Housing Works

pith:

The Tyranny of Choice

Obsessed with this photo of our shelves.

This Week at HWBC:

Today through April 30th celebrate National Poetry Month with 30% off all poetry, poet biographies, and prose written by poets!

Then stay tonight for Noteworthy: A Conversation with Women at the Forefront of the NYC Arts Programming Community, co-presented with GreenHouse and Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater. This panel moderated by the New York Post’s Elisabeth Vincentelli features women programmers and artistic directors from Celebrate Brooklyn!, SummerStage, Japan Society, and Joe’s Pub.

Tomorrow, Black Balloon Publishing’s Buzz Poole talks with celebrated Croatian novelist Robert Perisic about Perisic’s new book Our Man in Iraq.

Wednesday night come celebrate the launch of the spring 2013 issue of American Poet with readings from Sophie Cabot Black, Cynthia Cruz, and Rachel Eliza Griffiths.

Then on Thursday, a launch of a different kind, this time for comedian Ophira Eisenberg’s new memoir Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy. Wine and cheese will be served!

Finally on Saturday from 1-4, as National Poetry Month comes to a close, come to Song of Myself, a marathon reading of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” from the 1891 edition of Leaves of Grass.

Check out episode four of the podcast, which is all events from Downtown Literary Festival last weekend!

On April 14th, Housing Works Bookstore Cafe and McNally Jackson teamed up for the inaugural Downtown Literary Festival, highlighting the literature and culture of downtown Manhattan through events at both stores. The panel-free festival, organized by Housing Works’s Amanda Bullock and McNally Jackson’s Alice Whitman, was a great success, and Housing Works hosted a variety of events including a figurative tour of the literature of downtown New York City, a discussion with an owner and former owner of Russ & Daughters, a special edition of new literary series The Recital, a talk with veteran food truck vendors from across the city, a special presentation about the Depression-era guidebook series The American Guide, and a downtown edition presentation by lit and TV Tumblr Slaughterhouse 90210. Here we have collected a sample of some of the festival’s best moments.

HWBC Weekly Roundup

To Read:
Lifestyle suggestions learned from literature.
Resources to help families deal with traumatic news.
An interview with Museum of Moving Image on music videos as art.
Hunger Games = Space Jam:movies plots described using the same sentence.

To Look At:
Leading men age; leading women don’t.
Eloise in Brooklyn.
Self-described “worst best bad writr” Chuck Palahniuk’s Reddit AMA.

To Watch:
Patton Oswalt’s Star Wars fan fiction filibuster on the set of Parks and Rec.

[image via Beowulf Sheehan’s DLF photos]

Spotlight on DLF Events - Pravda After-Party, Sponsored by HarperCollins
This Sunday is the inaugural Downtown Literary Festival hosted by Housing Works and our neighbors McNally Jackson. Check out this page from now until then for previews of some of the exciting events!

7:00pm at Pravda: Master and Margaritas, Crime and Punish-mints, and more Russian literature–themed cocktails at DLF discounts while films featuring Berlin and Odessa in the early 20th century are projected onto Pravda’s walls. The first 80 cocktails will be on the house, courtesy of HarperCollins; after that enjoy a special DLF discount!

Pravda is located just down the street from both Housing Works and McNally Jackson at 281 Lafayette St in SoHo.

Spotlight on DLF Events - Happy Hour Mingle
This Sunday is the inaugural Downtown Literary Festival hosted by Housing Works and our neighbors McNally Jackson. Check out this page from now until then for previews of some of the exciting events!

5:00pm @ HWBC: After a day packed with events, unwind with drinks, mingling, and boozy sweets from Spirited Brooklyn!

Spotlight on DLF Events - New York a la Cart: Veteran Vendors Dish about Life on the Streets
This Sunday is the inaugural Downtown Literary Festival hosted by Housing Works and our neighbors McNally Jackson. Check out this page from now until then for previews of some of the exciting events!

1:30pm @ HWBC: Join Siobhan Wallace and Alexandra Penfold, authors of New York a la Cart: Recipes & Stories From the Big Apple’s Best Food Trucks, as they lead a discussion with Red Hook Food Vendors Executive Director Cesar Fuentes, Vendy award finalists Nick Karagiorgos of Uncle Gussy’s Greek Truck, Fauzia Abdur-Rahman of Bronx-based Fauzia’s Heavenly Delights, and Jonathan Hernandez of New York’s only Venezuelan food truck Patacon Pisao. Hear stories and learn street food history, and then sample from each of the event’s trucks parked nearby.

Spotlight on DLF Events - On the Grid: Stories in Our Streets
This Sunday is the inaugural Downtown Literary Festival hosted by Housing Works and our neighbors McNally Jackson. Check out this page from now until then for previews of some of the exciting events!

10:15am @ HWBC (moves to McNally Jackson at 11): Take a literary (and, just to be clear, figurative besides the movement to McNally Jackson) tour of downtown Manhattan led by Lit Crawl NYC with locally set readings from authors Amor Towles, Joanna Smith-Rakoff, Sarah Schulman, Jami Attenberg, David Goodwillie, Rosie Schaap, Brendan Sullivan, Lev Grossman, Adam Wilson, Jennifer Gilmore, Kristopher Jansma, Hari Kunzru, Katie Kitamura, Greg Young, and Amy Waldman.

Spotlight on DLF Events - Slaughterhouse 90210: Downtown Edition

This Sunday is the inaugural Downtown Literary Festival hosted by Housing Works and our neighbors McNally Jackson. Check out this page from now until then for previews of some of the exciting events!

3:30pm @ HWBC: Join Maris Kreizman of TV & lit tumblr Slaughterhouse 90210 for an NYC-themed slide presentation followed by authors Carlene Bauer, Austin Ratner, Jason Diamond, and Jessica Soffer talking about their favorite New York-based TV shows.

Spotlight on DLF Events - Road Trip with The American Guide
This Sunday is the inaugural Downtown Literary Festival hosted by Housing Works and our neighbors McNally Jackson. Check out this page from now until then for previews of some of the exciting events!

2:30pm @ HWBC: Join Erin Chapman and Tom McNamara, creators of The American Guide Tumblr, for an exploration of the Depression-era guidebookseries published by the Federal Writers Project between 1935 and 1943 which encouraged Americans to travel and document their trips.