On October 27 as part of the Selected Shorts series at Symphony Space, Award-winning actresses Lili Taylor (Six Feet Under) and Christine Ebersole (Grey Gardens) lead an illustrious cast performing modern spins on classic fairy tales taken from the new anthology My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, edited by Kate Bernheimer. 

Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked, hosts an evening sure to bewitch: …more

Writers came out on 9/28/2010 to celebrate the launch of Mischief + Mayhem, an imprint affiliated with OR Books and a collective of five writers: Dale Peck, Lisa Dierbeck, Joshua Furst, Choire Sicha and DW Gibson. …more

This Monday, Sept. 13, 7-10pm at DEATH BY AUDIO, 49 S. 2nd St., Williamsburg, Brooklyn

The Rumpus Presents:

Co-sponsored by Take the Handle:

Come help us say farewell to summer with comedians MICHAEL SHOWALTER and JESSI KLEIN, readings by NICK FLYNN, SARA MARCUS, HILTON ALS, and CORRINA BAIN and a musical performance by FRANKIE ROSE AND THE OUTS.

Hosted by Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott and NY Editor Rozalia Jovanovic.

Get advance tickets here. …more

NOON and Gigantic Present Bastille Day Soiree with Diane Williams, Rebecca Curtis, Joshua Cohen and Special Guest DJ John Pugh of Free Blood (and formerly of !!!). …more

MoMA PS1′s acclaimed summer concert series Warm Up is underway.

MoMA PS1, the exhibition space devoted to “the most experimental art in the world,” is host to this annual event—a fusion of music and art like no other in the city. And in the spirit of artful experimentation, coinciding with this year’s Warm Up is the installation “Pole Dance” by the firm SO – IL, winners of the annual Young Architects Program. After the jump, see the full unbelievable line-up of this summer’s musical events. …more

This week in New York Bret Easton Ellis and Shane Jones read, Light Industry screens “arty porn,” the musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is in its final run at the Public Theater, The Fiery Furnaces and The New Bomb Turks perform, Behind the Scenes at The Paris Review releases its summer issue with a party, NYC Pride March, and Flavorpill hosts the largest yoga event ever on the Great Lawn at Central Park.

TUESDAY 6/22: Yoga at the Great Lawn. Flavorpill brings you the largest yoga event ever. 1 teacher, 20 performers and 10,000 yoga mats. With Elena Brower leading the class, beatboxer Reggie Watts, 13 Hands, drum/dance troupe O’Nkosi Rhythms, cellist Garth Stevenson, and yogic bassist Wah. The Great Lawn at Central Park. 6:30, “Doors” at 5:30. …more

This week in New York Stephen Colbert celebrates Ulysses, Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson are King and Queen of the Mermaid Parade, Heidi Julavits interviews Aimee Bender at Symphony Space, Gordon Lish MCs the NY Tyrant reading, Ann Beattie reads at Book Court, Mary Caponegro headlines the Big Other extravaganza, Light Industry presents short films curated by Jack Stevenson, CLMP colonizes Housing Works for its Giant Lit Mag Fair, and BAMcinemaFEST continues.

MONDAY 6/14: Aimee Bender and Heidi Julavits at Symphony Space. Heidi Julavits interviews Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, for the Thalia Book Club. A selection will be read by Lillo Way. 7:30-9:00pm. …more

Wells Tower went home last night with the New York Public Library’s Young Lion Fiction Award.

Presumably because he’s been nominated for several awards and not won, a friend of his whom I spoke to at the event said that he invited her by asking if she’d want to come to an awards ceremony to see him not win. But then we agreed that being selected for The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 list recently was also a good thing, like an award. …more

Bottles of infused vodka were upturned last night at Russian Samovar for the return of the FSG Reading Series. With Lydia Davis and David Means slated to read, the bar on the second floor was papered with poets, writers and confederates of the publishing industry. …more

It’s “Terry Southern Month” at The Paris Review Daily—the quarterly’s online “culture gazette,” the goal of which is to stay in touch with The Paris Review’s audience between print issues. Today, read an interview with Terry Southern from Issue 138.

