Open City

The journal Open City is ending—I can't believe it's been around for twenty years. (I feel honored to have been in the last issue.) Thankfully, it will continue to publish books—I recently finished:

—just great.

(Carolyn Kellogg has more here, and here's Christian Lorentzen at the NY Observer.)

Some of the parts

Last week I read with Bryan Charles at KGB. Bryan read from his memoir, There's a Road to Everywhere Except Where You Came From (his novel is called Grab On to Me Tightly As If I Knew the Way—consistency in titling!).

There's a good, funny excerpt up at HTML Giant—here is a taste!

I went to Century 21 and bought several packs of new T-shirts. Every day I brought one or two to work with me in a laptop carrying case. I’d stop at various restrooms on my lunchtime walks—the Ranch 1 on Water Street was my favorite. I’d change into a new T-shirt and stuff the soiled one in my bag. Depending on the day I might need to change again in the afternoon. I used the restroom of the Au Bon Pain in the building lobby for this purpose. Before long all my T-shirts had huge yellow-brown stains under the arms and coffee-colored drip marks on the sides.

Tonight! Reading at KGB...!

I return to KGB for a reading with Bryan Charles! (What will I read?!) More info here, but I'll just copy it for you:

The Open City October KGB Reading

Featuring readings by:

Bryan Charles
and
Ed Park

Wednesday, October 27, 7PM

KGB Bar
85 E. 4th Street (btw 2nd and 3rd)
NYC
FREE

Bryan Charles is the author of the novel Grab on to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way and Wowee Zowee, a book about the band Pavement. His memoir, There’s a Road to Everywhere Except Where You Came From, is forthcoming from Open City Books in November.

Ed Park is the author of the novel Personal Days. He is also a founding editor of The Believer and a former editor of the Voice Literary Supplement. A new story will appear in the winter 2010-11 issue of Open City.

EP at KGB with Bryan Charles

On Weds., Oct. 27, I'll be reading with novelist/memoirist/Pavement scholar Bryan Charles at KGB—it's a reading for Open City. (A story of mine will be in the winter issue.) Bryan's memoir, There's a Road to Everywhere Except Where You Came From (a VTS, as the narrator of Joseph Weisberg's 10th Grade would say), is out now from Open City Books.

I'm excited! I don't know what I'm going to read from yet. (Probably not Personal Days, the award-losing novel of 2008....)

Maybe something from the Work in Progress or the Work in Progress 2 (i.e., the Work in Progress that I'm not supposed to be working on until I finish the first Work in Progress, but which I sometimes still work on anyway). Or from the Work in Progress 3, a/k/a Disambiguation, originally the first Work in Progress, that I would occasionally read from in 2009? (Remember 2009?) Or maybe just this gemlike short story that is currently here [points to skull]...

Starts at 7! My only reading of the fall! A/k/a my only nocturnal appearance below 14th Street of the fall!