Benjamin Nugent and Naomi Fry on the influence of Leonard Michaels

Join Benjamin Nugent, winner of the 2019 Terry Southern Prize, and New Yorker staff writer Naomi Fry at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, July 14, on The Paris Review’s Instagram for a live conversation about Leonard Michaels’s 1981 novel The Men’s Club. They’ll be discussing the influence of Michaels, a frequent contributor in the early days of The Paris Review, on Nugent’s latest short story collection, Fraternity.

Benjamin Nugent is the winner of The Paris Review’s 2019 Terry Southern Prize for Humor. His stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and The Unprofessionals: New American Writing from The Paris Review. He has written for n+1, The New York Times Magazine, Time, and other publications. He is the author of the novel Good Kids and the nonfiction book American Nerd. His new book Fraternity will be released by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on July 7.

Naomi Fry is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes about culture.

This is a free public event taking place on The Paris Review’s Instagram Live feed. 

The Paris Review Instagram

Instagram Live, https://www.instagram.com/parisreview/,

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Kelli Jo Ford in conversation with Emily Nemens

To celebrate the launch of Crooked Hallelujah, the debut novel from 2019 Plimpton Prize winner Kelli Jo Ford, The Paris Review will partner with Fort Greene’s beloved Greenlight Bookstore to bring editor Emily Nemens in conversation with Ford about the novel and her process.

Crooked Hallelujah tells the stories of Justine—a mixed-blood Cherokee woman—and her daughter, Reney, as they move from Eastern Oklahoma’s Indian Country in the hopes of starting a new, more stable life in Texas amid the oil bust of the 1980s. However, life in Texas isn’t easy, and Reney feels unmoored from her family in Indian Country. Against the vivid backdrop of the Red River, we see their struggle to survive in a world—of unreliable men and near-biblical natural forces, like wildfires and tornadoes—intent on stripping away their connections to one another and their very ideas of home. 

Kelli Jo Ford is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize, the Everett Southwest Literary Award, the Katharine Bakeless Nason Award at Bread Loaf, a National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and a Dobie Paisano Fellowship. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Missouri Review, and the anthology Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial, among other places.

Emily Nemens is a writer, illustrator, and editor. Her debut novel, The Cactus League, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in February 2020. In 2018 Nemens became the seventh editor of The Paris Review, the nation’s preeminent literary quarterly. Since her arrival, the magazine has won the ASME Award for Fiction, seen record-high circulation, published two anthologies, and produced a second season of its acclaimed podcast. Previously, she coedited The Southern Review, a storied literary quarterly published at Louisiana State University. 

 This event will be held on Zoom.

To register for this event or to learn more please visit Greenlight's website.

Greenlight Bookstore ZOOM

The World Wide Web, coming 'atcha , from Fort Greene

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Readings from the Summer Issue

Join The Paris Review’s editor, Emily Nemens, for a tour through the Summer issue, featuring several contributors to no. 233. The program will include readings of work from the issue and a conversation about translation.

Jamel Brinkley reads from his story “Witness”

Patricio Ferrari reads translations of Alberto Caeiro and António Osório 

Aracelis Girmay reads the work of Lucille Clifton

Vijay Seshadri, The Paris Review’s poetry editor, discusses poetry in translation

Registration is required for this free event.

This event will take place on Zoom. A link to join the conversation will be provided shortly before the event.

This is a free event. However, The Paris Review is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and welcomes your support.  Donate today.

This event event will take place on Zoom.

A link to join the conversation will be provided shortly before the event when you register with Eventbrite., This event is free but registration is required,

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Laura van den Berg in conversation with Emily Nemens

To celebrate the publication of I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, the newest collection from Paris Review contributor Laura van den Berg, Emily Nemens will be in conversation with van den Berg on The Paris Review’s Instagram. 

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, Laura van den Berg’s first story collection since her prizewinning book The Isle of Youth, draws readers into a world of wholly original, sideways ghost stories that linger in the mouth and the mind. Both timeless and urgent, these eleven stories confront misogyny, violence, and the impossible economics of America with van den Berg’s trademark spiky humor and surreal eye. Moving from the peculiarities of Florida to liminal spaces of travel in Mexico City, Sicily, and Iceland, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears is uncannily attuned to our current moment, and to the fears we reveal to no one but ourselves. 

Laura van den Berg is the author of the story collections What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us and The Isle of Youth and the novels Find Me and The Third Hotel, which was a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and an Indie Next pick and was named a best book of 2018 by more than a dozen publications. She is the recipient of a Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Bard Fiction Prize, a PEN/O. Henry Award, and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and is a two-time finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Born and raised in Florida, Laura splits her time between the Boston area and Central Florida, with her husband and dog.

Emily Nemens is a writer, illustrator, and editor. Her debut novel, The Cactus League, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in February 2020. In 2018 Nemens became the seventh editor of The Paris Review, the nation’s preeminent literary quarterly. Since her arrival, the magazine has won the ASME Award for Fiction, seen record-high circulation, published two anthologies, and produced a second season of its acclaimed podcast. Previously, she coedited The Southern Review, a storied literary quarterly published at Louisiana State University. 

 This event will take place on The Paris Review’s Instagram as a live event.

Instagram Live

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PAST EVENT Writers at Work/The Paris Review: An Evening with Kwame Anthony Appiah and David Remnick

On Wednesday, January 29, New Yorker editor David Remnick will interview scholar, philosopher, and author Kwame Anthony Appiah for his Art of Nonfiction interview at the Morgan Library.

The Paris Review’s renowned Writers at Work interview series is one of the landmarks of modern world literature. Hailed by the New York Times as “the most remarkable interviewing project we possess,” the series received a George Polk Award and has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Writers at Work interviews, at once expansive and intimate, are rarely conducted in public; Mr. Remnick’s interview of Mr. Appiah brings one of the leading intellectuals of our time into conversation with one of New York’s great editors on a truly special evening. 

The exhibition Alfred Jarry: The Carnival of Being will be open at 6 PM for program attendees. Select works from The Paris Review Archive, owned by the Morgan, will be on view. 

Tickets: $20; $15 for Morgan Members and Paris Review Subscribers; free for students with valid ID.

For more information or to purchase a ticket please visit the website of The Morgan Library and Museum. 

David Remnick. Photography by Brigitte Lacombe.
Kwame Anthony Appiah. Photography by Richard Trenner.

The Morgan Library and Museum

225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, 10016

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