92Y Announces Amor Towles, Celebrations Of Jane Austen And Sam Shepard And More Literary Events

92NY has announced a lineup of upcoming literary events with Amor Towles, Robert Crumb, Celebrations of Jane Austen and Sam Shepard and more.

A Celebration Of Sam Shepard: Curse Of The Starving Class

Reading and conversation with Christian Slater, Calista Flockhart, Cooper Hoffman, Marin Ireland, Lois Smith and more.

In Person and Online

Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 8 pm ET, From $25

The star-studded cast of The New Group's upcoming production of Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class – David Anzuelo, Kyle Beltran, Calista Flockhart, Cooper Hoffman, Jeb Kreager, Stella Marcus and Christian Slater — will read an excerpt from the upcoming production.

Actors Marin Ireland, Lois Smith and Nat Wolff will read additional selections from Shepard's other works. The readings will be followed by a conversation about Sam Shepard's life and work as one of American theater's most inimitable voices with the actors and The New Group's Artistic Director Scott Elliott.

Actor. Director. Playwright. Icon. Before Sam Shepard became a star onscreen for his performances in films like Days of Heaven and The Right Stuff, he was writing some of the most distinctive plays of his era. Among them was Curse of the Starving Class, a timeless story that troubles and dismantles the American dream in its examination of a family fighting to stay alive, performing Off-Broadway this winter in a new production directed by award-winning Scott Elliott.

This event is presented in partnership with The New Group.

Joseph Finder With David Remnick: The Oligarch's Daughter

In Person and Online

Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 7:30 pm ET, From $25

As an expert on Russian spycraft, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. In The Oligarch's Daughter, Finder combines his masterful storytelling powers and commanding geopolitical expertise to create the first novel of a new Cold War — a brilliantly written, expertly researched cat and mouse story following a man on the run, living under an assumed name in a small New England town with a million-dollar bounty on his head after falling in love with the daughter of a Russian oligarch.

As editor of The New Yorker, David Remnick's reporting on Vladimir Putin's Russia has shed new light on US-Russian relations in the years before and during Putin's invasion of Ukraine. In this gripping reading and conversation celebrating the launch of The Oligarch's Daughter, hear Finder and Remnick on the art of storytelling in the Putin era. Are we already in the midst of a new Cold War? Where is the line between fact and fiction in Finder's new tale? Join him and Remnick on the art of the modern spy novel.

Kevin Young And Poets Of The New Yorker: A Century Of Poetry

In Person and Online

Thu, Feb 20, 2025, 7:30 pm ET, From $25

Join award-winning poet and New Yorker poetry editor Kevin Young for a reading honoring a century of poetry in The New Yorker — and the release of a monumental new anthology, edited by Young — featuring some of the most iconic poetic voices in America.

From Dorothy Parker to Derek Walcott, Sylvia Plath to Sandra Cisneros, John Ashbery to Amanda Gorman, The New Yorker is both a gateway into and a treasure trove of English-language poetry. A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker: 1925-2025  gathers one hundred years of the most influential, entertaining, and taste-making verse ever published in the magazine, including by many poets who have graced the stage of 92NY — Seamus Heaney, Louise Glück, Langston Hughes, Tracy K. Smith, Mark Strand, Terrance Hayes, Billy Collins, Ada Limón and dozens of others.

In a special celebratory reading, hear Young and a group of some of today's premier poets reading from the anthology, both classic selections and their own work — a tribute to the stunning poetic range of the magazine's history and the resounding power of poetry itself.

A Celebration Of Jane Austen: Jennifer Egan, Kevin Kwan, Vivian Gornick And Alexandra Schwartz

In Person and Online

Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 7:30 pm ET, From $25

Join a group of celebrated writers and critics — including Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan, bestselling novelist Kevin Kwan, acclaimed memoirist Vivian Gornick, and The New Yorker's Alexandra Schwartz — for a reading and conversation about Jane Austen, in celebration of the 250th anniversary of her birth.

