The head of the _New Yorker_ fact-checking department, Peter Canby, moderated the “Discussion Among Writers” with Hari Kunzru, Peter Carey, and Gary Shteyngart, on the subject of “Outlaws.” It was a less freewheeling session than the one in the same space “an hour earlier”:http://emdashes.com/2008/10/new-yorker-festival-klam-leona.php. Canby’s questions tended to be feature lengthy quotations from the writers’ works. And there was less crosstalk, the responses conforming more to the two-minute time limits imposed on the likes of Sarah Palin the night before.
Speaking of whom, about midway through Carey mischievously inquired what Ms. Palin would make of one of Canby’s hifalutin questions. It must be said, though, that Canby’s method worked, as all three writers supplied informative and engaging answers and Shteyngart supplied enough humor in an hour to power the next ten Festivals in the event that “angry Ted Stevens”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEXJV2P2ZIw takes the Festival over.
Indeed, I’ll succumb to a temptation to turn over the bulk of this post to his quips. Describing his homeland Russia as still in a “pre-therapeutic” phase, he plans to “airlift eight thousand Park Slope social workers” to the vast country to bring it up to speed. Musing on the domesticated status of American writers, hostage to 401(k) plans and health care fees, he contrasted his lot with that of the Lost Generation: If the Spanish Civil War reasserted itself, unlike Hemingway “I’d only go if Iberia had a good frequent flyer plan…. I’m not flying coach to a war.”
An audience question about each writer’s favorite book elicited groans from the panel–but also revealing answers (well done, questioner!). Kunzru stated that the last novel that made an impression on him was Joan Didion’s _Play It as It Lays,_ so he now wants to migrate to California and wear a dress. Carey expressed an admiration for droll and dyspeptic Austrian novelist Thomas Bernhard, and Shteyngart professed to read Vladimir Nabokov’s _Pnin_ once a month.
One thing about these panels–you do come away with a solid impression of the participants. The Friday author sessions remain the ideal way to kick off the Festival weekend.

A little bit to my surprise, the “Discussion Among Writers” dedicated to “The Devil Within,” featuring Elmore Leonard, Joyce Carol Oates, and Matthew Klam and moderated by Daniel Zalewski, was a light, lively, and amusing affair, quite in contrast to the stated subject. The taciturn Leonard, who would have looked entirely at home whittling a garter snake out of a twig, was flanked by the admiring Oates and Klam—yes, the admiration flowed freely on this night.
Without ever dwelling on it or even stating it explicitly, all three panelists acknowledged to the desirability of complexity as well as the enduring power of the thriller genre. All three either disavowed the reality of “evil” or described it as yet another mundane by-product of human existence. Of his famous baddies, Leonard mused that he’ll think of one he’s creating “as a kid. He’s a bully, he’s a cheater. He doesn’t get along with very many people. And then I let him grow up.”
Happiest when his readers squirm, Klam offered, by way of Shalom Auslander, that “Light and Dark are buddies, and they hang out after work.” For her part, Oates, astonished at Klam’s glowing words about her book _Do With Me What You Will,_ insisted that she is more accustomed to the critical reception of her cat, who has shown little interest in her works.
Leonard showed the same kind of word-stingy pith he does in his books, observing that he doesn’t like to know too much about his characters, “just enough to make them talk.” I don’t remember if this was before or after Klam demanded that Zalewski fess up to drop-kicking puppies.
It was a session so loose, you’d have thought alcohol had helped it along.

Matthew Klam, Elmore Leonard, Joyce Carol Oates and Daniel Zalewski
(photo credit: Alex Oliveira/startraksphoto.com)

I had not noticed that _The New Yorker_ is using the Festival as a platform to perform an important civic duty. On Saturday and Sunday, a rotating slate of well-known people and _New Yorker_ luminaries will be on hand to register any eligible citizen to vote. If you are a recalcitrant politico-phobe or know one you suspect might respond to the extra inducement of meeting a famous person, it’s all at the Festival HQ at at Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street (between Sixth and Seventh Avenues). Here’s the schedule.
