Events (Chronological)
On the Comic Novel with Sam Lipsyte and Jess Walter
Friday, September 10th at 7pm
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Wry, bitter, and laugh-out-loud funny. Authors Jess Walter and Sam Lipsyte come together to discuss their brilliant comic novels. Walter chronicles the descent of his protagonist from journalist to neighborhood drug dealer in his darkly funny, yet tender novel The Financial Lives of the Poets. Lipsyte’s latest novel, The Ask, follows Milo Burke, a failed painter from queens who works in the development office of a mediocre college, as he makes “the ask” of his life.
Jess Walter is the author of The Zero, a finalist for the National Book Award; Citizen Vince, a winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel; Land of the Blind; and Over Tumbled Graves, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The Financial Lives of the Poets is his latest novel.
Sam Lipsyte is the author of the story collection Venus Drive (named one of the top 25 books of the year by the Voice Literary Supplement) and the novels, The Subject Steve and Home Land, which was a New York Times Notable Book and received the first annual Believer Book Award. The Ask is his newest book.Conjugal Lit with Lore Segal, Gary Giddins, Brenda Wineapple, Stephen Koch Moderated by James Marcus
Wednesday, September 22 at 7:00pm
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What books have the smartest things to say about conjugal love? Our panel of critics and writers gather together to discuss love and literature from Shakespeare to Jacqueline Susann.
Lore Segal is the author of four works of fiction, the most recent being Shakespeare’s Kitchen, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She has also translated and written several children’s books, including an award-winning version of Grimm’s fairy tales illustrated by Maurice Sendak.
Gary Giddins is the author of Visions of Jazz, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1998, as well as several other volumes of criticism, including Warning Shadows: Home Alone with Classic Cinema.
Brenda Wineapple’s White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson was finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2008. Her other books include biographies of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Janet Flanner, and that immortal and eccentric sister-and-brother team, Leo and Gertrude Stein.
Stephen Koch’s most recent book is The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of Jose Robles. He is also the author of Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Munzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals, as well as two novels and a study of Andy Warhol.
James Marcus is on the board of the National Book Critics Circle and oversees its NBCC Reads series. He is an editor at the Columbia Journalism Review and the author of a memoir, Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot-Com Juggernaut, as well as six translations from the Italian.
An Evening of Villains with Slice
Thursday, September 30th at 7:00pm
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Slice, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit print magazine, is the brainchild of two book editors with a firsthand view of how difficult it is for new authors to have their voices heard. In each issue, a specific cultural theme becomes the catalyst for short stories, articles, interviews, and poems from renowned writers and lesser-known voices alike. Issue 7 celebrates the theme of villains and features interviews with Kathryn Stockett, Alan Moore, Tana French, and Jonathan Safran Foer. Tonight’s reading will feature contributors from Issue 7 and previous issues.
M. Eileen Cronin was awarded a Washington Writing Prize in Short Fiction and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Third Coast, Bellevue Literary Review, Literary Review, Coe Review, and G.W. Review, as well as the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. She’s a clinical psychologist and an assistant editor for Narrative magazine.
Jared Harel’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in such literary journals as the Fiddlehead, Quarterly West, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Notre Dame Review, New York Quarterly, Barrow Street, and Rattle. He earned his MFA in poetry from Cornell University and currently teaches creative writing and composition.
Sarah Lynn Knowles works in book production in New York City. Her work has been featured in Perigee, Ducts, Two Hundred by 200, Submit Magazine, Spires, Film & History, Venus Zine, and several self-produced zines. She currently runs Brooklyn-based pop culture blog Sarahspy.com and edits online art/literary/music journal Storychord.com.
Sam J. Miller is a writer, a community organizer, and the coeditor of Horror After 9/11, a critical anthology forthcoming from the University of Texas Press in the fall of 2011. His work has appeared in literary journals such as the Minnesota Review, Fiction International, Washington Square, Gargoyle, Fourteen Hills, and the Rumpus.
Michael Paul Thomas received his MFA from Syracuse University, where he was the founding editor of Syracuse’s literary magazine, Salt Hill. He teaches literature and creative writing at Monmouth University and lives in Asbury Park, New Jersey.
