Don’t overlook book readings for a good night out

I’m aware that some people cringe at the thought of attending a literary reading. Otherwise sophisticated people have even been known to sneer at the very term reading, particularly when prefaced with poetry, in that voice Giuliani used when he described Obama as a community organizer.

But hear me out. Readings—prose, poetry or both; with or without an open-mic component—are the best underrated form of entertainment out there. There are loads of series around the city. You can get to know famous authors and up-and-comers. Lots of them are free. The ones that charge generally don’t charge very much.

Sure, sometimes a reading is inscrutable or amateurish or endless—same as any other art form. But in the good ones, the readers have stage presence, don’t swallow their words, and choose their passages or poems wisely, leaving the audience wanting more. Nobody’s preening or posing. And you in the audience: you get to look right into the reader’s eyes while hearing about what it’s like to be a person with all the same yearnings and woes and funny faux pas as you. If you’re an artist or dream of blossoming into one, you are likely to go home itchy to express yourself in your chosen medium, maybe even with a clearer idea of where to start. Even if you felt intimidated or dubious when you walked in, you’re apt to feel more human and less alone when you leave.

I’ve done it myself
I speak from long experience. I started counting up the number of venues where I’ve given readings of my fiction, poetry and essays, and I quit when I got to 25. I’ve read in coffee places, bars and libraries, including proud return engagements to my hometown library in Connecticut, where I attended story hours as a little girl. I’ve read in cabaret rooms like the glittery (if you don’t look too close) Don’t Tell Mama on Restaurant Row. And I’ve read at the giddy apex: Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater.

I’ve organized my share of readings as well. Once long ago, when running a series in an Upper West Side church for Columbia’s literary journal, I even helped Bernard Malamud, a hero of mine, put on his galoshes after one of his last public appearances. And I spend lots of time attending readings, for the pleasure of sitting in the audience and letting other people’s words wash over me.

Here are two series in the Village that I feel confident in recommending highly (and, for good measure, one in Brooklyn that has long ties to the Village).

The Village Story Salon is a monthly series that started last fall at the Hudson Park Library. It’s reviving a venerable tradition of after-hours readings at the branch, notably a series called Village Writers Meet Their Neighbors that ran into the 1990s and featured the likes of Sigrid Nunez and Eve Merriam. I met one of the organizers of the new series a couple of years earlier—at a reading, it so happens—so I went to the April reading to see what she was up to. The Salon is billed as a celebration of prose and is held the second Thursday evening of the month. No charge. Each one has a one-word theme tied to the month: Mom, Stormy, Gratitude. Three or four authors each read from recently published or new work for 10 minutes.

The April theme was fools. Arrayed in a row at the back of the reading room were four real pros, the most familiar name being Julia Phillips, author of the recent best-selling novel Bear. Beside her sat Jendi Reiter, a nonbinary author already on my radar because they publish a newsletter I love called Winning Writers, with loads of listings of writing contests that don’t charge a fee (increasingly rare). They read from their smart, witty novel Origin Stories, set during the AIDS epidemic. The other two authors were new to me. Jim Hicks, a comp-lit professor at UMass, read from his graceful English translation of the novel My Home Somewhere Else, in the process introducing me to its author, Federica Marzi, who grew up in Trieste, a city that’s not sure if it’s Italian or Slovenian.  The fourth author, Danny Shot, was pure Jersey, reading a rip-roaring story loosely based on his own Beat-wannabe youth. The fictional fools created by these four writers—most notably the girl who starts a relationship with an actual bear—were foolish in their own ways, but also in universal ways, which made the evening add up to more than the sum of the passages.

After the readings, co-hosts Cheryl J. Fish and Jonathan Vatner, novelists and professors themselves, get the audience Q&A going by asking a few smart questions. I found my head bobbing as the authors talked the same kind of talk that comes out of my mouth when I teach my writing classes at The Writers Studio: the value of working in more than one genre; the tricky balancing act of interiority and action; the temptation to hold readers’ hands when what readers really want, though they may not know it, is to connect the dots for themselves. I chatted with Cheryl and Jonathan afterward about how darned good the event was. Cheryl said, giddily: it’s been this way every single time.

At the more razzle-dazzle end of the reading spectrum is Generation Women, the series at Joe’s Pub where I got to be a reader last spring. This series has a theme, too; my night it was Unexpected Connections. The twist is that the organizer, the smart young Georgia Clark, brings together six women or non-binary performers, one representing each decade of life from the 20s up to the 70s, to tell a true story based on the theme. Because people are paying actual money to attend and because the Public Theater is the classiest of performance places, she vets, curates and fine tunes the essays for maximum punch on stage, something I’ve never experienced before and ended up appreciating.

She does another brilliant thing by convening us readers a couple of hours early for sound check and a photo shoot but mostly to hang out together in the basement green room. By the time she led us up through the labyrinth of back passageways, we were old friends vibrating in unison at a high frequency. When we burst onto the stage, the room was packed and abuzz with anticipation, the lights were low, and we all gave it everything we had. And what fun to represent the advanced decade in which I find myself, to notice the subtle shift that comes with decades on the planet: the ego finally grows less demanding, allowing for a broader purview.

Finally, I want to give a shout-out to a new and so far only occasional afternoon series at Freddy’s Bar in Brooklyn. This one is put together by my colleague Lisa Badner of The Writers Studio, the writing school where I learned my craft, where I’ve taught for two decades, and where, after much frustrated searching, I found my writing people. The school, which was headquartered in the West Village for many years, used to run an in-person reading series, but it went online during the pandemic and stayed that way; Zoom giveth (by permitting an international audience), but also taketh away (by removing the intimacy and serendipity of in-person gatherings). This less formal series takes place in the bar’s back room, where it’s dim and a little funky and everyone crams in tight. It’s perfect. The featured readers are teachers and master-class students at the school. The warmup act is an open mic with only a few spots. Word has clearly spread, because at the last reading there was a line out the backroom door to sign up. No charge, though everyone is encouraged to buy a drink or some food, a deal when you consider the generous helpings of poignancy, wit and lyricism you’ll be served.

• Village Story Salon Hudson Park Library, second Thursday of the month, 6-7:15 p.m. free. On hiatus after the June 12 reading, back on September 11. https://www.instagram.com/villagestorysalon/
• Generation Women: Joe’s Pub, check website for upcoming dates. Tickets $39.60; 2-drink or 1-food-item minimum https://www.generationwomen.us/
• The Writers Studio at Freddy’s Bar on hiatus for the summer after 5/3. No charge, but purchase of food or drink encouraged. Check website for fall 2025 dates.
• Artemis Poetry Collective: (reading and open mic): hosted by jazz singer Gitesha in the basement at One and One. Monthly on Saturday at 1-3. The one time I went, the event was loosey-goosey, with an old-time Village vibe. Suggested $5 contribution. https://www.facebook.com/TheArtemisPoetryCollective/
• Poetry Night at Hudson Park Library (reading and open mic): 6 p.m. second Friday of the month. Haven’t been yet. https://www.instagram.com/hudsonparknypl/p/DGOGsD6J_td/
• Carmine Street Metrics (reading and open mic): Jefferson Market Library Willa Cather Room, monthly, Saturday at 2, open mic sign-up at 1:45. I attended once and was impressed with the quality of the work. https://www.facebook.com/groups/115365158547016/
• The Writers Studio: For more about in-person and virtual fiction, poetry and memoir workshops and more: https://www.writerstudio.com/ or email [email protected].