A large swatch of artist Laurel Nakadate's work features performances in which she performs acts with strangers—and videotapes them. Nakadate recently discussed her work at UnionDocs as part of New York's " Walls and Bridges " conference.
On Thursday, a conversation about censorship, art and morality took place at the New School's Arnold Hall between two American authors and a pair of French philosophers. The discussion was part of the Walls and Bridges lecture series.
On Saturday, May 26, " The Writers Studio Reading Series " celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Yale Review , with authors who have some connection to the quarterly. The lineup of authors, including Louise Glück , Caryl Phillips , Edmund White and Michael Cunningham , read from their works at Le Poisson Rouge . All of the readers—with the exception of Edmund White, who has been published in the journal—teach at Yale....
Tennessee Williams, perhaps best-known for his plays "Streetcar Named Desire," "The Glass Menagerie," and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," is the author of a "massive body of work," in the words of N.Y.U. drama professor Joe E. Jeffreys. On the occasion of the centennial of Williams' birth—the playwright was born March 26, 1911—Jeffreys hosted the first of a three-part series at Manhattan's Museum of Arts and Design entitled The Kindness of Strangeness . (Williams fans will recognize the title of the pa...
Anticipation was high at the Story Prize event at The New School's Tishman Auditorium last week. The three Story Prize finalists—Anthony Doerr ( "Memory Wall "), Yiyun Li (" Gold Boy, Emerald Girl ") and Suzanne Rivecca (" Death is Not an Option ") read from their short story collections, knowing that, at the conclusion of the reading, one of them would win $20,000. Anthony Doerr came out the winner....
Nearly two feet of newly fallen snow proved little obstacle for fans to clap their eyes on musician Bill Callahan on a recent winter's night. Callahan, known to many by the name Smog, drew a hip crowd to Spoonbill and Sugartown in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for a reading from his novel, Letters to Emma Bowlcut . The book, read in the author’s halting, sonorous voice, consists of correspondence written by a man to a woman he met at a party. Readers aren’t provided much context for the meeting but ca...
English writer Zadie Smith has accomplished so much in the past 11 years. Her first novel, White Teeth , was published in 2000 before she even turned 25. Now, she's got two additional novels, a number of short stories, and a growing body of criticism under her belt. Smith was also named a tenured creative writing professor at New York University last September and was recently made the critic for Harper's Magazine's "New Books" column....
"World leaders need to answer to artists." This was the rallying cry of Natalia Kaliada, artistic director of the Belarus Free Theatre , at a benefit for the embattled dissident troupe organized by the PEN American Center that was held at Le Poisson Rouge on Wednesday. She added “politicians do not have steps; they have just words.”
At last month's True Story: Non-Fiction at KGB Bar, famed essayist, journalist and critic Vivian Gornick talked about womanhood, working and life as a woman worker. KGB curator Erin Edmison introduced the night with a story of how she came to first read Gornick's work.
Two is a famously bad age for toddlers, but it seems to be a prime number for a reading series marking a rite of passage—in this case, the celebration this past Wednesday of the Happy Ending Music and Reading Series’ two-year anniversary at Joe’s Pub.
The theme of the Happy Ending event at Joe's Pub on November 10th was dreams and ambitions. Jennifer Egan , Julia Holmes and Teddy Wayne read from their new novels, which offer unconventional views of success, explore what it means, and consider whether success can make us happy.
In the latest episode of KGB's non-fiction reading series, Dan Charnas read from his forthcoming book "The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop." Charnas' book, out next month, examines how hip-hop originated in the ghettos of 1970s New York to become one of the world's predominant pop-culture as well as a multi-billion dollar businesses. Also at KGB, Sara Marcus read from her book "Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrl Movement Revolution." The book tells the brash ...
Lady Antonia Fraser recently took the New York Public Library (NYPL) stage elegantly poised and eager to spellbind the audience with tales from her memoir, "Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter."
When it comes to things that go bump in the night, or things that bump each other off in the night, Otto Penzler is the man. The proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop purveys classic and contemporary crime novels, chillers, and thrillers, but in recent years has also become a kind of anthology Master of Ceremonies, rounding up choice selections in such genres as pulp and vampire fiction. Most recently, he has curated two volumes in Houghton Mifflin’s “Best American” series—“The Best American Mys...
When did the undead become so popular? Vampires used to lurk on the fringes of pop culture: but these days they are heroes, heartthrobs, and the family next door.
This year’s New Yorker Festival featured a panel on gay marriage--an appropriate topic given this month's onslaught of gay hate crimes, suicides and statements from elected officials about gay rights. The longstanding fight over same-sex marriage between gay rights activists and conservative politicians is now more heated than ever. The New Yorker Festival’s panel on gay marriage was a timely discussion that laid out current arguments from both sides.
In the latest episode of KGB's non-fiction reading series, Moustafa Bayoumi read from his book, " How Does it Feel to be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America ."
If anything could create a heated debate at 10 AM on a Saturday morning it would be politics. And of all the politics around, the Tea Party is almost guaranteed to fan the fire.
Readings from a memory champion and about a champion of recorded memories.
On Sunday, a line of rain-sopped literary types wrapped around the block to hear British-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie speak to Indian poet and novelist Tishani Doshi at Brooklyn's St. Francis College auditorium. After an hour wait, the crowd finally shuffled in to shake out their umbrellas and hear the writers talk. The event, which was part of the 2010 Brooklyn Book Festival, started off with remarks from Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. His introduction got a round of applause in ...
The Happy Ending Reading and Music Series ended its season on a fantastical note, in a program promising “Metaphors and Epiphanies.”
45 years after Martin Luther King Jr. led 25,000 marchers to the state capitol in Montgomery Alabama to protest denial of voting right to African Americans, the Bronx Museum is paying tribute to this historic event with photographic exhibit “Road to Freedom: The Civil Rights Movement 1958-1968 and Beyond." Earlier this spring, several artists and photographers came together at The New School to discuss the works and their context.
Even in wartime, you have to eat, and two writers tell us how they lived and dined in the Middle East at a reading at KGB .
If you only know one thing about Neil deGrasse Tyson (The Director of the Hayden Planetarium at The American Museum of Natural History ) it is probably that he was the man who outraged a lot of people when he demoted Pluto—it’s not a planet anymore.
If you know what 33 1/3 means, you're either over sixty, an audiophile, or a DJ.
In many countries that have been wracked by ethnic cleansing or a civil war, the victims of torture, and the people who tortured them, still live too close for comfort.
PEN often advocates for writers wrongfully imprisoned for politically reasons, but also chose to devote a panel at its recent World Voices Festival to writers from the more traditional prison community.
It’s hard to image anyone could get in serious trouble for appearing on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show , but it happened last year to the journalist Maziar Bahari.
The Poetry Project held a reading on a recent humid Wednesday evening at St. Mark's Church in the East Village featuring the contemporary poets Matvei Yankelevich and Robert Fitterman. Both poets are somewhat topical in their subject matter. Yankelevich balances idealism with irony in the treatment of his hip themes, while Fitterman favors humor with a hint of self-deprecation. The room was packed. Use the player above to listen to the entire event....
Writers Sharifa Rhodes-Pitt and Alice Albinia both write about their journeys and, appropriately enough, met in India while travelling. A mutual acquaintance suggested that Sharifa contact Alice and one day, despite not being in the habit of contacting strangers, she called Alice. They’ve been friends ever since, and joined together to read from their respective works at True Story: The KGB Bar's Nonfiction Reading Series.
