Tables of Contents December 9th: Phillips! Raboteau! Khabushani!

Last TOC reading of the year (*note the time change*), plus our annual Holiday Party!

Readers of Content,

It’s been a rough stretch. I know many of us are still feeling our own versions of clouds over our heads, cirric wisps of anxiety, fuzzy outlines of sadness, dark patches of anger, churns of incredulity, probably a whole lot more. I gave a talk to the board of the James Beard Foundation a couple days after the election, and the feeling that I shared in relation to the work ahead of us in the coming years was: not hopeful, but resolute. And grateful, to have solidly-built communities like this one to fall into and move forward with. I hope that we can be a source of support for all of you, in whatever ways we can, whether that’s just joining for a reading to find perspective and inspiration, working with us on events in the year to come or, as I often offer at the end of readings, using the space at Little Egg for organizing, meetings, or just somewhere to talk.

I’m excited to see some of y’all this Monday at Chelsea Market for our reading with Justin Torres, Ledia Xhoga, and Tracy O’Neill. And I want to put one other dot on your calendars before the end of the year, for our last reading of 2024 on Monday December 9th at Insa.

Our authors — Helen Phillips (HUM), Emily Raboteau (LESSONS FOR SURVIVAL), Khashayar Khabushani (I WILL GREET THE SUN AGAIN) — feel like the right voices to hear from as we head into the next year. I can’t wait to hear their readings, share some food, and be in conversation with them, and I hope you’ll join us if you can.

Please note, the reading on December 9th is from 6pm to 8pm, rather than our normal 7-9pm. This is because we will be holding our annual holiday party immediately following the reading! This party has become a source of regular joy, getting to gather a bunch of friends and authors from the TOC community to share some food and drink, swap books, and sing karaoke. This year, we’ll also have copies of a new TOC Zine, featuring recipes from myself, Tanya Bush, and Sammi Katz for dishes and drinks from the past year of readings, designed and illustrated by Olivia McGiff.

Tickets for the holiday party this year are $10, or $20 with a copy of the zine (which will be available on-site for $15 so, snag that discount!) Paid newsletter subscribers will receive a code below the break for a free ticket and copy of the zine. If you haven’t yet joined as a paid newsletter subscriber, maybe this little perk will help nudge you that way? It’s a huge help for us, and we’ll be sharing much more for folks at that level in 2025, so may as well hop in the wagon now.

In case you’re curious for a bit more info on our December authors:

Helen Phillips is the author of six books, including, most recently, the novel Hum (Simon & Schuster/Marysue Rucci Books, 2024). Her novel The Need (Simon & Schuster, 2019; Chatto & Windus, 2019) was long-listed for the National Book Award and named a New York Times Notable Book of 2019. Helen has received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, the Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction, the Iowa Review Nonfiction Award, and the DIAGRAM Innovative Fiction Award.

Emily Raboteau writes at the intersection of social and environmental justice, race, climate change, public art, and parenthood. Her books are Lessons for Survival, shortlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, Searching for Zion, winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the critically acclaimed novel, The Professor’s Daughter. Since the release of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, she has focused on writing longform essays about the climate crisis. She serves as nonfiction faculty at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference and is a full professor at the City College of New York (CUNY) in Harlem, once known as “the poor man’s Harvard.” She lives in the Bronx.

Khashayar J. Khabushani was born in Van Nuys, California, in 1992. During his childhood he spent time in Iran before returning to Los Angeles. He studied philosophy at California State University, Northridge, and prior to completing his MFA at Columbia University he worked as a middle school teacher. This is his first novel.

As always, each ticket includes three small dishes inspired by the passages, and one complimentary drink. Additional drinks will be available for purchase at the Insa bar. Of course Sammi and Olivia of Cocktails in Color will be mixing up literary cocktails, and Books Are Magic will be with us with a table full of books, so come ready to pick up some gifts for yourself and others!

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.

Please write biscuits@tablesofcontents.org with any and all questions about the event and party.

For the reading, 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.

Can’t wait to close out the year with you all,

Evan

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On Our Shelves

• Aside from upcoming TOC books, I'm also reading James Salter’s Light Years and Carlo Cipolla’s very timely (and brief) The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, both on recommendation from some TOC alums.

• Sarah Thankam Mathews’ newsletter thot pudding and especially this post-election post

• December author Emily Raboteau’s essay for Pioneer Works’ Broadcast

• Our friends at Ever-Growing Family Farm have some of their NY-grown rice harvest available for purchase. It’s one of the only rice farms in the state and they grow an amazing product. It’s going quick!

Paid subscribers, keep scrolling for a discount code for the holiday party and a sneak peek recipe from the TOC Zine. Thank you for your support! And can we say…this is a great time of year to upgrade to a paid subscription for more TOC recipes, content, and special events in 2025!