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

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

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

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

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

This week in New York The Rumpus throws an A Night Together with Sam Lipsyte, Michael Showalter, Lorelei Lee, Jeff Lewis, Jump-Off winners and more, Jamaica Kincaid and Rick Moody help collect Books for NY Schools, Richard Nash and Jim Hanas debate fiction and technology, Gary Shteyngart and Amy Sohn host a Shabbat dinner, Robert Coover reads, Etgar Keret talks to Ira Glass and Frederick Wiseman’s film Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind screens.

MONDAY 4/5: Joyland presents “The Fiction Feed 2.” The Fiction Feed 2 is a follow up to last fall’s reading and raucous debate about fiction and technology organized by Toronto-based literary website Joyland. This installment features author and Joyland co-founder Brian Joseph Davis, Cursor’s Richard Nash, and blogger and author Jim Hanas. McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince St. …more

Leave it to literary magazine n+1 to get interesting people together to talk about interesting things that are of interest right now. For example, in December they had Malcolm Gladwell and Christine Smallwood discussing Evangelicalism and the Contemporary Intellectual. A discussion on gentrification was held in January at the radical bookstore Bluestockings. And “post-isms” in the contemporary art world was the subject of a talk during the Armory Show earlier this month. In keeping with their taste for the expedient, n+1 is holding a panel on healthcare this Sunday 3/28, “Free Healthcare Now!: What Just Happened, and What We Need.” …more

This Thursday, New York’s New Media set, including Natasha Hafez, Rachel Sklar, Brooke Moreland, Soraya Darabi and Amanda Rose, will gather for what promises to be one of the largest philanthropy events organized through social media: Twestival 2010, which is part of the second annual Twestival Global – one day one cause all around the world. …more

This week in New York a tribute to George Carlin, James Wood reads a book he’s never read before, Shya Scanlon gets other people to read his poems, NYC Twestival 2010, Huggabroomstik, Jeff Lewis and others cover songs by Major Matt Mason USA, Victor Lavalle and Maud Newton talk, and Lapham’s Quarterly holds a panel discussion on creativity.

MONDAY 3/22: The Critic’s Voice: First Reads with James Wood. James Wood takes on a special assignment this season—to read a book he’s never read before, then return to the Poetry Center and discuss it. He’s chosen Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, a collection of short stories by David Foster Wallace. 92 Y. Lexington Ave. at 92nd St. 8:15pm. …more

This week in New York Keith Gessen and Elif Batuman talk, Guernica has a reading, Joanna Newsom sings and plays harp, Marcel Dzama appears, talks and signs books, The Moth has a Story Slam, Christopher Walken loses a hand and Zoe Kazan gives him one, and Atlas Obscura presents an international celebration of curious and obscure things.

MONDAY 3/15: Elif Batuman and Keith Gessen in conversation. Batuman’s pieces—for n+1, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and the London Review of Books— have made her one of the most sought-after and admired writers of her generation. In The Possessed, her latest work of non-fiction, Batuman investigates a possible murder at Tolstoy’s ancestral estate, retraces Pushkin’s wanderings in the Caucasus, and shows us why Old Uzbek has one hundred different words for crying. McNally Jackson. 7:00pm. …more

This week in New York Sam Lipsyte reads from The Ask, David Shields reads from Reality Hunger, the Magnetic Fields perform, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks reads, Lore Segal and Tao Lin engage in a panel discussion about the novella, Stephen Elliott holds a writing class, Philip Gourevitch, Francine Prose and Lewis Lapham explore natural and man-made calamities and Light Industry presents the films of Jon Moritsugu.

MONDAY: Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog, will be in conversation at 92Y. Her new play, The Book of Grace, premiers at the Public Theater this March. 92Y. Lexington Ave. @92nd St. 8:00pm. …more

While it is now one month later, we’d like to thank everyone who came out for ONE YEAR LATER, the Rumpus anniversary party co-presented by The Rumpus and sister-mag HTMLGIANT at Broadway East, a charming place where Chinatown meets the Lower East Side. The party featured readings by Justin Taylor, Tao Lin, Stephen Elliott, Rivka Galchen and Deb Olin Unferth, musical guests Diane Louvel, Alina Simone and Jeffrey Lewis, DJ author Lincoln Michel and Special Guest DJ Khaela Maricich. While this celebration was not an all-out concert like the Rumpus is accustomed to having, it had an intimate, engaging and artful vibe, which I rarely experience. Following is a photographic exhibit of the night. …more

This week in New York, white tents are set up behind the New York Public Library in Bryant Park. It is called Fashion Week because it is a celebration of fashion of the sartorial kind. While that is happening in the park, we’ll be devoting space in the blog each day this week to two of our best-loved literary fashionables.

The term “fashionable,” here used as a collective noun that seemingly suggests something like “of or pertaining to persons of fashion,” will mean something slightly different this week. This week we’ll explore writers who were not necessarily fashionable in the sense commonly understood, but internally fashionable for having developed distinct literary personas.

We begin our series with two writers with very unique literary personas: Samuel Beckett and Gertrude Stein. …more

In “By George,” Maira Kalman’s final installment of her year-long New York Times series, “And the Pursuit of Happiness,” Kalman ushers in the new decade with a tribute to the man without whom our nation wouldn’t be. …more

This week in New York The New York Times’s Arts and Leisure Weekend features Natalie Portman, Jeff Bridges, and Jimmy Fallon, Sweetgrass opens at the Film Forum, Carol Sklenicka discusses Raymond Carver, the films of Joyce Weiland screen at Light Industry, and Lev Grossman gets critics to question the hoopla around Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. Looking ahead: tickets for Julian Casablancas’s shows at Terminal 5 on January 14/15 are on sale.

