The winning story of Boston Review's 15th annual fiction contest is online; I think it's unpretentious and moving.

Advance Reading Copies are the new cute dogs -- they do all the romantic luring for you. (They also make excellent -- and free -- birthday presents.)

"Hey babe, I have a great idea for this weekend!" I can just picture the look so many boyfriends' faces.

Sharon, Nina, and all you bookish Bostonians, please be careful at the BPL.

The Harvard Book Store has some lovely events and readings scheduled for early June -- the main one we're excited about is David Sedaris on June 6, though we just found out it was sold out! Oi. Obvs the HBS would have hosted the former Christmas elf at a larger venue -- like, say, the Orpheum?!? -- but due to the literary rock star's contractual obligations he can only read from his new book of pseduo-memoirish stories, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, in small locations. Lucky ticket holders are in for an intimate and exciting event. We are exceedingly jealous and, as usual, scold ourselves for not being more timely with the ticket-buying. Whenever we read essays about things like how his mom gave him cigarettes in his Easter basket in The New Yorker, the voice inside our head actually reads them IN SEDARIS'S VOICE, which sounds like a talking baby kitten on speed. We heart him so. And yet! The HBS understands our needs and yours. We've been told:

However, we will have an audio feed for folks outside, and anyone wishing to wait can have their books signed by Mr. Sedaris after the ticket-holding folks inside the store are taken care of. Anyone who was unable to purchase a ticket is welcome to join the signing line outside of the store on the night of the event. We will have an audio feed for these folks, and we hope to have video as well. Once the audience inside has had its books signed, we'll let the patient people into the store from the signing line outside. 

It's worth noting that tickets ARE still available for Lewis Black (Me of Little Faith) on June 7 at the First Parish Church, as well as our beloved Andre Dubus III (The Garden of Last Days) on June 9 at the Brattle. Not to mention Barbara Ehrenreich's  discussion of her latest tome, This Land is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation. Tickets for that go on sale June 9, so begin with the mental-planning...now!

From the inbox:

Tribute to poet Anne Sexton

Sunday, November 18th at 2 pm

Don't miss our 5th annual celebration of the life and legacy of Anne Sexton, featuring readings and reminiscences by four friends and colleagues

Join us for our annual tribute to Anne Sexton, who wrote fearlessly about family, sexuality, despair, and joy, pioneering a radical new poetry. Four writers who knew her well will read from her poetry and from their own writing.

The friends and colleagues who will gather to remember Anne Sexton are: Victor Howes, fellow teacher; Lois Ames, who co-edited Sexton's Life in Letters; Robert Clawson, who managed Anne Sexton and her Kind - the poet's rock band; and Suzanne Berger, one of her students. A portrait of Anne emerges from their recollections and stories and from her own writing. Funny, free-spirited, transgressive, and wildly intelligent, she broke away from the conventions of suburban middle class life. The aggressive, disturbing honesty of her writing still influences poetry today.

Weather permitting, the program in Forsyth Chapel is followed by a walk to Anne Sexton's grave site.

Tickets will be available at the door.

There is plenty of free parking along the driveway entrance to Forest Hills. The Cemetery is an easy walk from the Orange Line T, Forest Hill Stop, via the Tower Street shortcut; see website for directions. If you plan to take the T, please bring a flashlight to help guide your exit, as it will be getting dark by the end of the program.

Editor DAVID FOSTER WALLACE lead a formidable group of contributors  in a discussion of this year's answer to The Best American Essays. And tonight, Elaine Scarry, Jerald Walker, and Robert Atwan will bring their work to the reading stage. So if you've already puzzled over this week's "Modern Love," caught up on all your old New Yorkers, and let your Atlantic Monthly subscription accidentally expire, tonight is your night. That's at 7 pm at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | free | 617.566.6660.

A few things we've been enjoying in lately:

The New York Times' Paper Cuts blog, maintained by the estimable Dwight Garner. He's on vacation now, but there are some wonderful recent entries here on what commuters read (or shouldn't read) on trains, as well as popular Christian sex manuals (which Garner doesn't think are much of a turn-on).

Maud Newton's excellent guest-blogged series on independent bookstores. Great stories and gossipy tidbits.

Hari Kunzru's short story "Magda Mandela," which appeared in the Aug 13 issue of the New Yorker. It's fantastic.

The latest batch of postcards on PostSecret. They've got a new book out, as well.