“What genius, what integrity it must have required in face of all that criticism, in the midst of that purely patriarchal society, to hold fast to the thing as [she] saw it without shrinking,” writes Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One's Own, of Jane Austen. More than anything, Austen wrote with wit, elegance, and extraordinary emotional truthfulness about the lives of women; their friendships, their desires, and their complex inner worlds. Her novels — Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Persuasion , and others — are “as nearly flawless as any fiction could be” (Eudora Welty), her characters vivid, complex, and alive, spawning countless adaptations and incalculable influence on popular and literary culture in the centuries after her death.

In a special reading and conversation on the 250th anniversary of her birth, hear a group of extraordinary contemporary writers on Austen's legacy — how she has remained in the cultural bloodstream for so long, her influence on their own work, and much more.

Amor Towles: Table For Two

In Person and Online

Wed, Apr 9, 2025, 7:30 pm ET, From $25

Master storyteller Amor Towles joins us for a reading and conversation about his remarkable career — and in celebration of his New York Times-bestselling story collection, Table for Two.

From his runaway bestseller debut Rules of Civility to The Lincoln Highway and A Gentleman in Moscow, millions of readers around the world have fallen in love with the books of Amor Towles — elegant, absorbing, gripping novels that have made him one of the most beloved writers of his generation. Written with his signature wit, humor, and sophistication, Table for Two — six stories based in New York City and a novella set in Hollywood's Golden Age, “Eve in Hollywood,” a sequel to Rules of Civility  — is another glittering addition to Towles's canon of stylish and transporting fiction.

What makes Towles' writing so enchanting? How does he make us want, need to keep reading? What was the inspiration behind Table for Two? In a special reading and conversation, hear Towles discuss his remarkable career as a writer and the secrets of his trade — an evening of literature and conversation with one of America's premier literary storytellers.

Daniel Mendelsohn: Homer's The Odyssey

In Person and Online

Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 8 pm ET, From $25

Join celebrated translator, critic and classicist Daniel Mendelsohn as he presents his landmark new translation of Homer's The Odyssey.

Widely known for essays bringing the intricacies of classical literature and culture to modern readers in The New Yorker, Daniel Mendelsohn's new translation of The Odyssey is a marvel — rather than streamlining and modernizing Homer's epic as many recent translators have attempted, Mendelsohn goes for broke by bringing the music of Homer's original into English, in all its archaic grandeur. The resulting epic is a stunning echo of Homer's original Greek, bringing Odysseus' gripping adventure — a timeless meditation on fate, power, marriage, and home, rich with profound human insight — to a dazzling pitch.

In a special reading and conversation, hear Mendelsohn on the making of his translation — why he hewed so close to the sound of Homer's original poetry, the technical virtuosity of his work, why The Odyssey continues to captivate us thousands of years after it was written, and more.

Robert Crumb and Dan Nadel With Naomi Fry -- Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life

In Person and Online

Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 7 pm ET, From $25

Over the course of 70 years, Robert Crumb almost single-handedly transformed comics from a pulp children's pastime into high art for adults. Now with the help of Crumb himself — and his never-before-seen letters and archives — award-winning comics scholar and biographer Dan Nadel is ready to tell his story.

Subversive, literary, and profoundly inventive, Robert Crumb's comics created a new American vernacular — capturing the 1960s counterculture, the shattering of our social and sexual taboos and the dissolution of the hippie dream, the history of popular music, and even the Book of Genesis in an utterly distinctive visual style. Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, and countless other comics artists are indebted to his pathbreaking work. In a new biography written with Crumb's cooperation, Dan Nadel tells his story — sharing how this complicated artist survived childhood abuse, fame, struggles with mental illness, and came out on the other side.

In an unforgettable conversation moderated by New Yorker staff writer Naomi Fry, hear Crumb and Nadel on the making of Crumb's iconic oeuvre — including Zap Comix, Fritz the Cat, Weirdo, his final book-length comic of The Book of Genesis, and more. Find out how Crumb transformed the pressures of 1950s suburban America and his own dysfunctional family into a distinctive style that captures the essence of Crumb's life, his unruly imagination, and the radical transformations of 20th century culture.

All tickets include a copy of Nadel's thrilling new book.