For writers, and readers, who aren’t making the annual pilgrimage to AWP, The Millions and Big Other join forces this weekend to offer a NYC alternative, A Reading and Conversation with Four Great Writers: Vijay Seshardi, Rachel B. Glaser, Alexandra Chasin, and (our very own) Sonya Chung. At Unnameable Books in Brooklyn on Saturday, starting at 5pm. Drinks will be served. Please Join Us!
A Reading and Conversation with Four Great Writers
Drunk Writing
Recommended Reading: Michelle Dean writes for The New Republic about the image of the tortured, alcoholic writer — and the “different kind of weight attached to a woman drinker.”
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On Hunger
Alexander Chee has a stunning new story in Guernica. He writes, “I wanted to eat and so I learned to sing…It took more than a witch to make a singer out of me.” Pair with Claire Cameron’s Millions interview with the author about his new novel, The Queen of the Night.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Rowling, Homes, Stein, Wilson, Moehringer, Tejpal, Silver, Young, Warner, Donoghue
Another bumper crop of books this week is led by J.K Rowling’s post-Potter effort, The Casual Vacancy is on shelves, as are May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes, Canvas by Benjamin Stein, Panorama City by Antoine Wilson, Sutton by J.R. Moehringer, Tarun J. Tejpal’s debut The Story of my Assassins. On the non-fiction side, Nate Silver’s long-awaited The Signal and the Noise is here, as is Neil Young’s memoir Waging Heavy Peace. New in paperback: John Warner’s Funny Man (the edition includes an essay by Warner that ran on The Millions) and Emma Donoghue’s blockbuster The Room.
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Huxley’s Closes His Doors of Perception
Doors of Perception author Aldous Huxley requested a dose of LSD as he succumbed to laryngeal cancer in 1963. Three weeks later, Huxley’s widow, Laura Archera, wrote a letter describing the experience (“the most beautiful death”) to her brother-in-law. Today the prescription of psychedelic drugs to terminally ill patients is less uncommon than you might expect.