Terry Southern is a good thematic choice being that he was one of the forces behind the birth of The Paris Review though maybe lesser known than its glorified founders George Plimpton, Harold L. Humes and Peter Matthiessen. And as Southern was a provocative aesthete he cut a smart fit with the post-war Paris literary crowd along with Plimpton, Susan Sontag, Henry Miller and Allen Ginsberg. …more

We’re giddy with the news that André da Loba, the artist behind the brilliant, whimsical and surreal illustrations for our Notable New York column recently received a merit award from 3×3 Magazine for his Notable New York series.

At 3×3‘s annual awards contest for contemporary illustration, The Professional Show (ProShow), André was also awarded a Bronze Medal for his illustrations for the graphic collectible card set “Biographies of Famous Americans” included in Gigantic Issue 2. Click through for a gallery of André’s awarded work along with other work we were honored to have André create for The Rumpus: …more

This week in New York Bill Gates talks with his dad, the Joan Rivers documentary screens, Christopher Hitchens talks about his new memoir, Isabella Rossellini talks to Leonard Lopate, KGB Bar holds a Fiction/Poetry slam, and Crispin Glover gives a unique slideshow presentation and screening.

TUESDAY 6/1: Isabella Rossellini talks with Leonard Lopate. 92Y. 8:15pm.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. This documentary, which recently screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, was called by Roger Ebert, “One of the most truthful documentaries about show business I’ve seen. Also maybe the funniest.” 92Y Tribeca. 7:30pm. …more

In his entertaining essay “BroBos in Paradise,” a pun on David Brooks’s pop-culture treatise BoBos in Paradise, Leon Neyfakh explores what he calls a new variation on Brooks’s term “Bourgeois Bohemians,” or BoBos.

Neyfakh calls them Brooklyn Bourgeois Bohemians, or Brobos. “Young, comfortable and inclined toward creativity, they enjoy a utopian-seeming existence…. An existence only occasionally marred by the realization that this is not the hopped-up New York they came to conquer.” He talks to Matt Power and The New Yorker’s Lizzie Widdicombe among others to dig up the motivations behind moving to or steering clear of the outerborough and gets a little at the heart of what it means to be a New Yorker. …more

This week in New York, BookExpo America (BEA) kicks off, and this year with a new feature: New York Book Week–events that are open to the public. Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) discusses and serves up cocktails, Timothy Donnelly and Matthew Rohrer read, Melissa Auf der Maur performs, Al Maysles and DA Pennebaker talk documentaries, Edward Koren talks about the art of humor with Jules Feiffer, and Matthey Barney’s Cremaster Cycle gets a full run at the IFC Center.

MONDAY 5/24: The Art of the Novella. Lore Segal reads from Lucinella, her savvy take on the New York literary scene. Greenlight Books. 686 Fulton St. 7:30pm. …more

Dust off your seersucker and sun hats and head out to a garden party. The New York Observer has found a few patches of cultured grass for you to set your sandaled feet on during the hot summer afternoons and swill mint juleps. Behold The Observer’s list of the city’s most anticipated garden parties. From the Frick to Wave Hill, keep an eye out for gate-crashers (unless you are one) and keep your spirits–and the ends of your glasses–up.

Murderer Gary Gilmore does the Texas two-step, Master Masons experience spiritual transcendence in the Chrysler building and satyrs compete in motorcycle side-car teams. These are just a few bits of the sprawling terrain that comprises Matthew Barney’s epic film cycle Cremaster. For a rare event, the cycle will be screened in its entirety in three recurring programs at the IFC Center through June 3. And don’t miss Barney in person, tonight, May 20, before the 7:00pm and 9:25pm shows.

If you miss Barney tonight, you can also catch him Friday at the New Museum. As part of the museum’s “Propositions” series, Barney discusses his new work-in-progress, Ancient Evenings, an opera based on Norman Mailer’s eponymous 1983 novel.

