Three days until the festival! I can feel the electricity building—can you feel it? What was it that one friend of mine told me? Oh, yes, I think it was “EEEEEEEEEE!”
Now, stay in sight of your teachers and guardians, and always use the buddy system! We’re going to cross all intersections as a group. (Traffic be damned.) Remember that “all participants will have a whistle, compass, and map on their person, and are instructed as to the use of these aids should they become lost.” Well, no, not really, but it would be so much more fun. And speaking of the buddy system, we’re adding a few special correspondents (think Kermit in a press hat) to our ranks for the weekend. Stay tuned on their identities.
A few pithy reminders:
Sign up to the Festival’s special texting service! All weekend long (and even beforehand; we’ve been getting about one a day), you’ll receive occasional updates. Just text “NYFEST” to 644444 and you’ll sign up to receive official updates on the New Yorker Festival via text message. Here’s more on that.
Not only are tickets still available to some events, but a small number of tickets for all events will still be available at the Festival headquarters during the weekend. As a reminder, Festival Headquarters is located at Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street (between Sixth and Seventh Avenues).
Even if you don’t get any tickets, that doesn’t mean you have to sit the whole weekend out. You can always go to the Javits Plaza (Eleventh Avenue between 35th & 36th Sts.) on Sunday at 1 pm to see what’s sure to be a scintillating demonstration of parkour with David Belle.
Many authors who are involved in other events throughout the weekend will be signing books all Saturday and Sunday afternoon. Check the festival site for the full list.
Send us any tidbits you want—sightings, encounters, favorite quotes—from the festival all weekend, at letters@emdashes.com. And if you see one of us, by all means flag us down! Both Emily and I look exactly like the icon above. That’s right, just like that. —Martin Schneider

From Festival Wire—these nights aren’t sold out, so you may be in luck!
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5
FICTION NIGHT: READINGS
Karen Russell and Jonathan Lethem
7 P.M. Anthology Film Archives ($16)
THE NEW YORKER TOWN HALL MEETING: IRAQ REVISITED
With Ali Abdul-Amir Allawi, Jon Lee Anderson, David Kilcullen, and Phebe Marr. George Packer, moderator.
7 P.M. Town Hall ($16)
A NEW YORKER DANCE PARTY
Hosted by Sasha Frere-Jones, with special guest d.j. Diplo.
10 P.M. Hiro Ballroom and Lounge ($20)
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6
WRITERS AND THEIR SUBJECTS
Matthew Bourne and Joan Acocella
1 P.M. Cedar Lake Dance Studios ($25)
PANELS
Casualties of War
With Major L. Tammy Duckworth, Captain (Ret.) Dawn Halfaker, and Colonel John B. Holcomb. Atul Gawande, moderator.
1 P.M. Florence Gould Hall, French Institute Alliance Française ($25)
NEW YORKER TALKS
Sasha Frere-Jones: What IsnÂ’t Hip-Hop?
2 P.M. Ailey Citigroup Theatre, Joan Weill Center for Dance ($25)
EARLY SHIFT
Anna Deavere Smith talks with John Lahr:
A Conversation with Performance
7:30 P.M. Cedar Lake Dance Studios ($35)
Rosanne Cash talks with Hendrik Hertzberg:
A Conversation with Music
7:30 P.M. Highline Ballroom ($35)
Saturday Night Movie: “Encounters at the End of the World”
Followed by a conversation between Werner Herzog and Daniel Zalewski.
7:30 P.M. Ailey Citigroup Theatre, Joan Weill Center for Dance ($25)
SATURDAY NIGHT SPECIAL
David Byrne Presents: How New Yorkers Ride Bikes
David Byrne will host an evening of music, discussion, film, readings, and surprises dedicated to the advancement of bicycling in New York City, including talks and performances by Yves Béhar, the Classic Riders Bicycle Club, Jan Gehl, Buck Henry, Calvin Trillin, Paul Steely White, Jonathan Wood, and the Young@Heart Chorus.
7:30 P.M. Town Hall ($16)
CASUALS
New Yorker Parlor Games with Henry Alford
8 P.M. The New Yorker Cabaret at Festival Headquarters ($25)
LATE SHIFT
Yo La Tengo talk with Ben Greenman:
A Conversation with Music
10 P.M. Brooklyn Lyceum ($35)
John C. Reilly talks with Dana Goodyear
10 P.M. Cedar Lake Dance Studios ($35)
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7
MASTER CLASSES
Poetry: Robert Hass and Katha Pollitt
10 A.M. Acura Stage at Helen Mills Theatre ($35)
FREE EVENT!
Parkour New York: David Belle talks with Alec Wilkinson
David Belle will discuss, and demonstrate, parkour, the sport he created. Parkour is a system of leaps, vaults, rolls, and landings designed to help a person surmount any obstacles in his path.
1 P.M. Event location to be announced. This event is free and open to the public.
WRITERS AND THEIR SUBJECTS
Rachel Brand, Neal Katyal, and Jeffrey Toobin on the Supreme Court
1 P.M. Florence Gould Hall, French Institute Alliance Française ($25)
TICKETS ON SALE NOW
Tickets are available online at ticketmaster.com, at all outlets in the New York metropolitan area, or by calling 1-877-391-0545. Tickets will also be sold during Festival weekend at Festival Headquarters, located at 125 West 18th Street, and at event doors. All Ticketmaster orders are subject to service charges.
Festival Headquarters will be open on Friday, October 5th, from 3 P.M. to 6 P.M., on Saturday, October 6th, from 9:30 A.M. to 6 P.M., and on Sunday, October 7th, from 9:30 A.M. to 5 P.M.
For more information, go to festival.newyorker.com.

This just in! The New Yorker Festival has added an intriguing event for Saturday night. Here’s the info:
Saturday Night Movie: “Encounters at the End of the World”
The New Yorker presents a special preview screening of “Encounters at the End of the World,” a new documentary by Werner Herzog about the astonishing landscape and intrepid citizens of Antarctica. Following the screening, Herzog will talk with Daniel Zalewski.
7:30 p.m. Ailey Citigroup Theatre
Joan Weill Center for Dance ($25)
I once saw Herzog interview Brian De Palma in a similar setting—I think it was the 1992 Viennale film festival. De Palma was promoting Raising Cain at the time. I won’t soon forget Herzog’s response after De Palma spent three minutes rhapsodizing about the use of computers to help him plan out ever-more-meticulous SteadiCam sequences involving Frances Sternhagen. Herzog—famous for subjecting his crews to the agonies of the Amazon—managed to pipe up, “But don’t you lose something in the spontaneity?” De Palma and Herzog—boy, interviewer and interviewee were rarely so mismatched. I’m sure Zalewski will be a better complement, and I can promise you, Herzog is very diverting! Go see this! I’ve heard terrific things about the new documentary, which is about Antarctica. (De Palma has yet to shoot a feature down there, with or without Sternhagen.)
Oh, and there’s one cancellation. The event featuring guitarists Dick Dale, Billy Gibbons, Vernon Reid, and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez is, alas, no more. Too bad!
As always, keep up to date with the unparalleled Emdashes Festival calendar. —Martin Schneider

We are well aware that our readers need no reminder, but for those who may have arrived on this page by accident, the day has finally arrived to order your New Yorker Festival tickets! Starting at twelve noon sharp—okay, just to be safe, 11:56 a.m.—the website is TicketMaster, the telephone number (877) 391-0545. We hope that you get all of your must-see events—and even the could-miss ones.
Keep in mind that this year for the first time, a small number of tickets will be available during Festival weekend. So if you do get shut out today, don’t give up! You might still get in. And if you’re looking for an easy way to navigate the dozens of great events—we count 66 of them—don’t forget the handy Emdashes calendar listings dedicated to the Festival.
Note that there has been a change in the late event at the Highline Ballroom on Friday, October 5. The “Conversations Between Writers” was originally “Norman Mailer and Martin Amis on Monsters.” Ably substituting for Mailer will be Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fascinating Somali author and filmmaker—she should bring a great deal of insight to the topic.
An event has serendipitously been added for Saturday involving a novelist who has written a book with that very title: David Remnick interviews Ian McEwan, author of Saturday and On Chesil Beach, on the morning of October 6 at the Directors Guild of America. Proving that every silver lining has a cloud, the Bill Nighy event on the same day has been canceled. —Martin Schneider

Here at Emdashes, we’ve gone to the trouble of entering every single New Yorker Festival event into our flourishing Emdashes event calendar, which several of you have already told us is becoming indispensable. We’re just getting into the groove of it ourselves, but if you’re a Google kind of person, you should easily be able to search all of our events on Google’s calendar search page. If you’re already using it to track your own events, you should be able to add the Emdashes events seamlessly.
Every New Yorker Festival event is tagged “NYFEST,” so if you search for that term on Google’s public calendars, all of the events should come up. You can also narrow the search by venue or by event type or by person.
It’s all part of providing the most complete Festival coverage we possibly can—given our part-time staff of three, with one (hi John!) in Vancouver—and we hope you’ll find it useful.
(Note that when we test the search, sometimes our events come up and sometimes they don’t—Google seems to be working out some early kinks. So be patient and keep trying if the results seem nonexistent. Trust us, they’re there.) —Martin Schneider

Sara Nelson over at Publishers Weekly has some juicy Festival information in her essential industry column:

So, what to make of the news that the New Yorker Festival, coming in October, has become so popular with “regular folk” that its organizers have decided not to make all the tickets available to readers of the magazine in advance; for the first time, the festival will hold back 10 percent of the seats to all events so that visitors can buy them on the fly on October 5, the day the festival begins. And this for a program that is literary by anybody’s lights: Norman Mailer, Martin Amis, Miranda July, and Orhan Pamuk are among the participants. So is Steve Martin, whose memoir, Born Standing Up, will appear later in the fall. And, yes, in a nod to so-called popular culture, there will also be an appearance by David Byrne; a panel on graphic superheroes (featuring fan Jonathan Lethem); and a screening of The Kite Runner, based on the Riverhead blockbuster. [Boldface and link mine, obviously.]

Ten percent! So even if that event you simply have to see is all sold out, you may still be able to get in if you are willing to get there early and wait. But please, no trampling! OK, if you insist on trampling, we hear the place to do it will be the Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues). Zap that data into your iPhone—apparently, it’s good with maps.

Whee, the fall events are finally heating up! We at Emdashes love the cultural thrills that only September and October can offer. In fact, we love them so much that we’ve been working overtime to populate our brand-new Google Calendar for events we think Emdashes readers would like to know about. It is seriously chock-full of fantastic readings. It’s our hope that you will rely on it to track Calvin Trillin’s movements more assiduously, but not in a stalkery way, of course. We would not advocate that.

If you’re hosting an event here in New York or elsewhere, or if your local bookstore or library is sponsoring a reading by a New Yorker contributor or other relevant writer in the near future, by all means email us! To join the calendar, just click below. —Martin Schneider

Thanks to Brian for the tip! The newest news from Brooklyn Vegan (could anyone in New York in 1925, or 1950, or 1975, even comprehend that something so named would become an essential read for everyone who cares about contemporary music?), as well as from ArtistDirect. The names to remember, besides the ones above: Yo La Tengo, Sasha Frere-Jones (who’s having another dance party), Peter Sellars, Alex Ross, John Seabrook, David Byrne, Hendrik Hertzberg, Ben Greenman, Dick Dale, Billy Gibbons, Vernon Reid, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Nick Paumgarten.
Check the Vegan post for the dates, and get your clicking fingers nimble for when tickets go on sale Sept. 15; channel yourself at 15 trying to be the 89th caller to the local radio station, and be that quick and persistent.
Also, unrelated: I love this. A detailed, critical look back at Oscar-winning films from —just read it.

From Rush & Molloy today:

Tickets to the 8th Annual New Yorker Festival – on sale Sept. 15 – should disappear in a flash. Look for head-butting between Martin Amis and Norman Mailer on the subject of “Monsters,”as well as conversations between A.M. Homes and Miranda July on “Deviants” and Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pahmuk on “Homeland.” French acrobat David Belle will show you how to do Parkour just like James Bond, and David Byrne will demonstrate “How New Yorkers Ride Bikes.” Check out http://festival.newyorker.com.

Keep checking back here for Festival news and, come October, reports!
Update: More on the David Byrne event from Masika Diary:

New Yorker Festival thanks to the news that David Byrne is organizing and hosting an evening of music and stories dedicated to atlernative transportation methods on October 6th at Town Hall. Byrne joins other popular New York City personalities as Brian Lehrer and Blonde Redhead’s Amedeo Pace as bicycle enthusiasts.

On his blog, he writes:

Had a very exciting meeting on Wednesday re: the Bike Forum project. The New Yorker will produce this event as part of their fall festival. It will be a forum, with entertainment, at Town Hall on Saturday October 6 on the subject of bikes in NYC. I’ve been trying to get this to happen for a while and now it’s picking up steam and momentum. As someone who has biked here as a means of transportation for many many years I sense a growing acceptance of the human-powered machine with two wheels. Some fears and hurdles to be dealt with for sure — but I sense a tipping point looming.

In related news, Gothamist reports that David Byrne’s bike was stolen the other day. Some douchebag took it while he was checking out a flick at the IFC Center.

The New Yorker Festival takes place on October 5th, 6th and 7th.

At Galleycat, Ron Hogan (a true Emdashes patron from way back) writes:

We’re getting the first drabs and drips of information about October’s upcoming New Yorker festival, the magazine’s three-day weekend of cultural symposia, concerts, and other events. Here’s what we can tell you about the literary side of things: In addition to the usual Friday night readings, there’s also going to be a set of events that feature “authors in conversation.” Among the couplings: Miranda July and AM Homes will discuss deviants, Sir Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pamuk trade insights on homeland, and Martin Amis and Norman Mailer will talk about “monsters,” although I wouldn’t be surprised if that turns into a discussion of totalitarian leaders like Stalin and Hitler, about whom they’ve each respectively written.