Cool (& spooky!) literary events in the first half-ish of October

Alejandro Varela, Arabelle Sicardi, Angela Flournoy, and more.

Oct 5, 2025
Cool (& spooky!) literary events in the first half-ish of October
Below is a non-exhaustive list of events for books and/or authors I love & events that have piqued my interest in the books they’re highlighting. Feel free to email me with suggestions. Stars = highly recommend. Tell me if you go!

Yours Truly <3

  • NYC: “Must Love Memoir” reading at Jake’s Dilemma, Tue. 10/14

*Megha Majumdar: A Guardian and a Thief

  • Brooklyn: With Jordan Pavlin at Greenlight Bookstore, Tue. 10/14
  • Fort Washington, PA: With Emma Copley Eisenberg at Upper Dublin Public Library, Fri. 10/17

Melissa Lozada-Oliva: Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus Is Alive!

*Mark Haber: Lesser Ruins

  • Dallas: With Lori Feathers at Interabang Books, Thu. 10/16

*Zefyr Lisowski: Uncanny Valley Girls

  • Brooklyn & virtual: With Harron Walker at Books Are Magic, Wed. 10/8
  • Brooklyn: Signing plus screening of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (!!) at Nitehawk Cinema, Sat. 10/11

Susan Orlean: Joyride

  • Rhinebeck: With Nick Flynn at Morton Memorial Library, Thu. 10/9
  • NYC: An “evening of literary mischief and heartfelt hilarity” with special guests Fab 5 Freddy, Julianne Moore, Josh Radnor, Jenny Slate, They Might Be Giants, and Sophie von Haselberg; also Orlean will be chatting with Sloane Crosley. At Symphony Space, Wed. 10/15
  • Lots more.

Urmila Seshagiri: Virginia Woolf’s The Life of Violet: Three Early Stories

  • Brooklyn & Virtual: Editor Urmila Seshagiri discusses the collection of experimental and interconnected short stories, with Woolf scholar Anne Fernald. At Center for Fiction, Thu. 10/16

*Brandon Taylor: Minor Black Figures

Vincenzo Latronico: Perfection

  • NYC: With Tony Tulathimutte at the McNally Jackson Seaport, Thu. 10/16

*Ada Limón: Startlement

  • Minneapolis: With Robin Wall Kimmerer at Pantages Theater, Wed. 10/8
  • San Francisco: Litquake Festival headliner, Sat. 10/11
  • More.

****Ilana Masad: Beings

  • LA: With Laura Warrell and Greg Mania at Sunny’s Bookshop, Sat. 10/11

*Quan Barry: The Unveiling

Gary Shteyngart: Vera, or Faith

  • Brooklyn: Convo with Janna Levin plus stargazing with the Amateur Astronomers Association and food by Makina Cafe; at Pioneer Works, Tue. 10/7

*Julian Brave NoiseCat: We Survived the Night

  • Brooklyn: In convo with Sky Hopinka, music by Laura Ortman and other performances for Indigenous People’s Day, at Pioneer Works, Tue. 10/14
  • NYC: With Kali “KO” Mequinonoag Reis at the Strand, Wed. 10/15
  • Lots more.

Yume Kitasei: Saltcrop

  • Seattle: With Wendy N. Wagner at Elliott Bay Books, Mon. 10/6
  • Austin: With Nicky Drayden at First Light, Tue. 10/7

Michelle Tea: Little F

  • LA: With Beth Pickens at Skylight Books, Wed. 10/15

*Jeff Weiss: Waiting for Britney Spears

  • Coral Gables, FL: With Alfred Soto at Books & Books, Tue. 10/14
  • St. Petersburg, FL: With Caroline Calloway (!) at Tombolo Books, Wed. 10/15

KM Fajardo: Local Heavens

*Walter Mosley: Gray Dawn

Looooove the Easy Rawlins series.

  • Virtual: With Paul Coates in a livestream hosted by Source Booksellers, Mon. 10/6
  • Culver City: With at Village Well Books, Wed. 10/8
  • More.

*Arabelle Sicardi: The House of Beauty: Lessons From the Image Industry

  • LA: With Darian Symoné Harvin at Skylight Books, Fri. 10/17
  • San Francisco: Convo with Viv Chen, perfume swap, and press-on nail bar (!) at Four One Nine, Sun. 10/19
  • More.