This week in New York Ben Marcus and Deb Olin Unferth read, John Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols) performs with PiL, MobyLives presents book trailer awards, One Story holds a Debutante Ball, Jewcy presents readings by Rachel Shukert, Sam Apple and Jami Attenberg, Paper Monument Magazine (sister-mag to n+1) throws a party for Issue 3, and Marc Ribot provides live musical accompaniment to Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid.

TUESDAY 5/18: Jewcy Magazine presents The Yiderati, this week’s installment of the series that presents emerging Jewish writers includes Jami Attenberg, Sam Apple and Rachel Shukert. The Strand. 7pm. …more

While New York Gallery Week was last weekend, which for the most part means that galleries were open on Sunday, the galleries in Chelsea, SoHo and the meatpacking district have some new shows worth checking out. Here’s a cheat sheet of some of the more interesting work I’ve seen. …more

The May 2010 online issue of Gigantic is up with fiction from Mike Young, Erik Morsink and M. Callen. The art/lit journal also has a talk between Gibby Haynes (of The Butthole Surfers) and Joe Wenderoth (Letters to Wendy’s) that covers cloning, clowns, cannons, race and monotheism with Wenderoth’s unusual curiosity, candor and rigor. As an artfully stunning and macabre counterpoint, there is the next installment from Until I Find It, the illustrated book by Leni Zumas and Luca Dipierro that’s being serialized each month at Gigantic online.

Chatroulette’s in the spotlight this week. While the social-networking site has been around since November 2009, and its creator was revealed in February as 18-year-old Russian high-school drop-out Andrey Ternofskiy, both The New Yorker and The Daily Beast have features on the relatively young site and its founder.

While Ternofsky is the new toast of Palo Alto who’s been skirting the courtship of Russian investors in favor of hobnobbing with Fred Wilson, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, his site has garnered a large following by a less-than-savory demographic–that of men who flash. …more

This week in New  York, Granta’s Sex Party, The Moth Mainstage presents Saints and Sinners, SLEIGH BELLS perform, Emily Gould celebrates her new memoir with a party, Sebastian Junger discusses his latest work, Chip Kidd, The Thing Quarterly presents issue 10 with Starlee Kine and Arthur Jones, Eteam in a group show Resurrectine and Jonathan Horowitz’s exhibit “Go Vegan!” returns.

MONDAY 5/10: Granta’s Spring 2010 Party: Sex. Featuring Victor Lavalle. Book Court. 7-9pm.

Kate Gilmore’s Walk the Walk 5-day Performance Piece: Walk the Walk is a Dynamic sculptural and performance-based artwork activated by a group of women walking, stomping, shuffling and marching on the roof of an eight-foot-high cubic structure. The piece draws attention to, and celebrates the vast number of women who work each day in the City. The installation questions notions of work, its limitations and possibilities, especially as they relate to themes of female identity, physical endurance and personal expression. Bryant Park. Avenue of the Americas at 40th St. 8:30am – 6:30pm. …more

This week in New York Electric Literature celebrates the launch of Issue 4, the Shepard Fairey exhibit is at Deitch Projects, Daniel Clowes discusses Wilson, John Leguizamo is honored by Spike Lee and Eric Bogosian, Ugly Duckling Presse presents “Talk Show,” and Lynne Tillman and Michael Cunningham pay tribute to Flannery O’Connor.

MONDAY 5/3: Talk Show: An Evening with Ugly Duckling Presse. Join authors Andy Fitch and Jon Cotner and poets Matthew Rohrer, Rachel Levitsky, Alex Stein and more for an evening of interviews, poetry, and unscripted surprises in the format of a late night talk show. The Kitchen. …more

This week in New York the sixth annual PEN World Voices Festival (PWVF) opens its week-long celebration of international writing with such notable literary figures as Sherman Alexie, Claire Messud, Yiyun Li, Salman Rushdie and Lewis Lapham among others (Full Schedule Here), Agriculture Reader holds a launch party, the Dead or Alive exhibition opens at the Museum of Arts and Design, Gossip perform, Stephen Colbert helps celebrate the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird and the Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) continues.

