This Week's Literary Events

If you have some extra time this week, you might want to check out some of these readings.  Remember, you're required to go to two readings during the semester and write a short review of each on this blog, so this is a good opportunity to get one or both of those done.  If you're planning to go to any of these, feel free to leave a comment, and perhaps a few of you can go together.

Trauma and Responsibility: Women Writing About Resilience
29 January, 7 p.m., 192 Books, 192 Tenth Avenue, New York, NY, 10011. Free.
Survivor’s guilt. Does it live on in our scars, or can we overcome it? In two powerful new stories, Karen Russell and Jennifer Vanderbes explore the lives of two women who must face a trauma and the responsibility they feel towards it. In Vanderbes’s story, a mother tries to live with the death of her child and the idea that she could have saved her. Russell’s protagonist, a massage therapist, finds that her touch has the power to change the way a war veteran perceives his involvement in the death of a fellow soldier. Granta editor John Freeman joins these two writers to explore how we write about trauma and if it is possible to release the guilt of a survivor.

Fiction Addiction: A Night with PEN American Center
29 January, 8pm, corner of Second St. and Avenue A. 2A in the upstairs bar.
Fiction Addiction, January time. We're teaming up with PEN American Center this month, the world's oldest human rights and literary rights organization in the world, defending free expression and celebrating literature since 1922. Can't wait to bring you these four PEN Members, 50 feet tall and reading for you on the 29th: TEA OBREHT (The Tiger's Wife); CHRISTOPHER SORRENTINO (American Tempura, Trance, etc); J. ROBERT LENNON (Familiar, Castle, etc); CATHERINE CHUNG (Forgotten Country). What more can be said? 

Organic Open Mic by Inspired Word 
Every Tuesday, 7pm, Bareburger 2nd Floor, 85 Second Avenue (@ 5th Street). $10.
Looking for special - and very unique - open mic in downtown Manhattan, with wall-to-wall people and great energy? Swing by the Organic Open Mic at the gorgeous Bareburger organic restaurant in the East Village - the home of some of the best tasting food on the planet.  Produced by the long-running Inspired Word open mic series, which has featured Grammy winners, American Idol finalists, Golden Globe Award winners, Emmy nominated actors, and HBO Def Poetry stars, this open mic is open to ALL types of performing artists - comedians, musicians, storytellers, singers, poets, fiction/nonfiction writers, playwrights, spoken word artists, performance artists, dancers. The event takes place on the second floor, with full-length windows on all sides that offers an especially beautiful view.


Storytelling: A Conversation on Truth and Betrayal
30 January, 7 p.m., BookCourt, 163 Court Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201. Free.
From a masseuse who secretly manipulates the scars of war with her touch to the fire that perhaps didn’t have to claim the life of a loved one to a still-born flirtation, Jennifer Vanderbes, Karen Russell and André Aciman explore the many shapes of betrayal. Granta associate editor Patrick Ryan joins these authors for a reading and conversation about their new work in Granta and the ways in which betrayal functions in a story.

Granta 122: Betrayal - The New York Launch
31 January, 7 p.m., McNally Jackson, 52 Prince Street, New York, NY 10012. Free.
Treachery lies at the heart of our most dramatic stories. Celebrate the launch of Granta 122 with an evening of stories and conversation exploring betrayal’s many forms with Ben Marcus, Karen Russell, Colin Robinson, Lauren Wilkinson and Granta editors. Drinks will be served at the event.

Fiction Reading: Lorrie Moore
31 January, 7 p.m., Greenberg Lounge, NYU School of Law, 40 Washington Square South. Free.
Acclaimed author Lorrie Moore’s most recent title is the novel "A Gate at the Stairs" (Knopf, 2009). Moore is the 2013 Distinguished Fiction Writer-in-Residence in the NYU Creative Writing Program. Introduced by Darin Strauss.

Poetry Reading: Brenda Shaughnessy and Craig Morgan Teicher 
1 February, 5 p.m., Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, 58 West 10th Street. Free.
Brenda Shaughnessy’s new collection is "Our Andromeda" (Copper Canyon Press, 2012). "To Keep Love Blurry," Craig Morgan Teicher’s latest title, was published by BOA Editions in 2012.