**Saturday, October 4**
10 a.m., Raúl Esparza
10:30 a.m., Judith Thurman
11 a.m., Edie Falco and Susan Sarandon
11:30 a.m., Wes Craven
12 noon, Sherman Alexie
12:30 p.m., Alex Castellanos
2:30 p.m., Alex Ross
3 p.m., Senator Chuck Hagel
3:30 p.m., Susan Orlean
4 p.m., Sasha Frere-Jones
**Sunday, October 5**
10:30 a.m., Nick Paumgarten
11 a.m., Reverend Al Sharpton
11:30 a.m., Mark Singer
12:30 p.m., Art Spiegelman
1 p.m., Larissa MacFarquhar
1:30 p.m., Michael Specter
2 p.m., Lynda Barry
2:30 p.m., Steve Brodner
3 p.m., Tad Friend
3:30 p.m., Buck Henry
4 p.m., Karen O
I confess I’m considering having the Rev. Sharpton register me even though I’m already registered. But I won’t, because it’s probably illegal.

Well, she did fine, I thought. Biden was better. She won’t lose the race for McCain. Next subject.
Next subject? That’s the New Yorker Festival! Which is this weekend! Emily and I will gallivant (that verb wears the simple present tense oddly) to as many events as we are able, and we will be writing up our reports over the weekend and well into the week after.
In addition we’ll be twittering away from our cellphones as we move from event to event, so be sure to check out the Emdashes Twitter feed plus “twemes.com/nyfest”:www.twemes.com/nyfest. If you want to add your comments to the latter feed, send your “tweets” to **40404** and add **#nyfest** to the start of your message. The more the merrier!
Note that a limited number of tickets to ALL events will be on sale at the Festival Headquarters at Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street during the weekend. Here’s the “schedule”:http://www.festival.newyorker.com/schedule.cfm. If you have gotten shut out of your must-see event, be sure to try your luck there.
It should be a great weekend: Stephen Colbert, Clint Eastwood, Oliver Stone, Elmore Leonard, Barbara Ehrenreich, Mary-Louise Parker, Elizabeth Edwards, Joe Trippi, Martha Plimpton, Paul Rudd, Dawn Upshaw, Guillermo del Toro, and Chuck Hagel are a few of the featured guests, and _New Yorker_ stalwarts like Adam Gopnik, James Surowiecki, Rebecca Mead, Michael Specter, Ian Frazier, David Denby, Dorothy Wickenden, Jeffrey Toobin, Paul Muldoon, and the redoubtable David Remnick will collude to make it three days to cherish.
If you spot Emily or myself, be sure to say hello!

For this year’s New Yorker Festival, we’re going to try a little experiment, and it will work a lot better if some of you join in. We want to have a special Emdashes Twitter dedicated to the New Yorker Festival.
If you are not acquainted with this micro-blogging technique, I recommend that you learn about it at the Twitter website. The essence of it is like writing a blog that consists of text messages. People can post messages of 140 characters or fewer to a blog from their cellphones (and also from a browser). Here’s a look at Jason Kottke’s Twitter.
Our goal is to have people attending events at the Festival contribute spontaneous “tweets,” or messages, and have them appear on a common page accessible to everybody. There’s a minor difficulty that most people will be doing this from a cellphone, and user cellphones have a strong tendency to default to their own Twitters. For users in the United States, the number to dial from your cellphone is 40404.
There is a service called Twemes that makes it easier to aggregate messages from multiple people onto a single Twitter. It’s very clever—users exploit the pound (#) sign to create a kind of tag that they append to the start of each message. So all users have to do is send a tweet as they normally would, but put the string “#nyfest” at the front. If that tag is there, the message will end up on this tweme page.
It’s as simple as that.
Emily’s username is (what else?) Emdashes, and mine is wovenstrap.
So if on Festival weekend, you see Stephen Colbert call David Remnick “papa bear” or witness Clint Eastwood gun down some muggers, Twitter it (after calling 911) by typing #nyfest!

Tickets go on sale two days from today, this Wednesday, September 17. Here are the full details, from the press release:
Guillermo del Toro
talks with Daniel Zalewski
On monsters.
Guillermo del Toro wrote, directed, and produced the 2006 film “Pan’s
Labyrinth,” which won three Academy Awards and became the
highest-grossing Spanish-language film in U.S. box-office history. His
other films include “Cronos,” “The Devil’s Backbone,” “Blade II,”
“Hellboy,” and “Hellboy II: The Golden Army.” His next project will be
a two-film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” to be
released in 2011 and 2012.
