Two NYC Stores Create Downtown Literary Festival

McNally Jackson Books and Housing Works Bookstore Café are hosting the inaugural Downtown Literary Festival, a daylong "celebration of the literary culture of New York City." 
The festival takes place at both stores simultaneously on Sunday, April 14, and will be followed by a happy hour at Housing Works Bookstore and an after-party at Pravda that will feature Russian literature-themed cocktails. 
The two stores are around the corner from one another, on Prince Street and Crosby Street in SoHo.

Events at the festival (no panels), include:

• A puppet show featuring stories of downtown life for children
• Tumblr's WPA guide update project, featuring Gabriel Kahane and Lapham's Quarterly
• A virtual walking tour of the literature of downtown New York City with LitCrawl NYC
• Stories of the best NYC show ever from musicians and fans, curated by music writer Alan Light and featuring Thurston Moore
• A celebration of the lost art of memorization and recitation with Rachel Syme and Maris Kreizman
• A Frank O'Hara lunch hour featuring poets Eileen Myles, Wayne Koestenbaum, Paul Legault and others
• Writers on their favorite bookstores, presented by PEN America
• A short history of street food in New York City and stories from the street vendors, presented by NYC a la Cart's Alexandra Penfold and Siobhan Wallace
• Live interviews and readings from the archive of the Paris Review
• Stories of the subway with John Wray, Charles Bock and Sophie Blackall
• A tour of downtown New York City through the years in pop culture with lit/TV blog Slaughterhouse 90210

The schedule has not been finalized but will appear and be updated on the stores' websites: McNally Jackson and Housing Works Bookstore Café

via Shelf Awareness