Kristie Wang received an MFA in fiction writing from Cornell University and a BA in English from UCLA. Currently living in San Francisco, Kristie is at work on a novel about Dutch missionaries in colonial Taiwan.
On the Well-Tempered Sentence with Gary Lutz, Ben Marcus, John Haskell, Christine Schutt
Moderated by John Madera
Wednesday, October 6th at 7:00pm
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Four exacting craftsmen of the sentence discuss writing at its most basic level. Critic, writer, and editor John Madera will lead this panel on one of the most critical parts of narrative.
John Haskell is the author of American Purgatorio, I Am Not Jackson Pollock, and Out of My Skin. A contributor to the radio program The Next Big Thing, he lives in Brooklyn.
Gary Lutz is the author of three short-story collections: Stories in the Worst Way, I Looked Alive, and Partial List of People to Bleach. Lutz has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
Ben Marcus is the author of three books of fiction: Notable American Women, The Father Costume, and The Age of Wire and String. In 2008 he received the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Christine Schutt is the author of the short-story collections A Night, A Day, Another Night, Summer and Nightwork, chosen by poet John Ashbery as the best book of 1996 for The Times Literary Supplement. Her first novel, Florida, was a 2004 National Book Award finalist. Her new novel, All Souls, is out now from Harcourt.
John Madera's work has been published in The Brooklyn Rail, Opium Magazine, Rain Taxi: Review of Books, and The Review of Contemporary Fiction; and is forthcoming in Conjunctions and The Believer. He's senior flash fiction editor at JMWW and his column, "A Reader's Log(orrhea)," may be found at The Nervous Breakdown.
Matthew Sharpe and Linh Dinh, A Literary Friendship
Thursday, October 7th at 7:00pm
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Friends and fellow writers Sharpe and Dinh discuss their dark and poignant novels. You Were Wrong, Matthew Sharpe’s new book, tells the story of high school math teacher Karl Floor who gets entangled in the life of a mysterious stranger he meets when she’s robbing his house. Linh Dinh’s debut novel Love Like Hate follows the unsentimental journey of a couple that have married in Saigon during the Vietnam War.
Matthew Sharpe is the author of the novels Jamestown, The Sleeping Father, and Nothing Is Terrible, as well as the short-story collection Stories from the Tube. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Magazine, Zoetrope, BOMB, McSweeney’s, and Art on Paper.
A recipient of a Pew Fellowship, the David T. Wong Fellowship, and the Asian American Literary Award, Linh Dinh is the author of two collections of stories, Fake House and Blood and Soap; and five books of poems, All Around What Empties Out, American Tatts, Borderless Bodies, Jam Alerts and Some Kind of Cheese Orgy.
In the Time of the Girls with Anne Germanacos
Tuesday, October 12th at 7pm
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Anne Germanacos explores ancient myths and contemporary America while also blurring the line between poetry and fiction. Oedipus is cured of blindness while living in a house full of cats, an icon of the Virgin Mary talks to an anthropologist, and a girl named Hera loves junk food.
Francine Prose
Wednesday, October 13th at 7pm
$10 General Admission, Members Free
Or donate a book to our Books for NYC Schools Program
Francine Prose is the author of many bestselling books of fiction, including A Changed Man and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Household Saints, which was adapted for a movie by Nancy Savoca. Her latest book Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife was published in 2009.
10-Year Anniversary Party for Starcherone Books
Featuring Readings by Donald Breckenridge, Joshua Cohen, Joshua Harmon, Janet Mitchell, Thaddeus Rutkowski, and Ted Pelton
Thursday, October 14th at 7pm
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Starcherone (pronounced “start-your-own”) Books is a nonprofit small press based in Buffalo, NY, with a mission to publish innovative fiction. As novelist Carole Maso recently said, "How very lucky we are to have Starcherone Press in the firmament! It casts light in every direction and is becoming, with a handful of others, one of the great hopes for the future of American literature." This reading is a celebration of this unique press’s tenth anniversary with some of its finest authors.
Donald Breckenridge is the fiction editor of The Brooklyn Rail, editor of The Brooklyn Rail Fiction Anthology and co-editor of the Intranslation web site. He is the author of more than a dozen plays, the novella Rockaway Wherein, the novels 6/2/95, You Are Here, and This Young Girl Passing.
