New York's Most Fun Literary Events

Over the past 3 months, I attended every literary event I could in New York City. Outside of work, I averaged attending a few literary events per week, maxing out at 7 events in 6 days the week of May 13, 2013, and nearly reaching that during BEA. Below is my top-5 list of monthly/quarterly events and top-5 one-time or annual events.

Aerialist Seanna Sharpe reads Hafiz in between doing acrobatics over the audience

1. H.I.P. Reading Series - at The Paper Box, 17 Meadow Street, Brooklyn. The June 14 event featured National Book Award finalist Téa Obreht, author of The Tiger's Wife, and Ayad Akhtar, the 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama for American Dervish. What was remarkable about the event was the circus theme, a clown, popcorn, and that the event began with an aerialist who swung from the rafters of the Brooklyn warehouse and read lines of Hafiz from parchment scrolls she pulled from her hair in between doing aerial stunts above the crowd.



Edwidge Danticat reads at the Franklin Park Reading Series

2. Franklin Park Reading Series - at Franklin Park Bar and Beer Garden, 618 St John's Pl, Brooklyn. The June 10 event featured prize-winning Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat, and the May 13 event featured an entertaining reading from Leigh Newman reading from Still Points North, her memoir about growing up in the wilderness of Alaska, and her father's macabre sense of humor about using his carcass in a survival situation.



Rivington Was Ours by Brendan Jay Sullivan and I Would Die 4 U by Touré projected onto a brick wall across from Bar 2A



Big Umbrella - at Bar 2A, 25 Ave. A, Manhattan. The June 11 event featured Touré reading a scintillating passage detailing Prince’s sex life. I learned that Prince is not gay, but he likes to bathe women and brush their hair. Brendan Jay Sullivan read from his forthcoming Rivington Was Ours about how Stefani Germanotta transformed from a gogo dancer on the Lower East Side into Lady Gaga. At the May 14 event, Ashley Cardiff read from her sexual memoir Night Terrors about how she had extended sexual dreams involving Prince. 



Teju Cole reads at Bar 2A as part of the May 2013 Fiction Addiction



Fiction Addiction - also held at Bar 2A, 25 Ave. A, Manhattan. The May 28 event featured Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole reading from Open City. What is remarkable about this venue is that with both the Big Umbrella and Fiction Addiction reading series, they project the authors reading onto the 50-foot brick wall across the street to provide a stunning visual to go along with the reading.



PEN Night reading was at WORD Bookstore in Brooklyn



PEN Night - at WORD, 126 Franklin Street, Brooklyn. The May 16 event featured Pulitzer Prize Finalist Jonathan Dee and New Yorker writer and McSweeney's author Ben Greenman. The authors were very accessible and took the audience for drinks afterwards.

Top 5 One-Time or Annual Literary Events in NYC:

1. BookExpo America - This is the top literary event in New York simply because it is where nearly everyone in publishing converges for 4 days each year. There are many afterparties associated with the event put on by each of the major publishing houses and businesses like the Bookrageous BEA Bash put on by Kobo at Housing Works. And who knows, at the conference, you might bump into a bestselling author like Daniel Handler, Doris Kearns Goodwin, or Snooki :). 
2. Brooklyn Lit Crawl - There were several literary events throughout Brooklyn on May 18, similar to San Francisco's Lit Crawl. My favorite event was the literary trivia put on by Tin House called Fighting Words, hosted by short story writer Seth Fried.
3. Jessica Greenbaum, D. Nurkse and Beth Bosworth - This reading at the Brooklyn Library's Main Branch featured the Poet Laureate of Brooklyn from 1996 to 2004, Dennis Nurkse. This April 17 reading was a very "Brooklyn" event, in that the authors spoke of Brooklyn's literary heritage going back to Whitman. Afterwards, the authors took everyone across the street to a new condo highrise for a free, fully catered rooftop deck party overlooking Brooklyn and Manhattan.
4. n+1 Issue 16 Launch Party -  This event packed 300+ people into Secret Project Robot, a Williamsburg artist warehouse. It seemed like most in attendance were aspiring writers/editors. It was also interesting to meet the n+1 editors at this April 13 event who were much younger than I expected--being all in their 20s and 30s.
5. An Illustrated Guide to Cocktails Book Launch and Happy Hour - This May 17 book release party at powerHouse Arena featured free cocktails to complement the discussion of vermouths and other types of alcohol by drink expert Orr Shtuhl.

Favorite Venues:

1. powerHouse Arena - This massive space in the DUMBO neighborhood with tall ceiling and an expansive floor can fit any sized-literary event, and its spaciousness, coupled with moving bookshelves and church pews to sit in made it a unique and fun venue for a literary event.
2. Housing Works Bookstore and Cafe - This Nolita store has an old-school two-story bookstore feel, while having the modern conveniences of a cafe and stage area for literary events, as well as enough room in the back for a photobooth.

Best literary event host/MC:

1. Seth Fried running the Tin House literary trivia event Fighting Words. His dry sense of humor, combined with drinks flowing from the bar, brought a lot of fun to the event, similar to the Monthly Rumpus in San Francisco hosted by Stephen Elliott and Isaac Fitzgerald. Seth Fried was the perfect host for the literary trivia event.

For more photos from events, see the album Literary New York.