"The Shit-Kickers of Madison Avenue," an older Talk of the Town piece by Lillian Ross, might just be our favorite thing ever (in recent memory, of course).

Speaking of Ross, have you read Picture? We did, and we're kind of ridiculously obsessed with it, still.

Apparently, Nick Hornby wrote a YA novel titled Slam. It's sitting on our desk. We're not sure what to make of it yet.

For the long weekend, we've been saving the following, which we will read under the covers, AC on, in lieu of BBQs and shopping sales: Rishi Reddi's Karma and Other Stories, Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith (out this January by Canongate, we started it yesterday, snap judgement: odd but pretty?), and the new Vogue. Plans to buy Maus II as well -- a trip to the Harvard Book Store is in order.

What are you reading?

See you in September.

Love,
Word Up

From the inbox:

Pierre Menard Gallery on Arrow Street has offered space to Somerville-based Cervena Barva Press editor and publisher, Gloria Mindock, for a new series that will run monthly through April 2008.  Mary Bonina is helping coordinate the series which will be held in the Pierre Menard Gallery above Lame Duck Books. The inaugural reading of the series kicks off September 19 and features Lucille Lang Day, F.D. Reeve, and Diana Der-Hovanesian.feature Lucille Lang Day, F.D. Reeve, and Diana Der-Hovanesian.

Tonight!

Steve Almond, Laura Dave, and editor Jenni Ferarri-Adler read from Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone. Twenty-six writers (including Nora Ephron, Ann Patchett, and Haruki Murakami) reflect on their passion for food and solitude. It's probably okay if you bring snacks to the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

A decade ago, Eve Bridburg started Grub Street, Inc., Boston's independent writing center. Eight thousand students later, Grub celebrates it's 10th anniversary tonight on Boston Common, across the street from Grub headquarters at 160 Boylston Street. Festivities start at 4 pm and go, according to the web site, "late, baby, late." Beer, barbecue, readings from the spanking new and deliciously varied Grub anthology Hacks, and general word-related revelry to ensue. Happy Birthday, Grub.

If our posting schedule seems irregular in the next week or so, it's because we're really busy listening to "Save Ginny Weasley" on repeat and blushing over novel-length Harry Potter fan fiction that involves...naughtiness:

"Please stay."

Heavy breathing. Then a sigh. "Why would I stay, Potter? I'm sweaty, I'm filthy, and we have classes tomorrow."

"We could just... lie here for a while. I don't want to get up. I want..." ...to hold you.

"Well, you can do whatever you want. I'm going, though."

"No! Please, Mal... Draco, just stay here for a bit."

A sneer. "God, Potter, you sound pathetic." Something soft in his cool, grey eyes. "Fine, alright, I'm staying. But not the whole night."

Yowsa!

Having taken meticulous notes and planned the novel during his cross-country travels, JACK KEROUAC wrote the first draft of On the Road in a three-week burst of creativity, taping sheets of paper together so they could run through his typewriter uninterrupted. After a cross-country exhibition tour, the original scroll has returned to Lowell’s Boott Cotton Mills Museum, where its display will be part of "ON THE ROAD IN LOWELL,” a festival of readings, musical performances, and art exhibits (see www.ontheroadinlowell.org) planned around the 50th anniversary of On the Road. The Beat Generation is reborn at Lowell National Historical Park, 115 John St, Lowell | June 15–September 14 [reception June 15: 6-9 pm] | 978.970.5000.

The lit buzz circulating around Brookline native RISHI REDDI reminds us of the hype that surrounded Jhumpa Lahiri back when The Interpreter of Maladies — a collection she began writing at Boston University’s Creative Writing program that went on to win the Pulitzer in 2000 — was published. Like Lahiri, Reddi uses her Indian background as a cultural setting. Most of the linked tales in Karma and Other Stories (click for an excerpt) are set in our own fine city, and generational gaps as well as a reconciliation with both Indian and American culture come into play. But Reddi, a Grub Street alumna and current board member, has her own elegant voice. She’ll read and sign at Borders Books and Music, 10-24 School St, Boston | 12:30 pm | free | 617.557.7188.

From the inbox:

Dear friends of 826 Boston:

First, we apologize for being out of touch. We've been very busy this spring putting together all the nuts and bolts of the organization. We cannot wait to open our doors to the Boston community this summer and meet all of you!