Daniel Zalewski is the features editor of The New Yorker.
Saturday, October 4th, at 7:30 P.M.
Directors Guild of America
110 West 57th Street
($35)
Tickets available Wednesday, September 17th, at 12 noon E.T., at
festival.newyorker.com or by calling 800-440-6974. Tickets will also
be sold during Festival weekend at Festival HQ, at Metropolitan
Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street, and at the door.

As we were excited to report recently, it’s New Yorker Festival season! And here’s the lineup for your browsing and ticket-buying pleasure. Oh, and Calvin Trillin’s walk–you can try, but don’t be crushed if it doesn’t work out. It so rarely does, but then again, it could be your year for the golden ticket! Tickets go on sale Friday, September 12, and you can find them at the Festival website. Quoting from the press release: “Tickets will also be sold during the weekend at Festival Headquarters, located at 125 West 18th Street, and at event doors.” See you there!
FRIDAY
OCTOBER 3
An evening of discussions among writers whose stories have appeared in The New Yorker; an interview with Alice Munro; a New Yorker Town Hall Meeting on race and class in America; a Cartoon Caption Contest at Festival HQ; and a New Yorker Dance Party.
FICTION NIGHT: DISCUSSIONS AMONG WRITERS
Writing About Home
Sana Krasikov, Yiyun Li, and Manil Suri, moderated by Cressida Leyshon
7 p.m. Acura Stage at Cedar Lake Theatre ($25)
The Devil Within
Matthew Klam, Elmore Leonard, and Joyce Carol Oates, moderated by Daniel Zalewski
7 p.m. Ailey Citigroup Theater
Joan Weill Center for Dance ($25)
The American Dream
T. Coraghessan Boyle, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Jhumpa Lahiri, moderated by Leo Carey
7 p.m. Angel Orensanz Foundation ($25)
Family Secrets
Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, and Tobias Wolff, moderated by Willing Davidson
9:30 p.m. Acura Stage at Cedar Lake Theatre ($25)
Outlaws
Peter Carey, Hari Kunzru, and Gary Shteyngart, moderated by Peter Canby
9:30 p.m. Ailey Citigroup Theater
Joan Weill Center for Dance ($25)
Where I Come From
Sherman Alexie, Shalom Auslander, and Junot Díaz, moderated by Carin Besser
9:30 p.m. Angel Orensanz Foundation ($25)
FICTION NIGHT: IN CONVERSATION WITH
Alice Munro interviewed by Deborah Treisman
8 p.m. Directors Guild of America ($25)
THE NEW YORKER TOWN HALL MEETING: Race and Class in America
With Barbara Ehrenreich, Thomas Frank, John McWhorter, Leslie Sanchez, and Cornel West. Moderated by David Remnick.
7 p.m. Town Hall ($20)
CASUAL FRIDAY
The Cartoon Caption Game
Hosted by Robert Mankoff
8 p.m. Festival HQ
Metropolitan Pavilion ($25)
A NEW YORKER DANCE PARTY
Hosted by Sasha Frere-Jones, with special guest d.j. Ghislain Poirier. Opening set by Megasoid.
10 p.m. Hiro Ballroom and Lounge ($25)
SATURDAY
OCTOBER 4
A day of interviews, panel discussions, and talks by New Yorker writers; an excursion to Governors Island; Early Shift and Late Shift events; preview screenings of the upcoming films “Fear(s) of the Dark” and “Frontrunners”; and book signings at Festival HQ.
