Touring David Mitchell’s Library at Symphony Space

From its opening minutes, the imagery invoked at Symphony Space on Wednesday night was memorably scenic. Billed as “An Evening With David Mitchell,” this event — opening the latest season of the Selected Shorts series — found the author at the end of a brief stint in the Northeastern United States, timed to the release of the cinematic adaptation of Cloud Atlas, his third novel. Granta editor John Freeman evoked the “ozone scorch of new images being born” in Mitchell’s […]

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Granta Goes Brazilian

Do you want to know who the best young Brazilian novelists are?  Granta will let you know on July 5th. The only thing we’re willing to bet is that every writer on the list will be really beautiful because Brazil seems to be a country with a large population of really good looking people.  Also, if it’s anything like the previous “Best of Young [insert country/language here] Novelists,” it’s gonna be very worth your time. Follow Vol. 1 Brooklyn on Twitter, Facebook, Google + and our Tumblr.  

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Afternoon Bites: Writers’ Ghosts, Granta, Joan Didion, and more

Lisa Fetchko on José Donoso’s The Lizard’s Tale: “Donoso is at his best when exploring our most twisted emotions. His male characters have hopelessly complicated feelings about women; his upper-class characters are consumed with guilt as they cling to privilege; many of his protagonists are trapped in paralyzing cycles of envy, doubt and insecurity.” At Full Stop, Nika Knight takes a seasonally-appropriate view of writers’ ghosts. Leslie Jamison on Joan Didion’s Salvador, in The Paris Review. Granta is having a […]

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Lit Crawling through NYC

Posted by Jon Reiss Last Saturday’s NYC Lit Crawl began at 6 PM in the East Village and ended at around 9 in the Lower East Side.  The event, which was sponsored by likes of heavy lit-ters such as Granta, Harper Perennial and Craig from Craigslist, offered a smorgasbord of mainly light-hearted often-silly events.  Bomb’s “Bomb-aoke” at Bowery Electric, for instance, promised a karaoke-meets interviews format where crawlers could take the stage, pretending to be one of the many artists […]

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Bites: New Granta, Blake Butler Talks to Andrew Zornoza, Stephen King Rocks With The Cougar, Speaking Teabag, and More

Granta announced their next issue will be based around “Work”. Over at Bookslut, Blake Butler has a conversation with Andrew Zornoza. Chris Farley is talked about. The new issue of Bookslut also has an interview with Daniel Nester. What do Stephen King, The Cougar, Neko Case, and Elvis Costello have in common? This musical. Learn to speak teabag. The Forward’s Sisterhood blog responds to Katie Roiphe’s article about male writers and sex writing.

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Bites: The Dantean inferno of Brooklyn, Dickens Christmas Bummer, Granta Picks, Todd P in Mexico, Best Metal, and More

I loved this Gawker quote about the “ironic trailer park” they are building in Bushwick: “Every year they add a new level to the Dantean inferno that is artistic living in Brooklyn.” Lit. “What a wonderful thing it is, that such a great success should occasion me such intolerable anxiety and disappointment!” Charles Dickens on A Christmas Carol.  The Guardian discusses why the book didn’t give the writer a surplus of holiday cash. Taschen will bring you back to the […]

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Best of 2009: Books

Tobias Carroll’s picks Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem Midnight Picnic by Nick Antosca Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler AM/PM by Amelia Gray Lowboy by John Wray The Other City by Michal Ajvaz Asta in the Wings by Jan Elizabeth Watson Between Jan Elizabeth Watson’s novel of a brother and sister raised in isolation and Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor, this was a good year for novels evoking childhood. Both Watson and Whitehead deftly suggest their narrators’ adult destinies with a few […]

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