Expect a more detailed newsletter soon, as well as the launch of our new and improved 826 Boston website, but for now, a brief update:

We have secured a space in Roxbury and expect to open in the late summer. All of the details on our space will be included on our website. The board just finished the second round of interviews for the executive director search and will announce its decision by the end of the week. Our initial programming at The English High School is going well. We'd like to thank authors Steve Almond, Junot Diaz, Kelly Link and Holly Black for visiting the students. We'd also like to thank our team of tutors who have volunteered  their time in the classroom.

826 Boston is holding also holding a benefit at the Cloud Foundation:

826 Boston, Inc. invites you to "Fill in The _____ ", an evening of
literary entertainment led by authors Charles Coe (Picnic on the
Moon), Julia Glass (National Book Award-winning Three Junes, The Whole
World Over) Tom Perrotta (Little Children, Joe College, Election, The
Wishbones, Bad Haircut) and Heidi Pitlor (The Birthdays), with musical
guest Eli "Paperboy" Reed.  Please join us for food, drinks, music and
word play on Wednesday, May 23rd from 6-9 PM at the Cloud Foundation
(647 Boylston Street) in Boston, and help "fill in the blanks". 
Writers will read from their latest work, and each will present an unfinished
piece for audience members to help complete.

826 Boston is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting
students ages 6-18 with their creative and expository writing skills.
The program is the newest addition to 826 National, an organization
that supports similar programs across the country.  The first chapter,
826 Valencia, was founded by best selling author Dave Eggers and
educator Ninive Calegari in San Francisco's Mission District.  There
are now chapters in Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Ann Arbor, and New
York City.  Like its "sister" programs, 826 Boston is looking forward
to engaging Boston-area writers, artists and other volunteers to
provide one-on-one tutoring, workshops, field trips, in-school
assistance, and to create student-published works.  While the bulk of
826 Boston's activities will begin once the program opens it's space
this Fall in Roxbury, tutors and volunteers have already begun an
exciting in-school program at The English High School in Jamaica
Plain. 826 Boston hopes to fill gaps in students' literacy and arts
education, exposing them to things they may not experience in school.
We work to provide every single volunteer teacher with the level of
support, training, and supplies they need to create exciting
project-based learning experiences that will deeply impact students.

We are proud to have this opportunity to introduce 826 Boston to the
Greater Boston community, and we look forward to seeing you at our
first Boston event!

Please follow this link to purchase tickets to the event:

http://www.826national.org/content/67/826-boston-presents

Read Nina's piece on 826's awesome program here.

Friday night, March 16, Grub Street hosts one of their "Grub Gone . . ." parties. Tomorrow evening's theme: Grub Gone Silly. Besides being boozey affairs (free beer for anyone who brings a book to contribute to the Grub library!), the parties involve a few quick readings. Jonathan Ames, Kris Frieswick, and Leslie Talbot bring on the guffaws for this installment. Anita Suhanin sings, and Alarm Clock Theater does some acting. Party starts at 7; readings start around 8; and the beer flows all night. Tickets are $8 ($5 for members) and you should grab them here fast.

On Monday night at Memorial Hall in Cambridge, writer, editor, and publisher Dave Eggers was joined by Samantha Power, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, and Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese "Lost Boy," and the subject of Eggers's fictional biography, What Is the What. Power moderated as Eggers and Achak Deng discussed the process of fictionalizing a true story, blurring the lines between fiction and non-, and inciting political action by rousing public interest. We recorded the event, and you can listen to it here.

Also, new in this week's Phoenix, I did a piece on doctor and Harvard Divinity School student Chris Adrian's new novel, The Children's Hospital. You can read that here.

In today's "Lizard Watch," the weekly email blast from Newtonville Books, Tim Huggins, owner and founder of the independent bookstore, and literary man-about-town, announced that he'd sold the place to Mary Cotton, a former employee of the store.

"It's just the right time," Huggins writes. "I felt that the bookstore had arrived at a place where it needed something more and different than I could provide to help it reach the next level of sustainability." The email is below, with Huggins's announcement, a few words from Cotton, and a press release.

I’m thrilled to be writing you as the new owner of such an amazing independent bookstore. When I moved to Boston in 2002, one of the first places I discovered was Newtonville Books, and it has remained an integral part of my life ever since. I still remember walking through the door for the first time and feeling the warm pull of the store’s personality inviting me to call Newtonville home. Many of my first friends in Boston were people I met at Books and Brews readings—writers and readers and people of all walks who cared about literature.