WRITERS AND THEIR SUBJECTS
Alexei Ratmansky and Joan Acocella
1 p.m. Acura Stage at Cedar Lake Theatre ($25)
Clint Eastwood and Lillian Ross
1 p.m. Directors Guild of America ($25)
Richard Brody on the films of Jean-Luc Godard
4 p.m. IFC Center ($25)
IN CONVERSATION WITH
Jean-Michel Dubernard interviewed by Atul Gawande
10 a.m. Acura Stage at Cedar Lake Theatre ($25)
Seamus Heaney interviewed by Paul Muldoon
1 p.m. New York Society for Ethical Culture ($25)
Chuck Hagel interviewed by Ryan Lizza
4 p.m. Acura Stage at Cedar Lake Theatre ($25)
Elizabeth Edwards interviewed by Atul Gawande
4 p.m. New York Society for Ethical Culture ($25)
Lynda Barry in conversation with Matt Groening
4 p.m. Festival HQ
Metropolitan Pavilion ($25)
NEW YORKER TALKS
Malcolm Gladwell: “The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes”
2 p.m. Ailey Citigroup Theater
Joan Weill Center for Dance ($25)
Art Spiegelman: “Breakdowns: Comix 101”
4:30 p.m. Ailey Citigroup Theater
Joan Weill Center for Dance ($25)
PANELS
If I Were Running This Campaign
Donna Brazile, Alex Castellanos, Edward J. Rollins, and Joe Trippi, moderated by Jeffrey Toobin
10 a.m. Directors Guild of America ($25)
Extreme Sports
Greg Child, Lynne Cox, and Andrew McLean, moderated by Nick Paumgarten
10 a.m. Festival HQ
Metropolitan Pavilion ($25)
Covering the Candidates
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Bill Keller, Peggy Noonan, and Jack Shafer, moderated by Ken Auletta
10 a.m. Cathedral NYC ($25)
The Next Generation of Fashion
Louise Markey, Makoto Takada, and Joeri Van Yper, moderated by Judith Thurman
1 p.m. Cathedral NYC ($25)
The Campaign Trail
Hendrik Hertzberg, Ryan Lizza, and George Packer, moderated by Dorothy Wickenden
1 p.m. Festival HQ
Metropolitan Pavilion ($25)
Political Humor
Samantha Bee, Andy Borowitz, James Downey, John Oliver, and Allison Silverman, moderated by Susan Morrison
4 p.m. Cathedral NYC ($25)
Young Shakespeareans
Lauren Ambrose, Ethan Hawke, Kristen Johnston, Martha Plimpton, and Liev Schreiber, moderated by Adam Gopnik
4 p.m. Directors Guild of America ($25)
ABOUT TOWN
A Governors Island Bike Tour
Adriaan Geuze, Leslie Koch, and Ricardo Scofidio talk with Paul Goldberger.
11 a.m. Governors Island Ferry Terminal ($80)
EARLY SHIFT
Saturday Night Sneak Preview: “Frontrunners”
Moderated by Rebecca Mead.
6:30 p.m. Stuyvesant High School ($25)
Paul Rudd talks with Michael Specter
7:30 p.m. Acura Stage at Cedar Lake Theatre ($35)
Dawn Upshaw talks with Alex Ross
7:30 p.m. Ailey Citigroup Theater
Joan Weill Center for Dance ($35)
Stephen Colbert talks with Ariel Levy
7:30 p.m. Cathedral NYC ($35)
Worst Nightmares Part 1: Horror Movies
Wes Craven and Hideo Nakata, moderated by Ben Greenman.
7:30 p.m. IFC Center ($35)
LATE SHIFT
Tom Morello talks with James Surowiecki
10 p.m. Acura Stage at Cedar Lake Theatre ($35)
Mary-Louise Parker talks with John Colapinto
10 p.m. Ailey Citigroup Theater
Joan Weill Center for Dance ($35)
Oliver Stone talks with David Denby
10 p.m. Directors Guild of America ($35)
Worst Nightmares Part 2: “Fear(s) of the Dark”
Charles Burns and Lorenzo Mattotti, moderated by Françoise Mouly.
10 p.m. IFC Center ($25)
SUNDAY
OCTOBER 5
A day of About Town excursions and events throughout the city; talks by New Yorker writers; interviews with Tommy Lee Jones and Haruki Murakami; a series of master classes in political cartooning, humor writing, and literary criticism; and book signings at Festival HQ.
