Guests Perform and Discuss their Work with Host Katherine Lanpher
Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest
bookseller, today announced the next edition of its hit series,
“Upstairs at the Square” – recommended by The New Yorker, New York,
Time Out New York, The Village Voice, WWD Scoop, Time Out London,
and more – which celebrated three years this June, at the Union Square
Barnes & Noble in Manhattan (33 East 17th Street at Union
Square). On Tuesday, August 18th, at 7 p.m., breakthrough
singer-songwriter Regina Spektor, whose new album is Far
(Warner/Sire Records, June 23), and creative visionary Kurt Andersen,
whose new book is Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and
Renew America (Random House, July 28), will discuss and perform
their work in conversation with cultural journalist Katherine Lanpher.
Admission is free, and no tickets are required. Seating is available on
a first-come, first-serve basis.
“It felt like those stories where a person sets out from their village,
ties a sack on a stick and sets off to experience the world – and then
comes back home.” That’s Regina Spektor (www.reginaspektor.com)
talking about the adventure she embraced making her dazzling new album,
Far. “I come from wanting to arrange everything myself, basically
directing myself,” she says of the evolution that ran from with the
one-woman recordings she made at college in New York (the self-released 11:11
album) and through her initially-indie and eventual 2004 Sire Records
debut Soviet Kitsch and Begin to Hope, her first truly
“produced” recording. “As time went by I was slowly able to allow more
and more participation. I keep learning.” Even as she listens back to
the album and relives these experiences, she has trouble putting her
finger on just what this represents in terms of the personal and
artistic growth. “It's kind of like watching your own hair grow. Then
all of a sudden you wake up and have long hair.”
Kurt Andersen (www.kurtandersen.com)
is the author of the bestselling novels Heyday and Turn of the
Century. He is also the host and co-creator of the Peabody
Award-winning public radio program Studio 360 and a prize-winning
contributor to Vanity Fair. He was a co-founder of Spy
magazine and the editor-in-chief of New York and he has been a
columnist, critic, and essayist for The New Yorker, New York and Time.
In his new book, Reset, Andersen notes, “This is the end of the
world as we’ve known it.