Cambridge-based novelist ALICE HOFFMAN s one of those deeply psychological writers who we depend on to bore into the individual minds of an ill-fated family. Once there, she unearths the sort of romantic desperation and weird, mystical secrets that most households would do anything to keep hidden. For her 19th novel to date, Skylight Confessions, Hoffman focuses on just how much an event of complete randomness can determine one’s fate. At 17, Arlyn Singer decides she’ll marry the next man who walks down the street. Too bad it results in a completely screwed up union, a physical (but not spiritual) death, and several dysfunctional kids raised in a creepy Connecticut house called The Glass Slipper. Court destiny when Hoffman reads and signs at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St, Newton | Jan 16 @ 7 pm | free | 617.244.6619 and at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | Jan 17 @ 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

BLOGGER-IN-TRAINING: Another author falls victim to the lure of instant publishing

We've spent part of our late morning reading about local author Steve Almond and his offspring Josie over at his new Baby Daddy Babble blog. It's interesting and witty stuff -- seriously. But just for the sake of clarification, let's get one thing out of the way. Blogs are okay so long as they've got the seal of coolness approval from Nerve, but they're definitely not appropriate when people start one to talk shit about you and your writing.

Glad we've slapped ourselves straight. Of course, none of this has anything to do with the fact that we have read and reread the stories in My Life in Heavy Metal countless times. This half of Word Up completely adores that book -- about as much as these people loath it, not to mention Almond himself. This link will take you to an excerpt from one of our favorite stories in the collection. Prime reading for a post-NYE day of distraction. Decide for yourselves if Almond's worth his contrary bloggishness.

Celebrate “A YEAR OF POETRY” at Brookline Booksmith with famous local scribe and BU Creative Writing prof ROBERT PINSKY, the Phoenix’s own LLOYD SCHWARTZ, 11 other local poets, plus Alhambra’s Poetry Calendar 2007 editor SHAFIQ NAZ. What would the next 365 days of your life be without some free verse and iambic pentameter? The gang will read and sign their own works and read from those of the masters at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

And now, for a fun game we're stealing from our super-special OTD friends. We'll call this one Odd Couples Part III: Separated-At-Birth Poet Laureates: 

Just ignore the haircut because obvs if you Google the Pinsky you'll find a ton of pics of him with a floppy mop. However:

1. Smoldering "Come hither, I'm an artist of sorts and I can caress your soul" eyes. Check.
2. A chin so square you could bounce a penny off it. Check.
3. Same schnoz. Check.
4. On the brink of an "I know it all" smirk.
5. Holy hotmess eyebrows. Check.

Yup. When we're right, we're right.

Sam Rosen stumbled across the Paper Cut Zine Library in Harvard Square earlier this fall because he was at a "speed friending" event in a neighboring room. "We were like 'whoa, what's this place about?'" he says. And so began his love for zines. He's a librarian at the Mount Auburn Street spot now ("anyone can be a librarian," he says), and he's organized one of the library's monthly benefits taking place this Sunday at 6 pm.

The Paper Cut has gotten in some trouble in the past for hosting too-loud shows. "Punk shows, mostly," says Sam. "Because it was punk, it got rowdy." Last month's was folk-acoustic, and this weekend, it'll be experimental-electronic music, with Kris Thompson (ethereal theremin), Encanti (seriously out there IDM), Cars and Trains (mandolins, glockenspiels), and Poltergeist Friction (said to give strange dreams). It's a $5 cover. And they'll be keeping it "as loud as a high school biology lab video." Yes.

The librarians are working on alphabetizing the extensive, growing collection of zines. And Sam's working on creating his own. It's called Magical Thinking, and based on his experiences: "everything from drinking 40's in Pete's bathroom to my funniest childhood memories, and this adventure I had with a friend where we found a boat at three in the morning near the Cambridgeside Galleria and hopped on it and went down the Charles. Zines can be anything."

The benefit is meant to raise a little money, but more so, raise awareness that the spot exists. It's at 45 Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge. Call 617.492.2606.