ABOUT TOWN
Morning at the Frick
With Peter Schjeldahl
10 a.m. Frick Collection ($65)
Come Hungry
With Calvin Trillin
11 a.m. Ticket buyers will be contacted concerning the starting point. ($100)
Inside the Artist’s Studio
John Currin talks with Calvin Tomkins
11 a.m. Ticket buyers will be contacted concerning the location. ($80)
Presto Change-o
Matthew Holtzclaw, Charles Reynolds, Jamy Ian Swiss, and Johnny Thompson, moderated by Adam Gopnik
11 a.m. Spiegeltent-Salon Perdu ($30)
Spice World
Claudia Roden talks with Jane Kramer
12 noon. Culinary Loft ($80)
WRITERS AND THEIR SUBJECTS
Tommy Lee Jones and Lillian Ross
11 a.m. Directors Guild of America ($25)
IN CONVERSATION WITH
Haruki Murakami interviewed by Deborah Treisman
4 p.m. Directors Guild of America ($25)
NEW YORKER TALKS
Paul Theroux: “Reliving ‘The Great Railway Bazaar'”
1 p.m. Ailey Citigroup Theater
Joan Weill Center for Dance ($25)
Salman Rushdie: “The Composite Artist: The Emperor Akbar and the Making of the Hamzanama”
4 p.m. Ailey Citigroup Theater
Joan Weill Center for Dance ($25)
MASTER CLASSES
Political Illustration
With Barry Blitt and Steve Brodner
10 a.m. Festival HQ
Metropolitan Pavilion ($35)
Humor Writing
With Ian Frazier and Mark Singer
1 p.m. Festival HQ
Metropolitan Pavilion ($35)
Literary Criticism
With James Wood
4 p.m. Festival HQ
Metropolitan Pavilion ($35)
BOOK SIGNINGS
Saturday, October 4
11 A.M.
Joyce Carol Oates – “My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike”
Tobias Wolff – “Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories”
12 noon
Roddy Doyle – “The Deportees: And Other Stories”
Anne Enright – “Yesterday’s Weather: Stories”
1 P.M.
Alice Munro – “The View from Castle Rock”
Haruki Murakami – “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir”
2 P.M.
Sana Krasikov – “One More Year: Stories”
Manil Suri – “The Age of Shiva: A Novel”
3 P.M.
Peter Carey – “His Illegal Self”
Paul Theroux – “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar”
4 P.M.
Robert Mankoff – “The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest Book”
Susan Orlean – “Lazy Little Loafers”
Sunday, October 5
11 A.M.
Hari Kunzru – “My Revolutions”
Jhumpa Lahiri – “Unaccustomed Earth”
12 noon
Richard Brody – “Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard”
John Seabrook – “Flash of Genius: And Other True Stories of Invention”
1 P.M.
Salman Rushdie – “The Enchantress of Florence”
Art Spiegelman – “Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!” and “Jack and the Box”
2 P.M.
Peter Schjeldahl – “Let’s See: Writings on Art from The New Yorker”
James Wood – “How Fiction Works”
3 P.M.
Lynda Barry – “What It Is”
Steve Brodner – “Artists Against the War”
4 P.M.
John McWhorter – “Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English”

The headline says it all; a full list of New Yorker Festival events, complete with times and locations, is now available at the Festival website.
I can’t improve on the wording they provide:
Tickets for The New Yorker Festival will go on sale at 12 noon E.T. on Friday, September 12th. For more information, click here.
We will be printing a version of the schedule ASAP.

Martin Schneider writes:
Finally, The New Yorker has gratified our curiosity by divulging details about the upcoming New Yorker Festival in October. There are a lot of terrific people listed here; our cup runneth over!
In its entirety, here is the press release:
The 2008 New Yorker Festival
New York, August 21, 2008 – During the weekend of October 3rd-5th, The New Yorker will present its ninth annual Festival, a three-day series of events that brings together an eclectic array of writers, artists, actors, directors, musicians and politicians at venues throughout the city. This year’s Festival takes place one month before the Presidential election, and there will be a special emphasis on politics in the Festival’s programming, as well as a weekend-long voter-registration drive. In past years, Festival events have sold out quickly, drawing more than seventeen thousand people from around the world. The full program guide of fifty events will be included in the September 15, 2008, issue of the magazine, on newsstands September 8th, and will be available at http://festival.newyorker.com. This year’s highlights include:
Right to Vote–The New Yorker Festival will partner with the New York City Board of Elections for a weekend-long voter-registration effort at all Festival venues and at Festival HQ, where special guests will be registering voters.
The annual New Yorker Town Hall Meeting will address the topic of race and class in America. David Remnick will moderate a discussion among the journalists Barbara Ehrenreich and Thomas Frank, the linguist John McWhorter, the political market-research expert Leslie Sanchez, and the scholar Cornel West.
A panel on political humor will feature “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” correspondents Samantha Bee and John Oliver; the “Saturday Night Live” writer James Downey; the humor writer Andy Borowitz; and Allison Silverman, the executive producer of “The Colbert Report.”
