The classics book club at Bryant Park Reading Room

Oxford University Press has once again teamed up with the Bryant Park Reading Room on their summer literary series.

The Bryant Park Reading Room was first established in 1935 by the New York Public Library as a refuge for the thousands of unemployed New Yorkers during the Great Depression. Today, thanks to the generous support of HSBC Bank USA, and the continued efforts of the Bryant Park Corporation, the Reading Room is thriving once again. As part of the Bryant Park program, Oxford University Press has created a special book club where we pair acclaimed contemporary authors with a classic title from the Oxford World’s Classics series.

This Tuesday, 6 June, marks the first Classics Book Club of the season! Check out the entire summer schedule below. Prior to each event, stop by Bryant Park to pick up a free copy of the book club choice while supplies lasts. The Reading Room is located in Bryant Park, right behind the NYPL Main Branch, on 42nd street between 5th and 6th Ave.

1.  June 6, 2017—Bruce Bauman, author of Broken Sleep, discussing Franz Kafka’s The Trial. 12:30 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.

Bruce Bauman is an award-winning author, an instructor in the CalArts MFA Writing Program and Critical Studies Department, and the Senior Editor of Black Clock literary magazine. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Salon, BOMB, Bookforum, and numerous anthologies and other publications. Born and raised in New York City, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the painter Suzan Woodruff.

2. June 20, 2017—Marina Budhos & Marc Aronson, authors of Eyes of the World, discussing Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth. 12:30 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.

Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos are writers whose first joint book was the acclaimed Sugar Changed the World. Aronson is a passionate advocate of nonfiction and the first winner of the Robert F. Sibert Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Budhos writes fiction and nonfiction for adults and teenagers, including the recently published Watched. Aronson is a member of the faculty in the Master of Information program at Rutgers and Budhos is a professor of English at William Paterson University. They live with their two sons in Maplewood, NJ.

3. July 11, 2017—Irina Reyn, author of The Imperial Wife, discussing Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. 12:30 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.

Irina Reyn is the author of What Happened to Anna K: A Novel. She is also the editor of the anthology Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take on the Garden State. She has reviewed books for the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Forward, and other publications. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in One Story, Tin House, Town & Country Travel and Poets & Writers. She teaches fiction writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

4. July 25, 2017—Joanna Luthmann, author of Love, Madness, Scandal, discussing Margery Kempe’s The Book of Margery Kempe.12:30 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.

Johanna Luthman is an associate professor of history at the University of North Georgia. Originally from Sweden, Luthman has studied and worked in the United States since the early 1990s, receiving her doctorate from Emory University in Atlanta. Her work focuses on the Tudor and Stuart eras, specifically on issues of love, sex, and marriage. Her previous publications include Love, Lust and License in Early Modern England: Illicit Sex and the Nobility (2008), published under the name Johanna Rickman. She lives in Atlanta with her husband, Dr. Marko Maunula.

5. August 8, 2017—Radha Vatsal, author of Murder Between the Lines, discussing Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters. 12:30 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.

Radha Vatsal was inspired by 1910s action-film heroines to create a heroine, Capability “Kitty” Weeks, an aspiring journalist who finds herself plunged into the tumultuous world of 1910s New York. Vatsal was born in Mumbai India, and has a Ph.D.from the English Department at Duke University (with a focus on silent-era film history). She lives in New York with her husband and their two daughters.

6. August 22, 2017—Meg Lemke, Editor-in-Chief of MUTHA Magazine, discussing Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. 12:30 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.

Meg Lemke is the Editor-in-Chief of MUTHA. She also programs the comics and graphic novels at the Brooklyn Book Festival, acts as a guest editor at Illustrated PEN, and takes on miscellaneous freelance projects in-between. She has worked as a book editor at Teachers College Press at Columbia University, Seven Stories Press and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The Seattle Review, The Atlanta Review, The Good Mother Myth blog, and Seleni, among other publications. She lives with her family in the dense mother-zone of Park Slope, Brooklyn. Find her @meglemke and meglemke.tumblr.com or read up on her formative years at Lady Collective.

Featured image credit: Bryant Park, Saturday by Teri Tynes. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.