Marie-Helene Bertino launched her debut novel, 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas last night at Greenlight Bookstore. Vintage jazz band Lapis Luna began the evening setting the mood for Bertino’s novel that takes place in The Cat’s Pajama’s, a Philadelphia jazz club. Bertino, who previously published the short story collection Safe as Houses (2012), celebrated the novel’s launch with a reading that included a dozen guest readers each sharing a portion of the opening chapter.

More »

Although we often focus on New York City’s literary scene, countless events occur elsewhere. Newark, New Jersey is home to Brick City Speaks (BCS), a new series hosted on the second Monday of every month, one of many exciting readings that take place in that city. Like other Newark series, BCS creates a community for writers and linguaphiles. BCS also links the students and instructors of Rutgers University with the City of Newark. BCS takes place in Hell’s Kitchen Lounge, located on Lafayette Street, concurrent with Margarita Monday. Hell’s Kitchen is a popular bar in Newark and frequently hosts various events, including comedy and burlesque shows. It was an ideal choice for reading series co-founders, Ines Lopes and Marina Carreira.

More »

Paul Rome’s debut novel We All Sleep In The Same Room captures emotional chilliness of two people distanced from each other by the grinding banality of their lives raising a son in a single bedroom apartment. Catherine Lacey’s Nobody is Ever Missing explores similar emotional distance, though in the case of her narrator, the distance is also a physical one; Elyria taking flight to New Zealand. Both authors sat down at McNally Jackson with Soho Press editor Mark Doten for a conversation about their books.

More »

Edan Lepucki and Emma Straub have been friends since they attended Oberlin College together. Both women released novels this year, and McNally Jackson hosted them to talk about their books and friendship in the literary world. David Gutowksi introduced the writers.

More »

It’s clear which camp has claimed me. I’m messy by nature, born with a high tolerance for stacks of teetering books on the floor, scraps of fabric and sequins piled in the corner, overstuffed bulletin boards with layers upon layers of postcards, photographs, ticket stubs. Not quite a hoarder, but hoard-ish—and the same goes for my drafts.

More »

WORD Bookstore hosted Amy Sohn to talk about her latest novel, The Actress, (July 2014), with Choire Sicha, co-proprietor of The Awl. Sohn provided pierogies from a neighborhood restaurant and Sicha set the mood as casual, insisting members of the audience should call out questions or comments they pair could answer or refute.

More »

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.

More »

If there is a literary equivalent of a shock-jock radio D.J., it might be Emily Gould, the essayist, memoirist, and blogger known for honest confessionalism, sometimes criticized as bordering on narcissism. Her 2010 collection of personal essays And the Heart Says Whatever earned her a $200,000 advance, and then the book flopped, as she describes in the essay “How Much my Novel Cost Me.” Gould now returns with a new book, the novel Friendship, but the distinction between fictional and nonfictional narrative remains insignificant. Gould pulls inspiration from her own life and that of her close friends creating a story of the friendship of two young women as they bumble through their twenties in New York City. Comparisons have been drawn to Lena Dunham’s Girls, though perhaps without the glitz and glitter of an HBO set. While Dunham’s girls’ blunders transpire across the Disneyland like paradise of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, a romanticized version of an already saccharine sweet world, Gould’s young women, Amy and Bev, find themselves in the distinctly less glamorous if equally expensive brownstone neighborhoods of Brooklyn.

More »