Democratic strategists Donna Brazile and Joe Trippi and Republican strategists Alex Castellanos and Edward J. Rollins will discuss what they would do if they were running the Presidential campaigns, in a conversation moderated by Jeffrey Toobin.
In “Covering the Candidates,” The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, the New York Times’s Bill Keller, the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan, and Slate’s Jack Shafer will discuss what the press did right–or wrong–in covering the Presidential race, in a conversation moderated by Ken Auletta.
Featured interviews include the TV personality Stephen Colbert; Republican Senator Chuck Hagel; the attorney and health-care advocate Elizabeth Edwards; the actor and director Clint Eastwood; the actor Paul Rudd; the actress Mary-Louise Parker; the guitarist Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave); the soprano Dawn Upshaw; the actor Tommy Lee Jones; the dancer and choreographer Alexei Ratmansky; the fiction writer Alice Munro; the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney; and the novelist Haruki Murakami.
Film events will include Oliver Stone discussing his work with David Denby and showing clips from his upcoming film, “W,” based on the life of George W. Bush.
The “Young Shakespeareans” panel will feature the actors Lauren Ambrose, Ethan Hawke, Kristen Johnston, Martha Plimpton, and Liev Schreiber, who will discuss performing in Shakespeare’s plays.
The magicians Matthew Holtzclaw, Charles Reynolds, Jamy Ian Swiss, and Johnny Thompson will join Adam Gopnik for a morning of illusions and conversation.
About Town excursions and events throughout the city will include: a bike tour of Governors Island, led by Paul Goldberger, with a discussion about the island’s future with the architects Adriaan Geuze and Ricardo Scofidio and Leslie Koch, the president of the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation; a tour of the Frick Collection, conducted by Peter Schjeldahl, before public hours begin; Calvin Trillin‘s eighth gastronomic walking tour of Chinatown and Little Italy, with stops at some of his favorite eateries; a tour of John Currin‘s studio, followed by brunch and conversation with Calvin Tomkins; and a conversation between Claudia Roden and Jane Kramer about Roden’s latest culinary discoveries, while tastings of her dishes and wine pairings are served.
The cartoonists Matt Groening and Lynda Barry will discuss their careers in cartooning, and Robert Mankoff, the magazine’s cartoon editor, will host a live version of the Cartoon Caption Contest.
Friday Night Fiction events will feature writers discussing the themes in their work: T. Coraghessen Boyle, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Jhumpa Lahiri will address the ever elusive American Dream; Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, and Tobias Wolff will uncover family secrets; Sherman Alexie, Shalom Auslander, and Junot Díaz will talk about home, whether a place or a state of mind; Peter Carey, Hari Kunzru, and Gary Shteyngart will discuss writing about outlaws; Sana Krasilov, Yiyun Li, and Manil Suri will discuss writing about their homelands; and Matthew Klam, Elmore Leonard, and Joyce Carol Oates will talk about the devils that lurk within.
A duet of “Worst Nightmares” panels will explore the dark side of film. Part 1 features scary-movie directors Wes Craven and Hideo Nataka. Part 2 will include a screening of the new animated film “Fear(s) of the Dark” and a conversation with two of its directors, Charles Burns and Lorenzo Mattotti.
Malcolm Gladwell, Salman Rushdie, Art Spiegelman, and Paul Theroux will explore topics as diverse as comics and railways in a series of New Yorker Talks.
A series of master classes will feature Steve Brodner and Barry Blitt on political illustration, Ian Frazier and Mark Singer on humor writing, and James Wood on literary criticism.
Sasha Frere-Jones will host the annual New Yorker Dance Party, with special guest d.j. Ghislain Poirier.
The presenting sponsors of the New Yorker Festival are Acura and Citi. The event is co-sponsored by the Alliance for Climate Protection, Banana Republic, BlackBerry, and Westin(R) Hotels and Resorts. Don Julio, SOYJOY, and Stella Artois are supporting sponsors.
Tickets go on sale Friday, September 12, 2008, at noon E.T., at festival.newyorker.com or by calling 800-440-6974. Tickets will also be sold during Festival weekend at Festival HQ, at Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street, and at event doors. Updated Festival information will be available online at festival.newyorker.com.