Photo: Ajay Suresh, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER LITERARY EVENTS AT 92NY

Orhan Pamuk, Hua Hsu, Sharon Olds, Olivia Harrison and More

HUA HSU AND NAMWALI SERPELL

In Person and Online

Wed, Oct 19, 7:30 pm, from $20

Stay True is New Yorker writer Hua Hsu’s debut memoir of friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art.  “It feels like one of those books that is the sum total of a writer’s life in thinking, craft, and curiosity, made felt at last, so that when the sentences come, they come with a deliberate, patient, and precise force,” wrote Ocean Vuong. 

Namwali Serpell—whose first novel, The Old Drift, was hailed as “a dazzling debut” by Salman Rushdie—now publishes The Furrows, a bold exploration of memory and mourning that that twists unexpectedly into a story of mistaken identity. that twists unexpectedly into a story of mistaken identity, double consciousness, and the wishful—and sometimes willful—longing for reunion with those we’ve lost. “This book reads like a ghost story, a murder mystery, a thriller, and a redemptive love story that never loses its knife edge of danger,” wrote Kiran Desai.  

*This event will take place at NYPL’s Bruno Walter Auditorium, 111 Amsterdam Ave.

LYNN MELNICK WITH DEBORAH PAREDEZ

Online

Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 7 pm ET, from $20

Lynn Melnick reads from and discusses her new memoir, I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton, a meditation on her grueling effort to reclaim her voice in the wake of loss and trauma, and Parton’s dual identities as feminist icon and objectified sex symbol.

“What Melnick has managed is beyond mere tribute, and beyond biography—it is a rich, close reading of multiple lives that sometimes find themselves touching,” writes Hanif Abdurraqib. “The narratives in this book are masterfully presented and do justice not only to the life of its central subject but also to the life of its writer.”

SHARON OLDS AND JOHN KEENE

In Person and Online

Tue, Oct 25, 7:30 pm ET, from $20

Sharon Olds, who won the Frost Medal earlier this year, now publishes Balladz, a new book of poetry. “Her poems are pure fire in the hands–risky, on the verge of falling, and in the end leaping up,” wrote Michael Ondaatje. “I love the roughness and humor and brag and tenderness and completion in her work as she carries the reader through rooms of passion and loss.”

John Keene’s Punks: New and Selected Poems won the 2022 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. “Wow. Get Punks. Loads of ritual and performative lyric here, essential stuff,” wrote Eileen Myles. “Keene’s brain ranges through the past impossibly, like an elegant thrift. Then wrenching prose poems that are pretty much explorations of radiant metonymies of someone being black and queer like only John Keene is.”

*This event will take place at NYPL’s Bruno Walter Auditorium, 111 Amsterdam Avenue.

ORHAN PAMUK WITH MERVE EMRE

In Person and Online

Thu, Oct 27, 7:30 pm ET, from $20 

Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk (My Name is Red) reads from and discusses his new novel, Nights of Plague, a historical epic of murder and mystery that imagines a plague ravaging a fictional island of the Ottoman Empire. 

 “The impulse to ennoble the most humble among us is perhaps the best reason to read Pamuk’s work,” wrote Anthony Marra. “In his novels, history is both the cause and consequence of dramatic conflict, often told from the points of view of those whose stories are rarely heard.” 

*This event will take place at Baruch College’s Engelman Hall, 55 Lexington Ave.

PATHETIC LITERATURE: WITH EILEEN MYLES, SAIDIYA HARTMAN, ARIANNA REYES, KARLA VILLAVICENCIO, DANA WARD AND EDMUND BERRIGAN

In Person and Online

Tue, Nov 15, 7:30 pm ET, from $20

An evening of readings by contributors to Pathetic Literature, the new anthology from Eileen Myles.

“I’ve collected whoever’s in here for their dedication to a moment that bends … and you feel something,” writes Myles in their introduction. “Each of these writers has a discomfort or a restlessness that exceeds their category somehow. Work that acknowledges a boundary then passes it. There’s no institution, or subculture, where any of this all belongs. This gathering is not so much queer as adamantly, eloquently strange, and touching, as if language itself had to pause. Less an avant-garde than something really beside the point. Until it begins to steamroll.” 

*This event will take place at The Museum of Modern Art.

OLIVIA HARRISON AND MARTIN SCORSESE ON GEORGE HARRISON: CAME THE LIGHTENING

In Person and Online

Sun, Nov 20, 2022, 8 pm ET, from $25

Join producer and philanthropist Olivia Harrison and Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese on the life of Olivia’s late husband, the great George Harrison — and her debut book of poems, Came the Lightening: Twenty Poems for George.

On the 20th anniversary of his passing, Harrison and Scorsese candidly discuss the incandescent life behind George’s songs, as they did in Scorsese’s 2011 documentary George Harrison: Living in a Material World. Hear them delve into the intimate stories of grief and sustained emotional connection told through Olivia’s deeply moving poems, Scorsese’s longtime fascination with George’s music, and much more.

For more information about the book please visit OliviaHarrison.com.

RACHEL AVIV AND HAFIZAH GETER

In Person and Online

Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 7:30 pm ET, from $20

Join us for readings from two astonishing non-fiction debuts: New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv’s highly anticipated Strangers to Ourselves, a collection of brilliant reporting and memoir that questions how we understand ourselves in crisis; and poet Hafizah Augustus Geter’s new memoir, The Black Period, a personal and collective history of grief, the systemic inequality that still haunts marginalized communities in America, and the Black and queer art that joyfully emerges from resistance to erasure.

*This event will take place at Baruch College’s Engelman Hall, 55 Lexington Ave.

About The 92nd Street Y, New York:  The 92nd Street Y, New York (92NY) is a world-class center for the arts and innovation, a convener of ideas, and an incubator for creativity. 92NY offers extensive classes, courses and events online including live concerts, talks and master classes; fitness classes for all ages; 250+ art classes, and parenting workshops for new moms and dads. The 92nd Street Y, New York is transforming the way people share ideas and translate them into action all over the world. All of 92NY’s programming is built on a foundation of Jewish values, including the capacity of civil dialogue to change minds; the potential of education and the arts to change lives; and a commitment to welcoming and serving people of all ages, races, religions, and ethnicities. For more information, visit  www.92NY.org.