MONDAY 1/04:

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Marc Ribot but were Afraid to Ask. Guitar legend Marc Ribot in concert followed by a Q&A session. All concert-goers should come prepared with a question. Musicians may bring their instruments. The Stone. Ave. C @ East 2nd. $25. 8:00pm. …more

This week in New York William Hurt converses at 92Y, Steve Beck performs the Goldberg Variations, Janeane Garofalo and Todd Barry in Comedy Below Canal, Christmas Eve klezmer party, Charlie Chaplin films are screened at the Walter Reade, Roger Ballen and Mike Kelley exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery, and a Mel Brooks double feature is shown with all-you-can-eat Chinese food.

MONDAY 12/21: The Modernist Book Group discusses Samuel Beckett’s Murphy, a man whose sole desire is to desire nothing. Community Book Store. 143 Seventh Ave., Brooklyn. …more

This week in New York, lit mags The Faster Times, The Rumpus, Gigantic and Open City throw holiday parties, James Gallery holds Pornography in the City panel, Nick Flynn and Joseph Fasano read at Projection, LDM holds Holiday Episode, Stephen Elliott discusses the making of memoir, the Bloodsugars perform, Quentin Tarantino talks, Gabriel Orozco gets retrospectivized at MOMA, and the Madcap Manhattan series screens at Film Forum.

MONDAY 12/14: Wall Street Jolly: The Faster Times, The Rumpus and Gigantic Holiday Party–Whether you prefer pinstripes or a silk-twill shift, put on your Wall Street inspired holiday best and come out and party like you just got a $3 mil. bonus. …more

This week in New York Malcolm Gladwell and James Wood talk about Evangelicalism and the Contemporary Intellectual, members of the Velvet Underground reunite at the New York Public Library, 60 Writers/60 Places screens, Anne Carson performs, Andy Warhol films get shown at Anthology Film Archives, Mark Doty and Marie Howe read, and Voice 4 Vision Puppet Festival presents odes to Salvador Dalí and Fernando Pessoa. (Holiday Preview: Next Week’s Parties: Monday–The Faster Times, The Rumpus and Gigantic host “Wall Street” party at Glasslands, and Tuesday–Open City celebrates at Hi-Fi Bar).

MONDAY 12/7: If you weren’t able to make it out to the Wes Anderson/Noah Baumbach talk at the NYPL a few weeks ago, you can catch Wes Anderson tonight at the screening of Fantastic Mr. Fox at MOMA. He’ll be around for a Q&A afterward. 11 W. 53rd St. 8:00pm. …more

On November 9, 2009, four days before the release of Fantastic Mr. Fox, an animated film by Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, I attended a live “conversation” between the two directors at the New York Public Library. …more

This week in New York the Rumpus and Tin House present MORE THAN YOU EXPECTED with Rick Moody, Starlee Kine and Eugene Mirman followed by a meteor shower, Martin Amis and Chip Kidd celebrate Nabokov’s work with special exhibit of The Original of Laura, Pseudo-Futurist video game improvisation, a week of events centered on National Book Awards, Bob Dylan performs, artist Terence Koh talks at National Arts Club, Greil Marcus live in one-man show–Lipstick Traces, Cinema 16 presents Tom Smith’s masterpiece Solar System, along with PSA’s from the 60s with live musical accompaniment, and SCORE! Pop-Up Swap.

MONDAY 11/16: Celebrating Nabokov: Special one-night only exhibit. Join Martin Amis, Nabokov biographer Brian Boyd and designer Chip Kidd for a celebration of Vladimir Nabokov’s life and work. When Nabokov died in 1977, he left behind the fragments of an unfinished novel on 138 hand-written notecards. His son Dmitri has compiled them in a book under Nabokov’s original title—The Original of Laura.  92nd St. Y. $26. Exhibit opens at 6:30pm, event begins at 8:00pm. …more

This week in New York Ben Marcus and Rivka Galchen at Harper’s Magazine’s The Family Table, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach talk, Mary Gaitskill, John Turturro, and Eric Bogosian at PEN benefit, Frederick Wiseman’s documentary La Danse, Jeff Lewis and the Wowz! at Cakeshop, The Internet as Playground and Factory conference with n+1 magazine, Performa 09 continues, and the First Annual Independent Bookstore Week kicks off.

MONDAY 11/9: PEN: Breakout Voices from Inside. PEN Members and friends will read the award-winning work from PEN’s Prison Writing Program. …more

This week in New York, Performa 09 festival of performing arts inspired by Futurist film, music and literature opens, Bomb throws a Fall Issue Launch Party, Books & Quiche Reading Series is back with Yiyun Li and Salvatore Scibona, Light Industry and Triple Canopy team up to bring you a 14-hour film installation, Robert Wilson’s Quartett opens at BAM, Agriculture Reader has a reading, and Tao Lin reads at Bookthugnation.

MONDAY 11/2 -Without Sun: Brody Condon. Part of Performa 09, “Condon’s “Without Sun” (2006), is an edited collection of ‘found performances’ – online videos of individuals who recorded themselves while having a psychedelic experience. The 15 minute video will be followed by a performative re-creation featuring the dancer Linda Austin and actor Russell Edge. MOMA. 11 W. 53rd St.

Best Music Writing Panel with Greil Marcus, Carrie Brownstein and More. 7:00-9:00pm. Housing Works Bookstore Cafe. 126 Crosby Street. …more