make after a visit to her son’s middle school, a trip that necessitated her making the dress on the cover, by hand in the dark.
Oliver de la Paz is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Requiem for the Orchard, winner of the Akron Prize for Poetry. His honors include a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Award and a 2009 GAP Grant from Artist Trust. His work has appeared in literary journals and magazines including Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House, Chattahoochee Review, and in anthologies such as Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation.
Marisa Silver is the author of four novels, including Little Nothing and Mary Coin, and two collections of short stories. In 2017, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work has received the Ohioana Book Prize, the Southern California Independent Bookseller Award, and the O. Henry Award. Her short fiction has been published in the New Yorker, as well as other journals, and has been included in The Best American Short Stories and other anthologies. She is a 2018-19 New York Public Library Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow during which time she’ll be working on a new novel, The Mysteries.
Founded in 1987 by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Philip Schultz, The Writers Studio is an independent creative writing program, offering six and eight-week workshops specializing in topics from the necessity of political fiction to writers beginning in their fifties. The classes, which meet in New York City, San Francisco, Tucson, the Hudson Valley and Online utilize an original teaching method which combines technique-based instruction with personal weekly feedback. Since its inception in 1990, The Writers Studio Reading Series has featured numerous writers and poets, including Lydia Davis, Junot Diaz, Andre Dubus III, Jennifer Egan, Mary Gaitskill, Julia Glass, Edward Hirsch, A.M. Homes, Etgar Keret, Marie Ponsot, Robert Pinsky, Gary Shteyngart, Colson Whitehead, and Yehuda Amichai. www.writerstudio.com Acclaimed scholar and humanist Martha C. Nussbaum turns her attention to the current political climate crisis of party polarization, divisive rhetoric, and the increasing inability of two halves of the country to communicate with one another in her most recent work, The Monarchy of Fear. At the heart of the problem, Nussbaum sees a simple truth: The political is always emotional, and the psychological constant of fear of the other will always be at-the-ready to fuel the fires of anger, disgust, envy, and blame. Drawing on a mix of historical and contemporary examples, from classical Athens to the musical Hamilton, Nussbaum will discuss the emotions behind our political culture, and suggest a roadmap for where we might go next. 
Self-Exposure is the autobiography of celebrated American art photographer Ralph Gibson. With his 80th birthday on the horizon in January 2019 and a career spanning over 50 years, Gibson is at a point of reflection in his life and work and decided to put pen to paper.
Writing in candid prose, Gibson takes the reader through his life and career from his earliest memories of growing up in California (the son of a Hollywood director, Gibson's childhood is touched by the old glamour of the silver screen: the likes of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth make appearances) to his time in the navy and his continuous love affair with photography.
Gibson's memories are filled with rich characters and period details. Often moving, the narratives of his at times troublesome childhood provide a rich background to the charismatic artist Gibson has become. Gibson covers a range of topics such as music, Catholicism, his wife, Mary Jane, and a long line of fellow artists and photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Robert Frank. His ruminations on his life so far display a deep, thoughtful understanding and self-awareness that make this book a fascinating read in itself as well as an illuminating companion to his work.
What emerges is an insight into the mind of an incredible, highly decorated artist. Evocatively illustrated, Self-Exposure presents Gibson's life story alongside his photographic work. Designed and produced in close collaboration with Gibson, this large-format publication—as much a biography as it is an artist's book—is Gibson's most personal book to date.
Join us as Ralph shares his latest work with fellow artist Laurie Anderson.
Ralph Gibson was born in Los Angeles in 1939. In 1956 he enlisted in the navy, where he began studying photography. His work is widely exhibited and held in public collections around the world, such as the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Laurie Anderson is a American avant-garde artist, composer, musician and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and sculpting, Anderson pursued a variety of performance art projects in New York during the 1970s, focusing particularly on language, technology, and visual imagery.