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Prose fans who feel shafted by the never-ending Comic Con publicity can finally have their vengeance when Housing Works Bookstore Cafe becomes an all-out arena for drinking, books, brain games and reading for this year's Lit Crawl on October 21. The PEN American Center has taken over hosting duties for this free annual bar-crawl/book-convention hybrid, which has seen New York's literati running to talks and challenges at bars, sex stores and clubs for nearly a decade.
This year's written-word throwdown will be hosted by Buzzfeed Books editor Isaac Fitzgerald and author Mira Jacob, and will feature outrageous challenges at different zones of the Housing Works space. Try your hand at Nerd Jeopardy, which will included categories on authors from the Marquis de Sade to Stephanie Meyer. Drinking With Men author Rosie Schaap, Sasha Fletcher and Garth Greenwell will help you yell over the sound of your buzzer. La Pluma y La Tinta's Raquel Penzo challenges your love of Latino writers at the Latino Literary Scramble Board. Then, From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant author Alex Glivarry leads contestants from Hyphen Magazine and Armchair/Shotgun in a tense game of Literary Pictionary, and the Tin House challenges you to Trivia Bingo.
If the competition gets too tough (or you get too wasted), you can jam out to rock from Farrar, Strauss & Giroux band The Savage Detectives; test your fate with a Tarot Card reading or get your face painted.
PEN will release the full schedule for this year's book rager on October 13 on the Lit Crawl site. The free party goes down October 21 from 7–9pm at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe.