Time again for Word Up, our weekly roundup of readings and talks worth getting up and out of the house for.
Thursday, July 10
Emily Gould and Elif Batuman
Gawker blogger turned memoirist Emily Gould’s new novel, Friendship, is about (you guessed it) a young Brooklyn blogger whose boyfriend happens to keep a studio in Greenpoint’s Pencil Factory. “Amy loved visiting Sam there, seeing all the other artists in the hallways and on the roof,” Gould writes. “It was so cheering to know that there were still people who made their living by creating physical things—even if some of them were commercial illustrators and graphic designers. Well, Sam wasn’t, anyway! He was just a guy who made giant oil paintings of Cuisinarts.” She’ll be discussing fiction and friendship with Elif Batuman, who has written for the likes of The New Yorker and n+1, and is the author of The Possessed.
7pm, McNally Jackson Books (52 Prince St). FREE.
Sunday, July 13
The Emergence of Video Processing Tools: Book Launch and Discussion
The scintillatingly titled Emergence of Video Processing Tools: Television Becoming Unglued, edited by Kathy High, Sherry Miller Hocking, and Mona Jimenez, examines early video instruments such as the Raster Manipulation Unit (aka—awesomely—the “Wobbulator”), the Paik/Abe Video Synthesizer, the Sandin Image Processor, the Rutt-Etra Video Synthesizer, the Digital Image Articulator, Pantomation, and the software HARPO, among others. If you have any idea what any of those are, then you will probably enjoy this conversation between inventor Dave Jones, artists-designers Kyle Lapidus and Tali Hinkis of LoVid, Rhizome conservator Dragan Espenschied, and Hank Rudolph of the artist space Signal Culture and the Experimental Television Center. If you have no idea what the majority of the above words mean, skip it.
3pm, The New Museum (235 Bowery). $8 general public, $6 members.
Monday, July 14
#grow fierce series
This Bluestockings poetic series showcases New York-based emerging women poets. The featured poets are alumni of the online Digging Deep, Facing Self writing course, which uses writing as a therapeutic process to enable “women who want to be fearless” to gain better access to their emotions and their respective selves. Sounds like things could get messy. Expect “moving narratives of star dust, open veins, blossoming gardens, poetic switch blades, roller skates and prophetic tea leaves.”
7pm, Bluestockings (172 Allen St). FREE.
Tuesday, July 15
Amy Sohn and Choire Sicha
Brooklyn-based writer Amy Sohn’s third novel. The Actress, is an examination of the power dynamics of contemporary Hollywood: essentially presenting a fictionalized version of any number of celebrity couplings we could mention. It’s a book, according to Slate, “which seems designed—in its intended intellectual seriousness on the one hand, and its blind-item-centric, beach-ready titillation on the other—to sit perfectly between Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays and Jackie Collins’ Hollywood Wives.” Other critics have been crueller, but watching Sohn in conversation with Choire Sicha (editor of The Awl and author of Very Recent History) will no doubt be interesting regardless.
7pm, WORD Bookstore (126 Franklin St). FREE.
Wednesday, July 16
Fantastic Fiction
This installment of KGB’s “Fantastic Fiction” series sees hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel in conversation with writers Victor Lavalle and Sofia Samatar. LaValle is the author of four books, including the surreal, monster-strewn, mental hospital-set Devil in Silver. Just to up his creepiness cred, he recently wrote the introduction to the Penguin re-issue of Shirley Jackson’s The Sundial. Samatar has published poetry and short fiction; her debut novel A Stranger in Olondria is a powerful tale that weaves superstition, religion, politics and a love for literature into a kind of fantastical travelogue that Bookslut read as a fictional meditation on Orientalism. An evening with these two authors promises weird and wonderful things.
7pm, KGB Bar (85 East 4th St). FREE.
Thursday, July 17
Alex Liberman Panel
Liberman was a legend of the Conde Nast set. Art director at Vogue for 21 years, then editorial director at Conde Nast for a further 32 years, he was also an accomplished sculptor, painter, designer and photographer. A book reflecting on this rennaissance man –Alex Liberman: Ways of Thinking About Design—has recently been put together by creative director and graphic designer Lucy Sisman. At this Strand event, Sisman will be joined by some of Liberman’s “closest friends and confidants” (Lloyd Ziff and Joan Juliet Buck) to discuss the big man’s life and legacy.
7pm, Strand Book store (828 Broadway). Attendees must purchase a copy of Alex Liberman: Ways of Thinking About Design or a $15 Strand gift card in order to attend this event.