Free
RSVP Below
Wednesday, 12:30 pm EST - 2:00 pm EST March 17, 2021
Online via Zoom
The Literarians will be held online via Zoom. Members who have RSVP’d will be contacted with instructions for joining. Please email Allison Escoto at allison@centerforfiction.org with any questions.
The Literarians is a free monthly discussion group open to members of The Center. Led by our head librarian Allison Escoto, The Literarians read a wide variety of contemporary fiction. New participants are welcome throughout the year!
Not a member yet? Join today!
Up Next:
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
Previous Selections:
- Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam
- Indelicacy by Amina Cain
- Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami
- A Burning by Megha Majumdar
- The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
- Deacon King Kong by James McBride
- Apeirogon by Colum McCann
- Milkman by Anna Burns
- Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
- Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
- The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
- Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
- Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
- Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
- The Parisian by Isabella Hammad
- Normal People by Sally Rooney
- The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
- On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
- Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
- Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
- The Burning Girl by Claire Messud
- An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Led by
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Allison Escoto
Head Librarian & Education Director
Allison Escoto
Head Librarian & Education Director
New Yorker by way of New Orleans, Allison Escoto received her BA in Creative Writing from SUNY New Paltz and closed out the 90s as a bookseller in Greenwich Village. After several years in publishing, she pursued and received her MLS from Queens College. Since then she has worked as a librarian for 15 years in various libraries in and around NYC and has been moonlighting as a poet and copywriter. She reviews books for Booklist and serves on the ALA RUSA Notables committee. From 2017-2020, she was the Associate Editor for Newtown Literary Journal, a publication dedicated to featuring writers from her beloved Queens.
Up Next
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Real Life
By Brandon Taylor
Published by Riverhead
Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends—some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But over the course of a late-summer weekend, a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with an ostensibly straight, white classmate, conspire to fracture his defenses while exposing long-hidden currents of hostility and desire within their community.
Real Life is a novel of profound and lacerating power, a story that asks if it’s ever really possible to overcome our private wounds, and at what cost.
About this series
Reading Groups
Whether you’re looking to catch up on great novels or you’re interested in exploring a new writer or literary period, our reading groups offer high-level literary discussion led by experts in the field.