Joshua Cohen is the author of six books, most recently the 800-page novel, Witz, and the short story chapbook, Bridge & Tunnel (& Tunnel & Bridge).
Joshua Harmon is the author of Quinnehtukqut, a novel, and Scape, a poetry collection. Quinnehtukqut was a finalist for the Cabell First Novelist Prize.
Janet Mitchell's debut collection The Creepy Girl and Other Stories won the 5th annual Starcherone prize. Her work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, The Quarterly, and elsewhere and has been optioned by Lifetime Television.
Ted Pelton's fourth book is the novella Bartleby, the Sportscaster. His fiction has earned him an NEA Literature Fellowship, and an Isherwood Fellowship.
Thaddeus Rutkowski is the author of the novels Tetched and Roughhouse. Both books were finalists for an Asian American Members' Choice Literary Award. His third novel, Haywire, is forthcoming from Starcherone Books. He is the fiction and nonfiction editor of the literary journal Many Mountains Moving.
Martha McPhee & Andrew Ross Sorkin on Money
Tuesday, October 19th at 7pm
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In Martha McPhee’s new novel Dear Money, novelist India Palmer is seduced into learning the bond trade, while her friend Will trades places with her and runs off to Maine to write the next Great American Novel. Are the Haves and Have-Nots really that different? Andrew Ross Sorkin’s nonfiction book Too Big to Fail: How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System — and Themselves reads like a thriller as he guides the reader through the financial crisis of 2008.
Martha McPhee is the author of the novels Bright Angel Time, L’America, and Gorgeous Lies, which was nominated for a 2002 National Book Award.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is The New York Times’s chief mergers and acquisitions reporter and a columnist. Mr. Sorkin is also the editor of DealBook, an online daily financial report he started in 2001.
Other Press: The Intimacy of Place
A Panel with Simon Mawer, Michelle Hoover, and Manuel de Lope
Moderated by publisher Judith Gurewich
Wednesday, October 20th at 7pm
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The spaces and landscapes we move through everyday affect us in ways that aren’t always apparent, but can have repercussions on the rest of our lives. This event brings together three authors from the independent publisher Other Press to discuss their novels and the importance of place within their stories. In The Quickening the wide prairie echoes the isolation of Michelle Hoover’s stoic characters. A young man’s return to his grandmother’s town awakens long-slumbering ghosts in Manuel de Lope’s The Wrong Blood, and a couple’s dream home serves as the backdrop for their crumbling marriage in the shadow of WWII in The Glass Room by Simon Mawer.
Michelle Hoover has been a Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference scholar, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and in 2005 the winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award for Fiction. The Quickening is her first novel.
Manuel de Lope was born in Burgos, Spain. At age fifteen he moved to Madrid where he now resides again, after having lived in Geneva, London, and the south of France for 25 years. In 1978 he published his first novel, Albertina en el país de los Garamantes, beginning one of the most treasured careers in modern Spanish literature.
Judith Gurewich is the publisher of Other Press, a position she has held since 2002.
One Writing Group, Four Books
A Conversation between Carolyn Parkhurst, Katherine Davis, Susan Coll, and Ann McLaughlin
Tuesday, October 26th at 7pm
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These four authors discuss how participation in their long-lasting and prolific writing group has affected their work and enriched their lives.
In Carolyn Parkhurst’s new book, The Nobodies Album, a novelist seeks to reconcile with her estranged son who has been accused of murder. Parkhurst is the author of The Dogs of Babel and Lost and Found, and has published fiction in the North American Review, the Minnesota Review, Hawai'i Review, and the Crescent Review.
A Slender Thread by Katharine Davis tells the lovely and evocative tale of two sisters dealing with a rare disease that’s slowly robbing one of them of the ability to communicate. Davis’s first novel was Capturing Paris. Her second novel, East Hope, won the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance 2010 Award for Fiction.
Susan Coll’s latest novel Beach Week is a fun send-up of the latest tradition of rich graduating D.C. high school seniors. This novel follows one group of ten girls as they set out for a week of debauchery at the shore. Coll is the author of four novels. Her third novel, Acceptance, a satire of college admissions hysteria, was made into a television movie starring Joan Cusack.