TURNING TRICKS?: Fishbowl vs. Cutler

It's been awhile since we checked in with the crew at Off the Shelf, the Boston Globe's lit blog. Yesterday, publishing reporter and all-around smarty guy David Mehegan posted a very funny rant about author's acknowledgment pages in fiction novels. He addressed it to the Department of Curmudgeon. Here's an excerpt:

I can't imagine Mark Twain writing, in "Huckleberry Finn," "I'd like to thank the Hannibal, Missouri, public library, which helped me refresh my memory on the technology of Mississippi steamboats," or George Eliot writing, at the end of "Middlemarch," "special thanks to Professor So-and-So, whose assistance was invaluable to me in my researches into the Reform Bill of 1832," or Fyodor Dostoevski writing, at the end of "Crime and Punishment," "my profuse thanks to Superintendent M-- of the St. Petersburg department of police for his generous advice on my treatment of investigatory methods." Or Dante: "I'd like to thank Virgil, for agreeing to be in my poem, and the various Islamic scholars who preserved the ancient writings that we in Europe now enjoy...."

Authors, I beg you to write your books and don't make me listen to your pencil-sharpening and page-turning and the "chunk" of the checkout machine at the library.

Mehegan, you're like the publishing industry's Andy Rooney! So adorable. Somebody should give you your own cable-access show. Which reminds us, that Andy Rooney event at the Brattle, originally scheduled for Dec 12, was canceled until further notice. We'll keep you updated.

For what it's worth: we actually enjoy reading author acknowledgment pages. Writers work HARD on their books -- fiction and non -- and it's their right to give thanks to whomever they please on the one page of their tome that didn't have to go through thirty revisions.

And here's another thing that's been amusing us on this utterly delightful Thursday morning. You guys ever heard of Jessica Cutler? Well, she's yet another blogger-turned-author. She writes about sex, and she did a VERY, VERY naughty thing. We LURVE it when the industry throws a tantrum over a scandal as juicy as a lecture cancellation.

The Book Standard reports:

MediaBistro’s catty attack on blogger-turned-author Jessica Cutler -- for backing out of its “From Blogger to Author” event next week (an attack which did garner the site some publicity on the New York Post’s Page Six and Gawker) -- forces us to once again consider the issue of what makes bloggers successful as authors -- or whether, in fact, one can translate into the other. Survey says: yes, sort of.

Cutler's book, The Washingtonienne, isn't breaking any Book Scan sales records (especially considering the hefty advance -- typical). Gawker called her a "smart whore," and Page Six made their usual dirty headline puns.

MediaBistro definitely didn't spare Cutler. They write whine:

Still, we're shocked -- shocked -- that someone known for exchanging sex for money would behave this way.

OUCH. We think you hurt her feelings, Fishbowl.

Perhaps Cutler just forgot to thank MediaBistro in her acknowledgements page and was too ashamed to show her face at the course. Which is still happening without her. Obvs.

SPORTS GUY

How did Tom Brady go from being a sixth-round draft pick to the Patriots’ star quarterback and one of football’s most celebrated players? Ah, the warm-fuzzy story of the underdog. Sports journalist, former Phoenix staffer, and NPR’s “Only A Game” contributor CHARLES P. PIERCE tells the tale of Brady’s rise in Moving the Chains: Tom Brady and the Pursuit of Everything.

Pierce may be a fan boy, but he profiles the Patriot past his team’s third Super Bowl win in 2004 and on into their disappointing 2005 season in order to highlight the athlete’s talent and skill under any circumstances. And did we mention he's a totally funny guy? He'll read as part of the Phoenix's Author Series tonight. Chat with Chuck, eat, drink, buy books, go home, read your face off. That's at Hong Kong (in conjunction with the Harvard Book Store), 1236 Mass Ave, Cambridge | 6:30 pm | Free | 800.542.READ.

SO LONG, AND GOOD LUCK

Edward R. Murrow hosted the first This I Believe radio program in the 1950s, which he introduced by musing, “What truths can a human being afford to furnish the cluttered nervous room of his mind with, when he has no real idea how long a lease he has on the future?” So very Murrow. The program asked Americans to explain their most closely held beliefs; it was recently resurrected by public-radio guru JAY ALLISON and his producer, Dan Gediman. Allison solicits submissions from ordinary folks rather than limiting it to household names. The result is This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women — the NPR junkie’s version of Chicken Soup for the Soul. New essays are interspersed with original compositions, so the stories range from statements by a Burmese immigrant to a piece by Hellen Keller. WGBH’s TONY KAHN and author ALAN LIGHTMAN join Allison for a Books & Brews reading at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St, Newtonville | 7:30 pm | free | 617.244.6619.