MONDAY 4/26: The Diversity Test: Gender and Literature in Translation. Guernica and PEN team up to present a lively debate on gender, culture, and literature in translation with novelist Claire Messud and a prestigious panel including Norman Rush and Lorraine Adams, among others. WNYC Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, 44 Charlton Street. $20/$15 PEN Members. 7:00pm. …more

This week in New York NOON launches Issue 9 with a reading and party, a reading by notable New Yorkers of stories on their first time in New York, Maile Chapman and Ethan Nosowsky converse, Synesthesia–a game of artistic telephone–begins, and PopRally helps you silksreen record sleeves while listening to Real Estate live.

MONDAY 4/19: Teddy Wayne at McNally Jackson. The author will read from his new book Kapitoil. Wayne has received a 2010 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship and his work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Time, Esquire, and elsewhere, perhaps most notably at McSweeney’s Internet Concern where he is a regular contributor of “unpopular proverbs.” 7:00pm. …more

As part of our event, A Night Together, which was co-presented with Tin House and Flavorpill on April 6, we held a contest to give writers the chance to win an opportunity to read on stage with Sam Lipsyte. Entrants of the contest, The Jump Off, were asked to submit a fictional work of 300 words or less using as a jump-off point one sentence or sentence fragment from Sam Lipsyte’s novel The Ask.  We got many compelling and varied stories that gave the words of Sam Lipsyte good and virgin context. …more

“I was being paid minimum wage by an important publisher to sit very still and, occasionally, walk across the floor.”

Writing on the subject of the publishing industry, especially if it is lyrical and done well, will never fail to interest me. Carla Blumenkranz’s short piece in n+1, “My Time in Publishing,” explores with sincerity, humor and sharp detail the excitement and awkwardness of a neophyte in a New York publishing firm in the dawn of Friendster. Definitely worth a gander.

This week in New York The Future of Criticism with Lorin Stein and Maud Newton, John D’Agata and Thalia Field discuss the lyric essay, Alice Walker on activism, Salman Rushdie and Lee Bollinger discuss free speech in a globalized world, Mikael Kennedy shows his Polaroids at the Chelsea Hotel and Congress for Curious People symposium is held at Coney Island.

MONDAY 4/12: The Congress for Curious People, an amazing collection of “human marvels” runs for ten days at Coney Island with lectures, esoteric performances and film. Tonight Evan Michelson provides an illustrated meditation on the Saddest Object in the World: an exercise in Proustian involuntary memory, aesthetic critique, and philosophical bargaining. 7:00pm. The Sideshow presents Chris McDaniel, the undisputed master of whip-wielding. 8:00pm. 1208 Surf Avenue. …more

Have your work published on a bookmark.

Mud Luscious Press, publisher of delectable pocket-size chapbooks and novellas from bright young writers, recently announced its bookmark contest. Regular readers know that Mud Luscious provides with its orders ephemera bookmarks with unique designs and excerpts from forthcoming novellas. And since they’re giving all their old stock away at AWP, they need new bookmarks to send out in June with their novellas and chapbooks.

Guidelines: Write 150 words or less, no genre restrictions, $5 per entry or $8 for two. Submit entries here: www.mudlusciouspress.com/contact

Two winners will be chosen and each will receive one quarter of the total entry fee pool plus complementary copies of the bookmarks. Submit and support a great small press.

Thanks to Bloomberg.com, we now know how much Chad Harbach, the “Unemployed Harvard Man,” made on the sale of his novel, and how many copies of The Art of Fielding he’ll have to sell to outsell his co-editors at n+1, Benjamin Kunkel and Keith Gessen. But to get a preview of Chad Harbach’s writing on baseball, check out his essay up at n+1, “Should the Sox Throw the World Series?” And leave it to Bloomberg.com to remind us of what’s essential in a person.

A NIGHT TOGETHER: Presented by The Rumpus, Tin House and Flavorpill

On April 6, The Rumpus, Tin House and Flavorpill joined forces and presented a night of fiction, music, comedy and general mayhem at the Highline Ballroom. Despite the large size of the Highline, it was a remarkably cozy evening. …more