Two sisters revisit their family home after their parents have died to sort through their belongings and their memories in Ann McLaughlin’s latest book Leaving Bayberry House. McLaughlin received her Ph.D. in Literature and Philosophy from American University in 1978. She has taught for twenty-five years at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD, where she is on the board.
Writing about New Yorkers, an Evening with The Antioch Review
with Bruce Jay Friedman, Ken McClane, Valerie Leff, Alethea Black, and Henry Van Dyke
Moderated by Robert S. Fogarty
Wednesday, October 27th at 6:30pm
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The Antioch Review, founded in 1941, is one of the oldest, continuously publishing literary magazines in America. Its eclectic approach to publishing has garnered it a reputation for excellence and the Center is pleased to present a panel with some of its contributors discussing fictional accounts of our beloved and difficult city.
Alethea Black’s first short story was published in 2007, and since then her work has won the Arts & Letters Prize, has been cited as distinguished in The Best American Short Stories, and has appeared in the Antioch Review, Kenyon Review, and Narrative. Her collection of short stories Wise As Serpents, Harmless As Doves will be out in 2011.
In 1955 Bruce Jay Friedman published “The Man They Threw Out of Jets,” in the Antioch Review, his second published story. The first had been pulled from the slush pile and published in The New Yorker two years earlier. He was the 2006 recipient of the Antioch Review Award for Distinguished Prose. Friedman’s latest book, Three Balconies, was published in fall 2008 by Biblioasis.
Valerie Leff is the author of the novel Better Homes & Husbands. Her stories have appeared in Carolina Quarterly, Chelsea, Lilith, The Seattle Review, Southwest Review, The Sun, and she has had four stories in the Antioch Review.
Kenneth A. McClane has published several books of poems including Take Five: Collected Poems, 1971-1986, A Tree Beyond Telling: Poems Selected and New, and At Winter’s End. McClane’s collection of essays Color: Essays on Race, Family, and History received a Gold Medal 2009 Book of the Year Award.
Henry Van Dyke has worked as an editor, journalist, and novelist. His novels are Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes, Lunacy and Caprice and Blood of Strawberries. His short pieces have appeared in the Antioch Review, Transatlantic Review, Generation, and The O. Henry Prize Stories.
Robert S. Fogarty has been the editor of the Antioch Review since 1977. He is the author and editor of eight books, with articles, and essays in the Nation, TLS, Missouri Review, Manoa, and Boulevard, among others.
Inferno (A Poet’s Novel) with Eileen Myles
Thursday, October 28th at 7pm
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Poet, novelist, performer, and raconteur Eileen Myles’ latest book Inferno (A Poet’s Novel) uses the act of writing to tell a woman’s coming of age story in New York during the era of punk. John Ashberry calls it “zingingly funny and melancholy.”
Eileen Myles is a poet, essayist and performer whose books include Not Me, School of Fish, Chelsea Girls, Cool for You, Sorry, Tree, and The Importance of Being Iceland. With Liz Kotz, she co-edited the notorious The New Fuck You/adventures in lesbian reading, responding to the short-lived gay and lesbian publishing boom in the ’90s. Her reviews, articles, essays and blogs have appeared in Art Forum, Parkett, Vice, AnOther Magazine and the Brooklyn Rail.
S. J. Rozan
Tuesday, November 9th at 7pm
$8 General Admission, Members and Subscribers to One Story Free
Or donate a book to our Books for NYC Schools Program
Busy plotting your own mystery or suspense novel and at a loss about how to proceed? If so, you won’t want to miss this talk with S. J. Rozan, whose latest book On the Line is another brilliant and beautifully written page-turner.
S. J. Rozan is the author of many critically acclaimed novels, most recently The Shanghai Moon, and has won most of crime fiction’s greatest honors, including the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Macavity, and Nero Awards. She lives in New York.
Jennifer Egan
Wednesday, November 10th at 7pm
$8 General Admission, Members and Subscribers to One Story Free
Or donate a book to our Books for NYC Schools Program
Have a big idea that one form can’t contain and despairing about how to bend and reinvent the traditional novel? Then don’t miss this thought-provoking talk by Jennifer Egan, whose new novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad,includes everything from footnotes to powerpoint in a non-linear, multi-viewpoint narrative that is also one of the most moving reads of the year.
