Teju Cole

Hear from the new kids on the publishing block how their dreams became reality. Aspiring authors won’t want to miss the opportunity to get tips and hear stories from novelists who made the leap into the publishing world. The Dean of Faculty at Gotham Writers’ Workshop Alexander Steele will talk with ... (more)Kamala Nair (The Girl in the Garden), Amor Towles (Rules of Civility), Teju Cole (Open City) and Rebecca Wolff (The Beginners). The event is FREE and open to the public. For updates and additional information, please visit the website at www.bryantpark.org. The Bryant Park Reading Room located on the 42nd Street side of the park - under the trees - between the back of the NYPL & 6th Avenue. Look for the burgundy and white umbrellas. Rain Venue: Library of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen 20 West 44th Street (between 5th & 6th Avenue).

Join us for three stunning evocations of how the future incorporates the past into the present. These forward-looking novelists examine personal journeys through our collective histories. In Progress , a stirring story of lives lost and found, Michael V. Smith introduces us to Helen, who is unable to ... (more)move on with her life. But life itself is moving on around her—literally. The building of a dam is forcing her small town—and her family home—to relocate. A haunting novel about national identity, race, liberty, loss, dislocation and surrender, Teju Cole’s Open City follows a young Nigerian doctor along the streets of Manhattan. But it is not only a physical landscape he covers; Julius crisscrosses social territory as well, encountering people from different cultures and classes who will provide insight on his journey—a journey that takes him to Brussels, to the Nigeria of his youth, and into unrecognizable facets of his own soul. From Timothy Taylor, the Giller Prize-nominated author of Stanley Park , comes a novel about the clash of art and advertising, the cultish grip of celebrity, and the intense connections that form in times of crisis. The Blue Light Project is a hard-hitting and emotionally wrought commentary on the forces that attract and repel us, and the faith that enables us to continue. Tickets $15 / $10 reduced. Free for festival members.