Reminder! SWEET: Actors Reading Writers (12/2)

This Thursday (12/2) at 7:30 p.m. at Three of Cups (83 First Ave. @ 5th St.), come listen to actress Joya Mia Italiano reading from Personal Days!

Other performers will do dramatic readings of work by Sonya Chung, Jonathan Dixon, poet Maya Pindyck, and the one and only Amanda Filipacchi, whose Love Creeps is one of my favorite comic novels.

(Here's the Facebook page for Sweet: Actors Reading Writers. And here's the same information configured slightly differently on my glorious webpage.)

"Bound to Last"

A piece I wrote on E. Gary Gygax's Dungeon Masters Guide (TSR) is in an interesting new anthology, Bound to Last: 30 Writers on Their Most Cherished Book (Da Capo), edited by Sean Manning. The introduction is by Ray Bradbury, and contributors include Sarah Manguso (on Ripley's Believe It or Not!), Karen Joy Fowler, David Hajdu, Karen Green, Jim Knipfel (on Mason & Dixon), Anthony Swofford, J. Courtney Sullivan, Jim Shepard...

(Bonus! You can listen to me, editor Sean Manning, and contributor Sigrid Nuñez discuss the book on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show.)

Two new pieces

I have two new pieces up/out:

1. For Bookforum, I look at the 16th (and 14th) edition of The Chicago Manual of Style.

2. For the Poetry Foundation, I meditate on Garrett Caples's pamphlet, "Quintessence of the Minor: Symbolist Poetry in English," and John Ashbery and James Schuyler's novel, A Nest of Ninnies.

Dramatic reading! 12/2

On Thursday, December 2, Personal Days will be one of five books being interpreted—dramatically!—by SWEET Actors Reading Writers. The actress Joya Mia Italiano will read from the novel; also featured will be work by Sonya Chung, Jonathan Dixon, and Amanda Filipacchi—our greatest living "pure" comic novelist!

The event takes place at Three of Cups, 83 First Ave. at 5th St.

Reading tonight (10/27) — NYC/KGB

I'll be reading tonight at 7 at KGB (85 E. 4th St.) with Bryan Charles—more info here.

Reading at KGB, 10/27

On Weds., Oct. 27, at 7 p.m. I'll be reading with novelist/memoirist/Pavement scholar Bryan Charles at KGB—it's a reading for Open City. (A story of mine will be in the winter issue.) Bryan's memoir, There's a Road to Everywhere Except Where You Came From (a VTS, as the narrator of Joseph Weisberg's 10th Grade would say), is out now from Open City Books.

I'm excited! I don't know what I'm going to read from yet...

Beard award

Chin Up!
I work the second shift in an office where cubicles are shared. The fellow who uses my cubicle in the first shift has a luxuriant beard. Every night, I come to work and find beard hairs all over the desk and keyboard. I find this incredibly disgusting. Is there a polite way of asking him to clean up after himself?

How about weaving those molted whiskers into a wreath that you can hang from your shared cubicle wall — with a bit of verse attached:

“Your beard is handsome
and deserves an award.
But on your face,
Not in my keyboard.
Don’t forget to tidy!”

And if you’re short on time, feel free to skip the wreath.

—NYT, Social Q's