WHY SHE WAKES EARLY

It Came from Below the Belt is a book by Bradley Sands that falls into the fiction genre known as bizarro. It features a human-swallowing giraffe, time travel, and a penis with presidential hopes. Earlier this month, Bradley read at the Coolidge Corner Theatre as an opener to one of their midnight movie screenings. Ian Sands, editorial assistant here at the Phoenix, is Bradley’s little brother. He wrote about what it’s like to have your older bro come to town to give a reading. The essay begins here; you should read the whole thing.

“My brother wrote a book. It's a good book, especially considering it’s his first. But that’s not to say that it’s for everyone, most of all my mother, my father, my uncle, my grandmother, my aunt, and anyone else related to me. I won't go into great detail as to why it’s not for everyone, except to say the plot involves one Grover Goldstein who’s swallowed by a giraffe and finds himself in the future where he helps his severed, sentient penis capture the presidential election.”

Click here to read “Insects in my stomach: What it’s like to watch your older brother give a reading”

Aside from the Steve Almond/James Joyce dirty business at Great Scott that Nina will be attending (and we can't wait to hear what she thinks of Almond's recitation), here are four more options for your Wednesday. Two of them are naughty omg!

How did Tom Brady go from being a sixth-round draft pick to the Patriots’ star quarterback and one of football’s most celebrated players? Ah, the warm-fuzzy story of the underdog. Sports journalist, former Phoenix staffer, and NPR contributor CHARLES P. PIERCE tells the tale in Moving the Chains: Tom Brady and the Pursuit of Everything, and he reads (did we mention that he’s a totally funny guy?) at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St, Newton | 7:30 pm | free | 617.244.6619.

Sure, sad little electronica musicians cum pseudo-social-justice bloggers (we’re looking at you, Moby) sometimes think they know how to inspire change through the written word, but the “AMERICAN PROTEST LITERATURE” panelists actually do. British author ZOE TRODD discusses her American Protest Literature (leave it to the Brits to know us better than we know ourselves), TIMOTHY PATRICK MCCARTHY reads Eugene V. Debs’s Statement to the Court, JOHN STAUFFER presents the images and photos that have altered public opinion, and playwright DORIC WILSON discusses excerpts from his Street Theatre. Cause a stir at the Old South Meeting House, 310 Washington St, Boston | 6:30 pm | free | 617.428.6439.

Remember that Seinfeld episode where Elaine doesn’t get the joke in a New Yorker cartoon and asks an editor and he doesn’t get it either? Could the ones they turned down have been better? A 90 percent rejection rate of submissions (even for regulars) prompted contributor Matthew Diffee to salvage lost gems scribbled by the mag’s top 30 cartoonists in The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker. He’ll present them as part of a live comedy show with colleagues Drew Dernavich, David Sipress, and Eric Lewis at the Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St, Cambridge | 7:30 pm | $15 | 617.876.6387. (We'll be there, probably not in the front row because there are rumors of audience participation and we tend to have a blushing problem. Report tk next week!)

Last but not least, the superfresh Boston Phoenix Author Series continues with GEORGE PROCHNIK's Putnam Camp: Sigmund Freud, James Jackson Putnam, and the Purpose of American Psychology. In other words? More sex talk. Lots of it. The reading, signing, and reception is at the Burren, 247 Elm St, Somerville | 6:30 pm | free | 617.776.6896.

In letters to his wife Nora, James Joyce addresses her as “my naughty little fuckbird,” “my little cuntie,” and “my sweet little dirty farter.” And that’s the G-rated stuff. Tomorrow night, Steve Almond (who else?) leads a reading of Joyce’s filthy letters with a team of local writers and musicians; Hallelujah the Hills frontman Ryan Walsh, Hands and Knees, and the Juliet Kilo provide musical interludes to the literary raunch. That's at Great Scott, 1222 Comm Ave, in Allston.

