Garth Rish Hallberg’s debut novel is 900-plus-page epic. City On Fire chronicles nine principal characters through 1970s New York City. He read from the work and took questions at BookCourt last week.
Rick Moody was at BookCourt last week to read from his latest novel, Hotels of North America. The novel creates a narrative through the online hotel reviews left by protagonist Reginald Edward Morse.
Owen Sheers is a poet, playwright, and novelist. He has worked with British war veterans producing a play retelling their traumas. His latest novel, I Saw a Man follows the healing process of Michael Marshall widowed when his journalist wife is killed on assignment in Pakistan. He discussed the novel at McNally Jackson Books with Joshua Ferris, author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour.
Kevin Powell is a poet, activist, former candidate for Congress, author, and even once starred in a reality television show before reality television was a thing. His memoir The Education of Kevin Powell follows in the tradition of other autobiographies and traces his origins in Jersey City to his life in Brooklyn. He was a Greenlight Bookstore to discuss the book with journalist Ted Hamm.
The New York City Reading Series Census is an ongoing project to catalogue the contemporary literary scene. Any reading series curator in the New York area can take the survey here.
What is the name of the series, and what is the significance or meaning of the series name?
The Hustle is a new reading series that brings writers together to talk about hustling: what hours they keep, how they pay the bills, how they write, how they read and more.
The New York City Reading Series Census is an ongoing project to catalogue the contemporary literary scene. Any reading series curator in the New York area can take the survey here.
What is the name of the series, and what is the significance or meaning of the series name?
The First Person Plural Reading Series—Harlem was founded in 2011 with the hope of bringing more attention to creative communities in Harlem. We began this series by inviting inventive, inspiring writers and artists to showcase work written from a “we” or plural POV. We are interested in the “we” because we contend that the “I” does not exist in any sort of truthful singularity. We are interested in the collective as it manifests in all temporary forms, collaboration as it evidences moving through disagreement, and community as it situates itself locally despite all efforts to stretch it past its thinnest point.