Judy Budnitz
November 16 2004, 7:30 PM
Beat Kitchen
Men in dog suits, babies born pitch black, a sister's bout with leprosy—however absurd the premise, Judy Budnitz's stories unveil startling truths about memory and family. Her novel,
If I Told You Once, inspired by the stories of I.B. Singer, chronicles one family across four generations, from Eastern Europe to America. Her stories have been featured in
McSweeney's, The New Yorker, and
The Paris Review. Her new story collection,
Nice Big American Baby, comes out in February 2005.
Gary Shteyngart and Jeffrey Eugenides talk about Life, Literature and the Pursuit of a Good Story
January 12 2005, 7:30 PM
The Abbey Pub
Born in Leningrad, raised in Queens, Gary Shteyngart was still struggling to reconcile his Old and New World identities when he began his first novel.
The Russian Debutante's Handbook follows 25-year-old Vladimir Girshkin from New York City to Eastern Europe, immigrant to expatriate, as he stumbles through love, literary magazines, and pyramid schemes. In 2003, Shytengart won the National Jewish Book Award for fiction; his short stories and essays have appeared in
The New Yorker, Granta, GQ, and
The New York Times Magazine.
With an eye for the absurd, Pulitzer-prize winning author Jeffrey Eugenides has written about hermaphrodites, suburban anomie, and immigrants in a new land. Now the author of
Middlesex and
The Virgin Suicides joins novelist Gary Shteyngart for a conversation (and a possibly a serenade or two) on literature, wanderlust, and roiling epics.
I'm Glad You Asked: An Evening of Free Advice
Hosted by Susan Stamberg
March 28 2005, 7:30 PM
The Abbey Pub
3420 West Grace Street, Chicago
In the shtetl you consulted the rebbe, the matchmaker, or your mother. The New World brought new possibilities: newspapers, radio, television, the Internet. Are redheads cursed? Will I die if I marry a woman with a dimpled chin? How do I get my parents to stop speaking Yiddish in public? From the Bintel Brief to Dear Abby to Drs. Ruth and Laura, advice mavens have used mass media to dispense commonsense wisdom and voyeuristic entertainment. National Public Radio's Susan Stamberg hosts an evening of dramatic readings of some of the best advice you'll ever get. Stamberg was co-host of
All Things Considered for 14 years and is now a special correspondent for NPR.
Esther Freud
April 20 2005, 7:00 PM
Beat Kitchen
Esther Freud's novels often draw inspiration from her family history, a lineage that includes Sigmund, Ernst, and Lucian. Her first book,
Hideous Kinky, about two small girls and their bohemian mother in Morocco, was based on her own nomadic childhood. Her latest,
The Sea House, darts between past and present: an architect, his wife, and a German refugee in 1953, and a young woman 50 years later, piecing their letters and lives back together. Freud's other novels include
Peerless Flats, Summer at Gaglow, and
The Wild. In 1993, she was selected by Granta as one of the 20 Best Young British Novelists.
David Rakoff
May 18 2005, 7:30 PM
The Abbey Pub
3420 West Grace Street, Chicago
With a sharp eye for the absurd, writer and
This American Life contributor David Rakoff joins the ranks of social observers David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell. His first collection,
Fraud, describes, among other things, a Buddhist retreat led by Steven Seagal and Rakoff's own brief stint as Sigmund Freud in the Christmas window at Barneys. His essays have appeared in The
New York Times Magazine, GQ, Vogue, and Salon.com.