Like many funny writers, this essayist and novelist grew up around someone with a highly cultivated sense of humor, in this case her grandmother Nettie. “She was extremely funny. She was sarcastic in a very loving way, which I think is a hard note to hit.” The challenge of being simultaneously funny and sweet. Plus … Continue reading »

When she was 13, her father let her skip school to stay home and read in bed. “It was a great paternal moment, too,” she tells the New York Society Library, “to say to your child: I get that this is more important than going to school today.” The making of a reader, the making … Continue reading »

Admired for fiction (The Russian Debutante’s Handbook) and non-fiction (Little Failure), he began at age five when his grandmother asked him to write a book about Lenin. “She paid me a piece of cheese for every page I wrote, and I wrote 100 pages. I love cheese.” A conversation at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan with music … Continue reading »

  He is a New York Times best-selling writer – 170 books, translated into 34 languages, with sales of over 6 million – but if you are a childless adult, you likely don’t know his name. If you are a 12-year-old YA reader, however, you cheer when you hear it. Plus, the sweet fried dough … Continue reading »

  The going price of a vote in the thirties? $5. How did they know you voted their way? By sandpapering the voting-both curtain so they could see through it. Forget it, Jake, it’s Albany. Tales of political corruption from the author of Ironweed and more.  PERSON: Dan O’Connell  PLACE: Times Union Building  THING: the … Continue reading »

  We all deceive ourselves, says the author of Call Me By Your Name, who provides a hierarchy of self-deception. “The most glaring one, the most painful one, is to imagine yourself being loved by some people who absolutely hate you.” How many really love you? Maybe 50%. “That’s a good number.” Hard truths and … Continue reading »

Best known as the creator of the Goosebumps books, a mighty empire of YA horror, R. L. Stine began as a humor writer, and sees interesting connections between laughter and fear. “It’s like writing punch lines; every chapter has some kind of surprising cliffhanger ending.” We spoke several years ago – he was one of … Continue reading »

  Blindfold a child, put a bat in her hand, and promise her candy, a lot of candy. What could go wrong? Nothing, says the author of the darkly delightful Mister Monkey, in a deft defense of pinatas. Plus: what to do when a neighbor has automatic weapons, poetry from Bob Holman who was entirely … Continue reading »

  Things have changed since she moved to a small town in the Hudson Valley. Now there are scented-candle stores to the left of her, a neighbor with a grenade launcher to the right of her, volleyed and thundered. Gentrification and odder incursions go rural. Plus memories of Spalding Gray, poetry from Bob Holman, music … Continue reading »

  He’s framed a ticket to the World Series game Sandy Koufax did not pitch and a sheet of Freud’s stationery on which the great man did not write. In the second of a two-part episode recorded at JCC Manhattan, Jonathan Safran Foer describes the pleasures of the non-event and the joys of possessing archaeological … Continue reading »

  By letting us not only understand but inhabit its characters, does a novel reveal the commonality of human experience or demonstrate our differences? Both, of course, but Jonathan Safran Foer is particularly sympathetic to the former. In the first of a two-part episode recorded at JCC Manhattan, we discuss the joys of intimacy and … Continue reading »