The best fall book events at bookstores and cultural institutions

To find out which authors with new books out this season will be reading in New York bookstores, check out our roundup of fall book events.

By Matthew Love Tue Aug 21 2012

Photograph: Tom Craig

Martin Amis
Paul Auster

Paul Auster
Photograph: Nina Subin

Junot Díaz
827.otc.litcrawlnyc

Lit Crawl NYC
Photograph: Dominique Nabokob

Zadie Smith
Photograph: Rankin

Irvine Welsh
John Freeman

John Freeman
Michael Chabon
Salman Rushdie

Photograph: Beowulf Sheehan

Salman Rushdie
Photograph: Peter Ash Lee

Damien Echols
828.otc.brooklynbookfestival

Brooklyn Book Festival
Emma Straub

Emma Straub
Photograph: David Shankbone

A.M. Homes
Marie Howe

Marie Howe
Photograph: Rachel Giese Brown

Mary Oliver
Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie
Tom Perrotta

Tom Perrotta
Gary Shteyngart
Photograph: catalina kulczar-marin

Photograph: Tom Craig

Martin Amis

This season sees the release of new books from heavyweight writers like Junot Díaz, Zadie Smith and Michael Chabon. All three will stop in New York to read at locations including Barnes & Noble, Greenlight Bookstore and the 92nd Street Y. BAM offers a unique fall book event with a roast of Gary Shteyngart.

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Junot Díaz

Critics choice

Díaz’s Pulitzer-winning novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, tied together American and Dominican culture, tossing out nerdy dogma alongside Latino familial patter, and weighing the thoughtless luxuries of the First World against the hard-won triumphs of the Third. If The New Yorker’s recent excerpt of Díaz’s new collection, This Is How You Lose Her, is any indication, the author’s tales of love continue to strike a compelling balance between worlds.

245 Clinton Ave, between De Kalb and Willoughby Aves
Until Tue Apr 30

More info

Zadie Smith

Critics choice
Free

In her lauded debut, White Teeth, and more recently 2005’s On Beauty, Smith examined the collapse and re-formation of the nuclear family through personal and satirical lenses. Her offering this fall, NW, plays with contrasts between male and female, black and white, and high-minded and plebeian on a larger scale: It’s the story of four Londoners becoming adults in the northwest corner of their city. The book’s structure—and the prose itself—feels restless, so it should be a treat to hear the author wrangle with the text during a live reading.

686 Fulton St, at South Portland Ave
Tue Oct 15

Buy tickets

Michael Chabon

Critics choice
Free

Before tunneling into the fantastical world of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Chabon focused on familial bonds and friendships within a more fanciful context in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay. In his latest, Telegraph Avenue, Chabon places one of his favorite themes in a new context: The novel chronicles the story of two old friends who struggle to keep their record store in business when a big-box retailer (owned by a former neighborhood resident) moves in a couple blocks away.

33 E 17th St, between Broadway and Park Ave South
Wed Sep 25

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Mary Oliver

Price band: 2/4
Critics choice

This engaging, Pulitzer-winning poet has been consistently productive in her later years. In recent volumes, including Swan and the forthcoming A Thousand Mornings, Oliver’s imagery and its source material—frequently derived from the animals, greenery and water near her Massachusetts home—have not changed. More importantly, at the age of 76, Oliver’s capacity for simple ecstasy in response to the natural world remains entirely intact. Her ability to transcribe the communion she finds in her daily experiences is so acute that the reader feels not only swept along with her, but intimately connected to their own surroundings.

92nd Street Y 1395 Lexington Ave, between 91st and 92nd Sts
Mon Oct 15

More info

Gary Shteyngart Roast

Price band: 2/4
Critics choice

The success of the ubiquitous comedy trend in the literary world might sound like a long shot; but this event, part of BAM and Greenlight Bookstore’s new ongoing collaboration, Unbound, has been impeccably cast. Who better to excoriate than Shteyngart, the self-effacing and amiable author of playfully satiric novels Super Sad True Love Story and Absurdistan? And with writers adept at slinging barbs on the dais—including Jay McInerney and Sloane Crosley—laughs are guaranteed. If you’re still not convinced, google Shteyngart’s book trailer for Super Sad—it reveals him to be a clever ham who knows how to take a joke.