Jennifer Egan is the author of The Keep, Look at Me, The Invisible Circus, and the story collection Emerald City. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, GQ, Zoetrope, All-Story, and Ploughshares, and her nonfiction appears frequently in The New York Times Magazine.
Fiction Writers/Book Critics: What Happens When You Do Both? with Jane Ciabattari, Lev Grossman, and Roxana Robinson
Moderated by Noreen Tomassi
Thursday, November 11th at 7pm
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Should novelists review other people’s novels? Does their own experience in front of the blank page make them better, smarter, kinder critics? Do they approach the task of criticism differently? Hear from three writers of fiction and criticism as they talk about leading double lives!
Jane Ciabattari is the author of the short story collection Stealing the Fire and a regular reviewer for NPR.org, The Daily Beast, and many other publications. She serves as President of the National Book Critics Circle.
Lev Grossman is the book critic at Time magazine and the author of the novel The Magicians, which was a New York Times bestseller.
Roxana Robinson is the author of four novels: Summer Light, This Is My Daughter, Sweetwater and Cost; three collections of short stories: A Glimpse of Scarlet, Asking for Love, and A Perfect Stranger; and the biography Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life. For over twenty years Robinson has reviewed works of fiction, biography and art history for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.
Noreen Tomassi is Director of The Center for Fiction.
Haunting the Present: New Literature from Europe 2010
November 17th at 6:30pm and 7:45pm
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As part of the 7th annual New Literature from Europe Festival, The Center for Fiction is pleased to present an evening of panels with some of the most acclaimed and cutting edge writers from Europe’s vanguard, guided through the evening by moderator, André Aciman. The two panels will feature Philippe Claudel (France), Kirmen Uribe (Spain), Jenny Erpenbeck (Germany), Gerhard Roth (Austria), Radka Denemarkova (Czech Republic), Olga Tokarczuk (Poland), Gabriela Adame?teanu (Romania), and Antonia Arslan (Italy).
Check back often–more information about this program is coming.
Philippe Claudel is the author of By a Slow River, which received the Renaudot prize in France, and Brodeck, which won the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens in 2007. He is also the writer and director of the movie “I’ve Loved You So Long” starring Kristin Scott Thomas.
Kirmen Uribe is considered one of the most outstanding renovators of present literature, delving into the waters of autofiction with a rich style that is complex and evocative. His novel, Bilbao-New York-Bilbao, has received Spain’s National Prize of Literature 2009, the Critic’s Prize 2008 in Basque language, the Ramón Rubial Foundation Prize and the Booksellers Guild of Euskadi Prize.
Jenny Erpenbeck is the author of stories, novels and plays, which have been translated worldwide, and her literary honors include the Ingeborg Bachmann Jury Prize, and the Heimito von Doderer Prize.
Gerhard Roth’s first novel was published in 1972 and he’s gone onto write 14 more novels along with plays, a children’s book, and several books of essays. The destructive forces of National Socialism and Austria’s relationship with its past and its present constitute the central theme of one of his latest book translated in English, The Story of Darkness.
Radka Denemarkova is a novelist, dramatist, TV screenplay writer, translator, essayist, and teacher. She is the only Czech writer to have received the prestigious Magnesia Litera literary prize twice for prose.
Olga Tokarczuk is one of Poland's most accomplished contemporary novelists. Her work is widely translated in Europe, and her novel, Runners, won the 2008 Nike Prize for Best Book.
Gabriela Adame?teanu is one of Romanian’s outstanding writers and political journalists. She is the recipient of numerous awards in Romania and internationally, including a 2002 Hellman Hammett Grant by Human Rights Watch and the Romanian Writer’s Union’s 1984 Annual Prize.
Antonia Arslan is an Italian writer and a professor of modern and contemporary literature at the University of Padova. Her writing centers around the Armenian genocide and the survivors who live in Italy.
Moderator André Aciman is the author of fiction, essays, and a memoir, and is the Chair of Comparative Literature and Director of the Writers’ Institute at the CUNY Graduate Center. His most recent novel is Eight White Nights.
Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters with Louis Begley
Thursday, November 18th at 7pm
Proust Society Members Free,
Center for Fiction Members $5,
General Admission $8
Or donate a book to our Books for NYC Schools Program
The Dreyfus Affair split apart fin de siècle France both socially and politically. In this lecture, author Louis Begley will discuss the Affair and its reflection in Proust 's masterpiece, À la recherche du temps perdu.
Louis Begley is a bestselling novelist and a lawyer who retired after a 45-year career as partner in a prominent law firm. His Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters was published by Yale University Press in 2009. His fiction includes Wartime Lies, About Schmidt, and Matters of Honor.
A Closer Look at Baron de Charlus with Anka Muhlstein
Tuesday, November 30th at 7pm
Proust Society Members Free,
Center for Fiction Members $5,
General Admission $8
Or donate a book to our Books for NYC Schools Program
Baron de Charlus is one of the most powerful characters in Proust’s masterwork, À la recherche du temps perdu. In this talk, scholar and author Anka Muhlstein will present a study on the literary keys of Baron de Charlus, centered on the points of contact between Proust and Balzac.
Anka Muhlstein was born in Paris in 1935 and has lived in New York, with her husband Louis Begley, since 1974. She has published ten books, biographies and essays and is working on a volume on Proust as a reader. She has been awarded the Goncourt prize of Biography and has twice received the History Prize of the French Academy. Her long-standing interest in Proust is illustrated by a slim volume of quotes, Par le Regard de Marcel Proust, published by Denoel in 1972 and her participation in the Proust Project.
Myla Goldberg
Thursday, December 2nd at 7pm
$8 General Admission, Members and Subscribers to One Story Free
Or donate a book to our Books for NYC Schools Program
Feeling that the trip from fledgling writer to published novelist may never end? Hear Myla Goldberg, bestselling author of Bee Season, made into a movie starring Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche, talk about her own journey as a writer. Goldberg’s other books are Wickett's Remedy, the children's book, Catching the Moon, and hernewest, The False Friend.
The Center for Fiction is also pleased to announce that Goldberg will be teaching a workshop in Spring 2011 so please join us for this sneak preview!
The First Novel Fête
Friday, December 3rd at 6:30pm
$35 Advance Purchase, $50 at the Door
Join us the Friday before our benefit to drink, dance, network, and hear short readings by our 2010 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize finalists as we celebrate their achievement. All proceeds from ticket sales will go to support our Books for NYC Schools program.
For more information about this event, please contact Esther.
Immersive Fiction, a Conversation between Tom Bissell and Steve Gaynor
Thursday, December 9th at 7pm
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Far from the simple task-oriented games of Pong and Pacman, video games now tell complex stories and create fantastic detailed worlds to immerse players. But who’s bringing that narrative to the game, the creator or the player? And why are we so compelled to play them? Experts Tom Bissell, author of Extra Lives, and Steve Gaynor, designer of BioShock 2, discuss this new form of fiction.
Tom Bissell is the author of Chasing the Sea, God Lives in St. Petersburg, and The Father of All Things. A recipient of the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Bay de Noc Community College Alumnus of the Year Award, he teaches fiction writing at Portland State University and lives in Portland, Oregon. Extra Lives is his latest book.
Steve Gaynor is a video game designer working in northern California at 2K Marin. He designed two levels of the acclaimed action title BioShock 2, and was writer and lead designer of its story-based expansion. Steve writes about game design on his oft-cited blog, Fullbright, where he contributes to the ongoing conversation about the future of immersive interactive entertainment.
Oscar Hijuelos and Carlos Eire on the Cuba-Miami Connection
Thursday, December 16th at 7pm
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In Beautiful Maria of My Soul, Oscar Hijuelos returns to the character of Maria from his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. The reader follows the enchanting Maria from Havana before Castro’s rise, to the steamy streets of Miami. Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Refugee Boy is Carlos Eire’s second memoir about his journey from Cuba to America as a boy on his own, and the pains and joys of assimilation.
Oscar Hijuelos, the son of Cuban immigrants, is a recipient of the Rome Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize. His novels have been translated into twenty-five languages.
Born in Havana in 1950, Carlos Eire left his homeland in 1962. His first memoir, Waiting for Snow in Havana, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction 2003.