THE HOSTESS WITH THE MOSTEST

Not everybody hearts AMY SEDARIS (particularly reviewers of her latest film, Strangers with Candy), but we’ve been glued to the trajectory of her career ever since reading about her bizarre lifestyle in brother David’s essays. Amy’s first solo book project, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, harks back to the days when a hostess’s duties were “charmingly old-fashioned, like courtship or back-alley abortions.” Her tongue may be stapled to her cheek, but I Like You does come with practical advice and recipes -- even if some etiquette not-to-dos would make Ms. Emily Post roll over, and then projectile-vomit, in her grave. You can ask her about that and about her imaginary live-in boyfriend, Ricky, when she reads at Borders Books and Music, 10-24 School St, Boston | 5:30 pm | free | 617.557.7188, or at the Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St, Cambridge | 9:30 pm | $3 | 617.499.2012.

FACIST DREAMS

Leslie Epstein, director of the Boston University Creative Writing Program and an wonderful novelist in his own right (we lurved San Remo Drive but unforch don't have time to tell you more about the dude right now -- Google him, the answers are all on the Internets) will be reading from his latest, The Eighth Wonder of the World, at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | Free | 617.566.6660. Read Dana Kletter's Phoenix review here.

From the inbox:

Quick Fiction, a magazine of tiny stories, releases its tenth issue in style on Thursday, November 9 at the Enormous Room in Cambridge at 7 pm. Dubbing the event "Double-Digit Debacle," the magazine celebrates five strong years in publishing with a release party featuring readings by Quick Fiction authors James Grinwis, Amy L. Clark, and Michael Thurston.

Previously: Quick Ficiton: Doing Good
Also: http://quickfiction.org/

The Old North Bridge

Walden Pond

The Old Manse
(Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne lived here)

Why has no one informed us of the fact that Concord, MA is gorgeous? Lucky for you scribes and literary folk with a car and gas money, The Concord Festival of Authors begins next week on Thurs, Oct 19 and will run through Fri, Nov 3. Over 40 authors will be reading at various bookstores, libraries, and other venues in and around the Concord area. Too many to list here, in fact, so take a peek at the Concord Public Library's calendar for this year's schedule. Almost all of the readings/talks are free.

Some obvious stand-outs:

The New Literary Voices line-up on Sun, Oct 22
Rachel Kadish, Tolstoy Lied
Heidi Pitlor, The Birthdays
Adam Braver, Crows over the Wheatfield
Elisabeth Brink, Save Your Own
Mistress of Ceremonies: Lynda Morgenroth
Fowler Memorial Library, 1322 Main St, West Concord | 3:00 pm

The Wizard of Oz Family Party on Sun, Oct 28
There will, in fact, be people dressed up as the Lollipop Guild. Please note costumes are encouraged, not required, though you will feel extraordinarily awkward and un-Oz-like if you aren't dressed in full Tin Man or Dorothy gear. The choice is yours.
Concord Scout House, 74 Walden St, Concord | 2-4 pm

Dennis Lehane, Coronado: Stories on Wed, Nov 1
Mahoney Auditorium, UMass Lowell, South Campus | 7:30 pm

There's an amusing article over at The Foreword that poses the question of whether this sort of literary event should be considered a fundraiser. It involves a chiding phone call from Sandra Day O'Connor to organizer Rob Mitchell. Festivals like this don't make bank, and they survive mainly on the passion and commitment of their organizers, local authors and sponsors, and visiting bigger-name writers who are willing to participate. It's just...well...nice. And we're pleased to see this one has been alive and kicking for 14 years.

Mark Z. Danielewski’s debut House of Leaves – with its unsettling text patterns (scrunched letters, upside-down words, sentences that ran diagonal, blank pages, black pages), its unsettling narrator interaction, and, most of all its unsettling – no, terrifying -- image of an ever-expanding blackness -- ranks as one of the most psychically haunting books I’ve read. Sort of a Twin Peaksy horror show, existentionally creepy and unconventional.

Unconventional also describes Only Revolutions, his second novel, just out, which he’ll be rotating – err – reading from tonight. The book starts at both ends. It’s told by two 16 year-old lovers, Hailey and Sam, over the course of a hundred years. Lists of historic events, all suggested by readers of Danielewski’s web site, line the margins of the pages. It’s suggested that you read eight pages one way, flip the book over and around, and read eight pages the other way. I’ve done six rotations, so I’m close to fifty pages into it. And so far, it’s more Leaves of Grass than House of Leaves – exuberant, exultant, with all sorts of language acrobatics. Does the writing warrant the effort? I’m withholding judgment at the moment. But I haven’t stopped rotating yet. And I’m curiou