There’s been some good buzz around the reading series Soul Sister Revue, curated by the poet Cynthia Manick. I was eager to see how the series has taken shape since its early shows at Cornelia Street Café and the New York Poetry Festival.

I headed to Hi-Fi in the East Village on a recent Tuesday night. The back-room felt intimate in an old-school-Village kind of way, complete with red brick and a tiny stage.

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On January 21, The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) named its finalists for the publishing year 2014 in the categories of poetry, criticism, biography, autobiography, nonfiction and fiction. On the evening of March 11, those finalists read their work to a packed New School auditorium, and on the evening of March 12, one finalist from […]

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Thomas Page McBee, a long time columnist at The Rumpus, read from his memoir Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man. He was joined at WORD Bookstore in Brooklyn by poet and Buzzfeed editor Saeed Jones, author of the collection Prelude to Bruise.

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New York might get a bad rap for sky-high rents, but at least it isn’t Antwerp. Antwerp in the 1860’s, that is. A vitriolic diatribe written by Charles Baudelaire against the defenseless little country of Belgium appears in the latest issue of the Pushcart Prize-hoarding magazine Conjunctions. According to Baudelaire, the 19th century poet and essayist, low rents were the only things the “ragamuffin” of a state had going for it in the mid-1800’s.

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At a time when the independent bookstore has been under scrutiny—Julie Bosman of The New York Times, most notably, investigated whether the burgeoning rent costs would drive sellers out of Manhattan—McNally Jackson Books and Housing Works joined together to host the Second Annual Downtown Literary Festival on Sunday, April 13th. Though there were moments when the young age of the festival showed a bit (some events were simply more organized and better prepared than others), the joint McNally Jackson and Housing Works production succeeded in displaying the vibrant literary culture that still exists around Houston Street, adding, in its own way, to the recent trend of criticism and analyses that has centered on Manhattan as the “Writer Mecca” of the United States.

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The Poetry Society of America brought together poets Ana Božičević and Ann Lauterbach for a reading at McNally Jackson Books. The reading was the third in a series organized by the Poetry Society of America. Previous readers from the series included Angelo Nikolopoulos paired with C. K. Williams and Nick Laird paired with Meghan O’Rourke.

Ana Božičević read from her latest collection, Rise in the Fall, published by Birds. Božičević and her little dog Klaus took to the stage to read, Klaus secure in her purse. She explained that she snuck the dog in, and that it was his first poetry reading. Klaus was well behaved.

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Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop, one of the only all-poetry book shops in the nation—nay, the world!—had its triumphant grand opening a weekend ago. The day was full of cheer, liquid cheer, fellowship, books and chapbooks, and some two dozen readings. Everyone went home happy and fulfilled.

But I missed that. This is not about that.

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The New York Foundation of the Arts hosted Rigoberto González at the 86th Street Barnes and Noble in promotion of his new book, Autobiography of My Hungers. González is a poet, essayist, fiction author, young adult fiction author, book reviewer and professor at Rutgers University. Autobiography of My Hungers is a series of flash prose memoir vignettes that delve into personal moments from González’s life.

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