August 11th Reading Series: Ed Park! Anelise Chen! Nicole Cuffy!
A new venue for August (right down the street from Little Egg) and some recommendations and YA nerdery in our On Our Shelves...
Readers of Content,
Thanks to everyone who filled the rows of wooden tables at Farm to People this week to hear Justin Haynes, Julia Elliott, and Alejandro Heredia read from their amazing novels and stories! We scented the room with orange zest and serve zaboca (avocado) salad for Justin’s Ibis; poured blood-red cocktails and laid trays of pickled herring for Julia’s Hellions; and let light angel food cake and gooey burnt pound cake dissolve on our tongues for Alejandro’s LOCA. Check out photos from the night here.
We love Farm to People for its commitment to local food (learn more about all its amazing work from their home-delivery farm boxes to delicious dinner service to parties and panels in their space) and hope to be back there again in the future!
Looking ahead to August, we’re sticking with the summer abundance spirit and making our way to another “Farm” (what can we say, we’ve got a type!) A new venue always comes with a tinge of excitement, especially for a space as verdant and fun as Farm.One where we'll hold our next TOC reading on August 11th. We're thrilled to welcome a summer lineup featuring Ed Park (An Oral History of Atlantis), Anelise Chen (Clam Down), and Nicole Cuffy (O Sinners!), and hope you'll join us!
Ed Park is the author of the novels Same Bed Different Dreams (2023), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Personal Days (2008), a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. His fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, TheNew York Review of Books, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Bookforum, McSweeney’s, and many other publications. He is a founding editor of The Believer and the former literary editor of The Village Voice, and has worked in newspapers and book publishing. He'll join us to read from his debut story collection An Oral History of Atlantis.
Anelise Chen is an American writer of fiction and nonfiction. She teaches creative writing at Columbia University. Her first novel, So Many Olympic Exertions, was published by Kaya Press in 2017. It was a VCU Cabell First Novelist Award Finalist. Her second book, Clam Down (One World), based on her brief stint as the Paris Review Daily's "mollusk correspondent," published in June 2025. She is a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 Awardee. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, New York Times, The Believer, McSweeney's, BOMB, The New Republic, NPR, Village Voice, Conjunctions, and more.
Nicole Cuffy is the author of Dances, longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel. Cuffy has an MFA from The New School and is a lecturer at the University of Maryland and Georgetown University. Her work can be found in the* New England Review; The Masters Review,* Volume VI (curated by Roxane Gay); Chautauqua; and Blue Mesa Review. Her chapbook, Atlas of the Body, won the Chautauqua Janus Prize and was a finalist for the Black River Chapbook Competition. She will read from her novel O Sinners!
Each ticket includes three small dishes inspired by the passages, and one complimentary drink. Additional drinks will be available for purchase. Our friends Sammi and Olivia of Cocktails in Color will be mixing up cocktails inspired by our three authors' books, so you'll want to make room for a couple! And our buddies at McNally Jackson will be with us selling books, so come ready to pick up a few copies.
We do have a handful of seats reserved for sliding-scale admission to keep these events as financially accessible as possible. Please let us know if this ticket price is prohibitive for you and we’ll find a way to get you a seat at the table. These sliding scale seats are limited, so please be thoughtful about your resources and needs when making a request.
For more information on physical accessibility at Farm.One or any other questions, please write us at biscuits@tablesofcontents.org.
We can accommodate gluten-free and vegetarian diets with advance notice. If you have other restrictions or aversions you are of course still encouraged to attend, you just may not be able to partake in every course. Please be sure to notify us of any serious allergies in advance and remind us at the event.
Doors will open at 6:45 so feel free to come a few minutes early to grab a drink and get settled.
See you all August 11th at Farm.One!
On Our Shelves
Last night we hosted a celebration of Joyland Publishing’s first novella, the lovely Information Age by Cora Lewis, at Little Egg. Check out the book (described last night by Rob Franklin as a “more optimistic Speedboat”) and more of the wonderful writing Joyland publishes!
Tomorrow night, friend of TOC Arthur Moon is doing a special performance of their yet-to-be-released music at Public Records; we’ll be there and think you should too!
The other day at the beach (Rockaway 106th, lunch at Caracas, duh) I read The Time of the Novel by Lara Mimosa Montes on recommendation from TOC Alum Giada Scodellaro and was swept away; highly recommend for anyone who has ever wanted to escape the “real” world into a world of their own creative work, and encountered the challenges of realizing that desire. Plus it’s only like 82 pages! A dream!
Applications for 2026 Marble House Project residencies have been extended by a few days - I did this residency in 2022 and it was an amazing experience! Apply by Sunday.
Last week Tyler Wetherall and Brian Gresko hosted the second annual literary series curators meetup at Pete’s Candy Store in Williamsburg; it was amazing to see how much literary energy and organizing there is that even we weren’t aware of! Be sure to sign up for Tyler’s newsletter Reading the City for rundowns of weekly literary events in NYC.
Prepare yourself for our nerdiest newsletter note of all time: our recap post of our Redwall dinner at Glynwood is now the third most-popular post ever in the r/eulalia subreddit (you have to be such a Redwall nerd to even know that that subreddit exists.) Anyway, gonna need a bigger room for the next installment of that dinner, wot wot!
You know the feeling of finally reading an amazing book that you somehow had never gotten to? That was us during our perfect dinner at Hart’s this week. And now we’re telling all our friends about it even though like, everyone’s already read that one? Anyway, highly recommend!
See you soon,
Evan & the TOC team
