92nd Street Y Literary Readings and Performances

A Celebration of Maurice Sendak with Tony Kushner

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:01:03 EDT

Mon, Sep 15, 2008, 8:00pm

Tony Kushner, Meryl Streep, James Gandolfini, Dave Eggers, Spike Jonze, Linda Emond, Catherine Keener, Anika Noni Rose, Stephen Greenblatt and others, moderator

Maurice Sendak is the modern picture book's portal figure, read the jury citation honoring him with the first Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for children's literature. The author and/or illustrator of more than 90 books, including the Caldecott-winner Where the Wild Things Are, Higglety Pigglety Pop! and In the Night Kitchen, Sendak has collaborated on operas and ballets for television and stage. Playwright Tony Kushner leads this 80th-birthday celebration, with performances, readings and commemorations by Sendak's friends and fellow artists. This event is supported in part by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.

Hamutal Bar-Yosef

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:01:03 EDT

Fri, Sep 19, 2008, 8:00pm

Hamutal Bar-Yosef is immediately recognizable as a great poet, wrote Stanley Moss. Her poems are written about her life, which has been tragic and sometimes glorious, Israel, the Jews and their culture, what it means to be alive, the world-all very big subjects. Night, Morning: Selected Poems is her first collection to be translated into English.

Breyten Breytenbach and Dubravka Ugre i

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:01:03 EDT

Tue, Sep 23, 2008, 8:00pm

J.M. Coetzee called Breyten Breytenbach an immensely gifted writer, able to descend effortlessly into the Africa of poetic unconsciousness. Written in Afrikaans and English, his books include A Season in Paradise, True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist, The Memory of Birds in Times of Revolution, Windcatcher and All One Horse, which he illustrated. In her indignation and in her sorrow, [Dubravka] Ugre i speaks for many people, of many experiences.a writer to be cherished, wrote Susan Sontag. Ugre i is the author of The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, The Ministry of Pain, Thank You for Not Reading and, most recently, Nobody's Home.

John Crowley and Marilynne Robinson

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:01:03 EDT

Thu, Sep 25, 2008, 8:00pm

There are some people-and I'm one of them-for whom life consists only of passing time between novels by John Crowley, wrote Michael Chabon. Crowley's works of fiction include Little, Big; The Translator; Lord Byron's Novel; The Solitudes (from The Aegypt Cycle); and Four Freedoms, which is forthcoming. Marilynne Robinson's words have a spiritual force that's very rare in contemporary fiction, wrote James Wood. Her new novel, Home, returns to the setting of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead. Her other books include Housekeeping and The Death of Adam, a collection of essays.

Judy Blume

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:01:03 EDT

Sat, Oct 4, 2008, 1:00pm

Judy Blume, winner of the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, is the author of numerous classic works of literature for children and adolescents, including Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret; Freckle Juice; Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing; Deenie; Blubber and the Fudge series. Judy Blume's latest is a four-book series for younger readers, illustrated by New Yorker cartoonist James Stevenson; the third book, Going, Going, Gone with the Pain & the Great One has just been published.