Reading Groups

Members Only: The Literarians

Free

RSVP Below

Wednesday, 12:30 pm EDT - 2:00 pm EDT June 16, 2021

Online via Zoom

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The Literarians will be held online via Zoom. Members who RSVP 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:
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

Previous Selections:

  • Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
  • Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
  • Real Life by Brandon Taylor
  • 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
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Led by

  • headshot

    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

  1. . 
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    Hamnet

    By Maggie O'Farrell

    Published by Vintage

    PURCHASE

    England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on. A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.

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.

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