Tables of Contents + MacDowell April 29th: Nunez! Bertino! París!

Heading back to the Brooklyn Grange's Sunset Park rooftop farm for a Spring reading featuring MacDowell fellows!

Readers of Content,

One of the things I love about the TOC Reading Series is that though we follow the same format every month, each month brings a new version of the experience, from the dishes to the cocktails to the answers in the conversation. Last month we had a new new thing: my first time missing a TOC event! I tested positive for COVID the day of the event, as I was finishing sautéing some ginger and shallot in oil for the asaro stew for ‘Pemi Aguda’s dish, and realized I couldn’t smell what should have been the *very* fragrant sizzle.

I’m so grateful to the TOC team, all of whom stepped up to make the event run so smoothly that I was hardly even missed! Thanks to Shiyulli, Rachel, Kim for running the show, Chef Yong from Insa for jumping in to help get the food from the pots to the plates, and most of all Josh who leapt last-minute into full MC role, moderating a great conversation with the authors and keeping the whole night on track. It was crazy not to be there (I missed you!), but also so exciting and rewarding to hear how beautifully everything came together in my absence.

Thankfully I’m recovered and looking forward to our April reading! And glad I won’t be missing this one, because there are few things more magical than being on an NYC rooftop at sunset. We've been lucky to experience a few of those nights at the Brooklyn Grange's rooftop oases over the years, and are so excited to bring Tables of Contents back to their Sunset Park rooftop farm for our April 29th reading!

For this month's lineup, we've partnered with MacDowell, one of the leading artist residency and arts-supporting organizations in the country, to celebrate three of the amazing authors from their Fellow community, including Marie-Helene Bertino (Exit Zero), Sigrid Nunez (The Vulnerables), and Daniel Saldaña París (The Dance and the Fire). We truly swoon for this lineup. Here’s some more info on these authors and MacDowell, and a link to tickets and additional event info (including accessibility info) is below:

Sigrid Nunez has published nine novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God, The Last of Her Kind, The Friend, What Are You Going Through, and, most recently, The Vulnerables. Nunez is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. The Friend, a New York Times bestseller, won the 2018 National Book Award and was a finalist for the 2019 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize. In France, it was longlisted for the 2019 Prix Femina and named a finalist for the 2019 Prix du Meilleure Livre. It was also a finalist for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award. In 2024, The New York Times listed The Friend among the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. A collection of Nunez’s short fiction will be published in 2026 under the title It Will Come Back to You.

Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of, most recently, Beautyland, a National Book Critics Circle Finalist and a New York Times Notable 100 and Time Magazine Top 10 Book of 2024. She is currently the Ritvo-Slifka Writer-in-Residence at Yale University. Exit Zero, her second short story collection, will be published in April 2025.

She is also the author of the novels 2.am. at The Cat’s Pajamas (NPR Best Books 2014), and Parakeet (New York Times Editor’s Choice), and the story collection Safe as Houses, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Electric Literature, Tin House, McSweeneys, Granta, BOMB, Guernica, and many others. Honors include The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellowship in Cork, Ireland, The O. Henry Prize, The Pushcart Prize, fellowships from MacDowell, Hedgebrook Writers Colony, The Center For Fiction NYC, and Sewanee Writers Conference.

Daniel Saldaña París is a novelist, essayist, poet, and translator. His latest book is The Dance and the Fire (Finalist for the 39th Herralde Novel Prize; Anagrama, 2021). He is also the author of the books of poems That Pure Matter (Winner of the Jaime Reyes Award 2007) and The Autobiographical Machine, as well as the novels Among Strange Victims and Ramifications, both translated into several languages. His collection of personal essays Planes Flying Over a Monster (Anagrama, 2021). In 2024 he published the sound essay The Helpers of the Sun (Everand).

About MacDowell
Composer Edward MacDowell and pianist Marian MacDowell founded MacDowell in 1907 to nurture the arts by offering creative individuals of the highest talent an inspiring environment in which to produce enduring works of the imagination. In 1997, MacDowell was honored with the National Medal of the Arts. Each year, MacDowell welcomes 300 architects, composers, filmmakers, interdisciplinary artists, theatre artists, visual artists, and writers from across the United States and around the globe. More than 16,000 residencies have been awarded in the last 118 years. Recipients have included Ayad Akhtar, James Baldwin, Michael Chabon, Mary H.K. Choi, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Louise Erdrich, Andrew Sean Greer, Cathy Park Hong, Ann Patchett, Dee Rees, Vijay Seshadri, Colson Whitehead, and Julia Wolfe. Best-selling author and visual artist Nell Painter is the chairman of MacDowell’s Board of Directors.

Each ticket for this event includes three small dishes inspired by the passages, and one complimentary drink (beer, wine, or NA). Our friends Sammi and Olivia of Cocktails in Color & Spirited Women will be mixing up drinks inspired by the books, so you'll want to make room to try a couple! For this event, since we are not able to sell drinks on-site, there is the option to add-on additional drinks when you check out, and we encourage you to get an extra or two! You get thirsty at that altitude.

We’ll also have each of the authors’ books for sale, so come ready to pick up some copies!

One final treat for this month: you're also invited to join us before the event for a tour of the farm at the Brooklyn Grange, and a behind-the-leaves peek at the work the Grange is doing. Select the farm tour add-on with your ticket for a stroll around the farm with a welcome drink before the reading (tour begins at 6pm). Space for this portion of the event is limited.

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.

The Brooklyn Grange is wheelchair-accessible and has elevator access. Please write The Brooklyn Grange at programming@brooklyngrangefarm.com with any and all questions.

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 see your faces on April 29th at Brooklyn Grange!

Evan

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On Our Shelves

• Little Egg GM Nora Kaye (screenwriter & filmmaker) and server Jeana Scotti (playwright & 2025 MacDowell fellow) are hosting a casual writing workshop for creatives working in the service industry TONIGHT, Tuesday March 25th, at Little Egg. Sign up to join!

• Chef Asnia Akhtar, who has helped in the kitchen at many a TOC, is cooking for an Iftar fundraiser at Barzakh cafe on March 29th, check it out and grab tickets here!