Tales of New York: A Reading

Brad Gooch is the author of several works of fiction and nonfiction, including Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor and City Poet: The Live and Times of Frank O’Hara. Gooch returns with Smash Cut: A Memoir of Howard & Art & the '70s & the '80s (Harper), a searing memoir of life in 1980s New York City. Gooch presents a colorful and atmospheric tale of wild bohemians, glamorous celebrity, and complicated passions—with cameo appearances by Madonna, Robert Mapplethorpe, William Burroughs, and a host of others legendary artists.

Garth Risk Hallberg was a 2008 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Fiction and a two-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle's Balakian award for excellence in book reviewing. When the infamous New York City blackout of July 13, 1977, plunges this world into darkness, each of the lives in’s debut novel, City on Fire (Knopf) will be changed forever. Entertainment Weekly writes, “It’s hard to believe this layered New York epic is a debut: The glitter and grime of the city’s punk heyday are captured in gorgeous detail as multiple stories converge.”

Robbert Goolrick is the author of the #1 New York Times best-selling novel A Reliable Wife, Heading Out to Wonderful, and his memoir, The End of the World as We Know It. In The Fall of Princes (Algonquin Books), Goolrick brings to vivid life 80s New York City, a world of excess and self-indulgence, where limousines waited for hours outside Manhattan’s newest trendy club or the latest dining hot spot. Where drugs were bountiful and not refused. Where no price was too high and flesh was always on offer. Where a quick trip to Europe or a weekend on the coast or a fabulous Hamptons beach house were just part of what was expected. When the money just kept coming, and coming, and coming . . . until it didn’t.