Katherine Dunn’s posthumous Near Flesh: Stories

  • Portland: Omar El Akkad, Jeff VanderMeer, and Crystal Willer discuss at Literary Arts, Tue. 10/7
  • NYC: Naomi Huffman, Grace Byron, and Terry Nguyen discuss at McNally Jackson Seaport, Wed. 10/8

Jade Chang: What a Time to Be Alive

  • Chicago: With Susie An at 57th Street Books, Tue. 10/7
  • LA: With Ann Friedman at Vroman’s Bookstore, Wed. 10/8
  • Portland: With Genevieve Hudson at Literary Arts, Thu. 10/9
  • More.

Stephanie LaCava: Nymph

  • NYC: With Marlowe Granados at McNally Jackson, Tue. 10/14

*Karen Hao: Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI

Panel: Writing Urban Pasts Through Fiction

LA: Naomi Hirahara (Mas Arai series), Walter Mosley (Easy Rawlins series), and Héctor Tobar (The Tattooed Soldier) talk about “their craft, their sense of history, and the influence of Southern California on their work,” moderated by David Ulin. At the Literary Los Angeles Festival, 10/11

Lily King: Heart the Lover

  • South Hadley, MA: At First Congregational Church, Tue. 10/7
  • Nashville: With Ann Patchett at Parnassus, Wed. 10/8
  • More.

*Donika Kelly: The Natural Order of Things

Panel: Queer Magic

Stefan Fatsis: Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary

  • Washington, D.C.: With Josh Levin at Politics & Prose, Sun. 10/12
  • Brooklyn: With Vinson Cunningham at Community Bookstore, Wed. 10/15
  • More.

Anna North: Bog Queen

  • Brooklyn: With Olivia Wolfgang-Smith at Lofty Pigeon Books, Tue. 10/14
  • Washington, D.C. & Virtual: With Jung Yun at East City Bookshop, Wed. 10/15
  • More.

*Grace Byron: Herculine

Excerpt here.

Jenny Kiefer: Crafting for Sinners

Fredrik deBoer: The Mind Reels

  • Middletown, CT: At Wesleyan RJ Julia, Tue. 10/7

*Alejandro Varela: Middle Spoon

  • Cambridge & Virtual: With Ursula Villarreal-Moura at the Cambridge Public Library, Thu. 10/9
  • Washington, DC: With Lupita Aquino at Mt. Pleasant Library, Sat. 10/11
  • More.

****Ken Liu: All That We See or Seem

  • Cambridge: With R.F. Kuang at The Brattle Theatre, Tue. 10/14

Victoria Redel: I Am You

  • Seattle: With Laurie Frankel at Elliott Bay Book Co., Sun. 10/12
  • LA: With Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum at Book Soup, Mon. 10/13
  • Portland: With Kimberly King Parsons at Literary Arts, Tue. 10/14
  • More.

*Bobbi Brown: Still Bobbi

Never forget when that influencer panned Jones Road and the millennials came in full force like, “Oh no no no, that is mother.”

*Angela Flournoy: The Wilderness

E.Y. Zhao: Underspin

  • Cambridge: With Neel Mukherjee at Harvard Book Store, Mon. 10/6
  • Ann Arbor: With Julie Buntin at Literati, Wed. 10/8
  • St. Louis & Virtual: With Edward McPherson at Left Bank Books, Fri. 10/10
  • More.

Patricia Lockwood: Will There Ever Be Another You

*Heather Aimee O’Neill: The Irish Goodbye

My two-time writing instructor!

Cory Doctorow: Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

  • Washington, DC: With Rohit Chopra at Politics & Prose, Wed. 10/8
  • Brooklyn: With Lina M. Khan at the Central Brooklyn Public Library, Thu. 10/9
  • Lots more.

Leni Zumas: Wolf Bells

*Poetry at the Dalí: Romeo Oriogun (The Gathering of Bastards) and Natalie Scenters-Zapico (My Perfect Cognate)

  • St. Petersburg, FL: At The Dalí Museum, Thu. 10/9

Mariah Rigg: Extinction Capital of the World

  • Iowa City: With Tom Lin at Prairie Lights Books, Mon. 10/13