Experience Emily Wilson's THE ILIAD, Richard Ford, Roxane Gay & More Readings At 92NY

Get the details on upcoming readings at 92NY, featuring Emily Wilson's The Iliad, Richard Ford, Roxane Gay, and more. Find out when and where these exciting literary events will take place.

Viet Thanh Nguyen:
A Man Of Two Faces
With Min Jin Lee

In Person and Online

Friday, Oct. 20, 8 pm ET, From $20

Join Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer, The Committed, and The Refugees) as he reads from his new memoir, A Man of Two Faces, followed by a conversation with Min Jin Lee (Pachinko).

Nguyen and Lee, two of America's great contemporary storytellers, discuss Nguyen's stunning new book — “a triumphant memoir that sears through the fog of American amnesia,” writes Cathy Park Hong. “It is a fissured lyric on memory and a clarifying meditation on empire. Every American needs to read this essential book.”

Expanding the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and the relationship between Vietnam and America, A Man of Two Faces is marked by Nguyen's trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son. Hear these two vitally original writers on Nguyen's moving and brilliant meditation about the relationship between personal narrative and cultural power.

Dionne Brand, Sadiya Hartman And Christine Sharpe: Writing, Form And Black Life

In Person and Online

Wednesday, Oct. 25, 7:30 pm ET, From $20

An evening of readings and conversations on writing, form and Black Life. Dionne Brand's Nomenclature surveys eight volumes of poetry published between 1982 and 2010 and a new long poem on the diaspora and quotidian disasters. “Brand is without question one of the major living poets in the English language. Nomenclature is an invaluable and important text for poetry readers,” wrote John Keene.
 Saidiya Hartman's Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2019. Her work is “gorgeous and heartbreaking,” writes Daphne A. Brooks. “It is scholarship as art imbued with a kind of discursive simultaneity that yields both eulogy and possibility.”

Academy Of American Poets' Chancellors Reading: With Tracy K. Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Carolyn Forché, Marilyn Chin, Nikky Finney, Marie Howe And Ed Roberson

In Person and Online

Thursday, Oct. 26, 8 pm ET, From $15

92NY's Unterberg Poetry Center teams with the Academy of American Poets to present its annual Chancellors' reading, featuring Marilyn Chin, Carolyn Forché, Nikky Finney, Marie Howe, Ed Roberson, Tracy K. Smith, Patricia Smith, and Natasha Trethewey.

Emily Wilson: The Iliad
 

with readings by actor Chukwudi Iwuji and Emily Wilson and a coversation

In Person and Online

Monday, Nov. 6, 7:30 pm ET, From $20

Emily Wilson, whose translation of The Odyssey redefined Homer's ancient epic for the 21st century, presents her long-awaited new translation of Homer's other great epic, The Iliad. Celebrated as the definitive translation of Homer for our age, “Emily Wilson's crisp and musical version [of The Odyssey ] is a cultural landmark,” wrote The Guardian. “This translation will change the way the poem is read in English.” In lean, precise verse, Wilson transforms Homer's harrowing poem of war, fate, and grief into an idiom at once timeless and utterly contemporary.   

Wilson, along with accomplished theater veteran Chukwudi Iwuji (Tamburlaine, Hedda Gabbler), will read from her translation and discuss the work and process of translation.

Roxane Gay and Lindsay Hunter

In Person and Online

Tuesday, Nov. 14, 7:30 pm ET, From $28 
 

New York Times best-selling author Roxane Gay (Hunger, Bad Feminist) presents her new book of essays, Opinions. Collecting Gay's best non-fiction of the past decade — on state-sponsored violence and mass shootings, women's rights post-Dobbs, online disinformation, the limits of empathy, and more — Opinions is a wide-ranging, strikingly fresh, and often personal perspective on the biggest issues facing American society. Gay is joined by Lindsay Hunter (Don't Kiss Me, Eat Only When You're Hungry) upon the release of Hunter's new novel, Hot Springs Drive, published by the new Roxane Gay Books imprint. A darkly engrossing exploration of desire and the far-rippling consequences of betrayal, Hot Springs Drive is Hunter's most ferocious book to date. “She has a brilliant sense for the perfectly telling image,” writes Garth Greenwell of Eat Only When You're Hungry. “Her humor is so biting and smart it was almost a surprise, at the end of this engrossing book, to realize how thoroughly she had broken my heart.”

Richard Ford and John Edgar Wideman

In Person and Online

Thursday, Nov. 16, 8 pm ET, From $25

Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford (The Sportswriter, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land, Let Me Be Frank with You) returns to read from the fifth novel in his Frank Bascombe sequence, Be Mine. The culmination of five books and 40 years, Be Mine presents Bascombe in the twilight of his life — unconstrained, astute, provocative, and often laugh-out-loud funny, a living testament to Ford's stature “among the elite American writers of the past half-century” (Dwight Garner, The New York Times ). He reads with MacArthur “Genius” Fellow John Edgar Wideman, a “master of language” (The New York Times Book Review), upon the reissue of The Homewood Trilogy — two novels and a story collection set in Wideman's hometown of Pittsburgh that launched his career. Join two of America's signature storytellers —commanding chroniclers of our time and place — as they share the stage for the first time. 

Ava chin and Paisley Rekdal
with Jessica Hagedorn

In Person and Online

Ava Chin (Eating Wildly, Split) and Paisley Rekdal (Appropriate: A Provocation) read from their new books, powerful and ranging accounts of Chinese American history — and the aftermath of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 — followed by a conversation with Jessica Hagedorn.

Ava Chin's Mott Street is a gorgeously written, sweeping narrative history of the effects of the Exclusion Act through an intimate portrayal of her own family's epic journey to lay down roots in New York's Chinatown. “It is a vibrant and moving family story — essential reading for understanding not just Chinese American history, but American history,” writes Celeste Ng.

Chin is joined by poet and essayist Paisley Rekdal, who reads from West: A Translation — an unflinching hybrid collection of poems and essays, written in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad, that draws a powerful, necessary connection between the railroad's completion and the Exclusion Act. “She makes us feel and see the complicated and violent nature of the issue of race and identity,” writes Ha Jin. “Rekdal writes with eloquence, liveliness, and poignancy.” Don't miss these two essential writers, movingly and forcefully transforming our understanding of American identity and migration. 

  About The 92nd Street Y, New York: The 92nd Street Y, New York (92NY) is a world-class center for the arts and innovation, a convener of ideas, and an incubator for creativity. Now celebrating its 150th  anniversary, 92NY offers extensive classes, courses and events online including live concerts, talks and master classes; fitness classes for all ages; 250+ art classes, and parenting workshops for new moms and dads. The 92nd Street Y, New York is transforming the way people share ideas and translate them into action all over the world. All of 92NY's programming is built on a foundation of Jewish values, including the capacity of civil dialogue to change minds; the potential of education and the arts to change lives; and a commitment to welcoming and serving people of all ages, races, religions, and ethnicities. For more information, visit  www.92NY.org.