BOOKS FOR NYC SCHOOLS
Help us with our ongoing program to collect books for New York City public school students in need by bringing your new or gently used books for children or young adults in exchange for admission to select programming throughout our fall season. Your book donations are always welcome, but you can gain admission to the following programs with a book or two (or ten!).
Because our space is intimate we ask that you make reservations for our events. To do so, call us at 212-755-6710 or fill out the RSVP form at the bottom of this page.
Please note that members of The Center for Fiction attend all "Meet the Author" events for free! For more information on becoming a member of The Center, click here.
To RSVP for or obtain additional information about any of these events, please call (212) 755-6710 or use the RSVP form below:
RSVP Online Form:
Events (By Series)
Why We Read
| Why We Read isn’t just a lecture series, it’s a challenge to some of our most celebrated authors to examine their own ways of reading and to take a deeper look at our collective need to hear and tell stories. We continue Why We Read this fall with a talk by acclaimed author Francine Prose whose book Reading Like a Writer was a New York Times bestseller. |
| October 13, 7pm | Francine Prose |
Craftwork
| Our ongoing series invites acclaimed authors to give readers and emerging writers insight into how to create great fiction. |
| November 9, 7pm | S. J. Rozan |
| November 10, 7pm | Jennifer Egan |
| December 2, 7pm | Myla Goldberg |
Fact & Fiction
| One topic, two genres. In this series, we bring together a fiction and non-fiction writer to discuss different perspectives on a shared subject. In October Martha McPhee and Andrew Ross Sorkin discuss money, money, money and the financial collapse, while Oscar Hijuelos and Carlos Eire come together in December to talk about the Cuba–Miami connection. |
| October 19, 7pm | Martha McPhee & Andrew Ross Sorkin on Money |
| December 16, 7pm | Oscar Hijuelos and Carlos Eire on the Cuba-Miami Connection |
The Critic's Voice
| In partnership with the National Book Critics Circle, we’re pleased to present two panels that join critics and acclaimed writers together in conversation. |
| September 22, 7pm | Lore Segal, Gary Giddins, Brenda Wineapple, Stephen Koch Moderated by James Marcus |
| November 11, 7pm | Jane Ciabattari, Lev Grossman, and Roxana Robinson |
The Good Fight: Celebrating |
| Some of the best writing sees the light of day because the dedicated editors and publishers of lit mags and small presses take risks that big corporations simply can't. Each season we introduce our audiences to some of these amazing people, their writers and the great work they're doing. |
| September 30, 7pm | An Evening of Villains with SLICE |
| October 14, 7pm | 10-Year Anniversary Party for Starcherone Books |
| October 20, 7pm | Other Press: The Intimacy of Place |
| October 27, 6:30pm | Writing about New Yorkers, an Evening with The Antioch Review |
Writers in Conversation
| We bring together some of our favorite authors for insightful conversation on fiction, writing, and life. |
| September 10, 7pm | Sam Lipsyte & Jess Walter |
| October 6, 7pm | Gary Lutz, Ben Marcus, John Haskell, Christine Schutt |
| October 7, 7pm | Matthew Sharpe and Linh Dinh, A Literary Friendship |
| October 26, 7pm | A Conversation between Carolyn Parkhurst, Katherine Davis, Susan Coll, and Ann McLaughlin |
Exploring the Edges
| In the past few years our idea of what fiction is has begun to change. Flash fiction has become a mainstream genre, fan fiction and interactive storytelling sites on the internet are evolving rapidly, and narratives in video games and television shows like “Lost” have become increasingly complex. In our ongoing series Exploring the Edges we take a look at fiction that challenges us to rethink what it means to tell a story. |
| October 12, 7pm | In the Time of the Girls with Anne Germanacos |
| October 28, 7pm | Inferno (A Poet’s Novel) with Eileen Myles |
| December 9, 7pm | A Conversation between Tom Bissell and Steve Gaynor |
Proust Events at The Center
| November 18, 7pm | Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters with Louis Begley |
| November 30, 7pm | A Closer Look at Baron de Charlus with Anka Muhlstein |
Other Events
| November 17, 6:30pm and 7:45pm | Haunting the Present: New Literature from Europe 2010 |
| December 3, 6:30pm | The First Novel Fête |