It’s getting heavy around here; we’re trying to keep you organized.

 

Catherine Robbe-Grillet’s home in Normandy. Photo by Fredrik Wenzel. Copyright Lina Mannheimer, 2011.

 

MONDAY

We all know zombies are a popular subject these days, in films, books, and the public imagination. Learn about the history of these nonpeople and the place they have held in various cultures before infecting ours, through a new class at the Brooklyn Institute entitled ‘Zombi’ and the Politics of Representation, starting today.

TUESDAY

At the Center for Fiction, authors Susan Richards Shreve and Elizabeth Strout will read from their respective novels, You Are the Love of My Life and Olive Kitteridge.

WEDNESDAY

The Nuyorican Poets Cafe is hosting another evening of beatboxing slam reinterpretation of great literature with the Hip Hop Book Club, curated and hosted by Kid Lucky and Susan Hwang. This week, featured hip hop artists Spiritchild, Beatsmyth, and Luquantum Leap, among others, will engage with Grimm’s Fairytales . . . and see what comes up.

THURSDAY

BAM launches a new literary series in conjunction with Greenlight Bookstore, Unbound. Join Pierre Huyghe and Liam Gillick in a discussion On Truth (and Lies) in Art, hosted by Simon Critchley, about art, truth, and capitalism.

Head to the Center for Fiction once again for a readings by Sheila Kohler, from her book The Bay of Foxes and Maaza Mengiste, from hers, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze.

The Spectacle Theatre presents a special program featuring Estonian animation artist Priit Pärn, who will be present at the screenings of his films on the big silver—after having been absent from New York since the 1980s. We’re serious, you should go.

The Brooklyn Museum hosts a reception and media preview in honor of three ravishing exhibitions going on there this fall. Brooklyn-based artist and BOMB fave Mickalene Thomas has her first solo museum exhibition, Origin of the Universe, while Lucy R. Lippard shows in Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art. And finally, the premier American retrospective of French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel, My Way.

New Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey, will read from her new book of poetry, Thrall, at Cave Canem.

FRIDAY

An exhibition opens at the Pace Gallery, featuring new works by artist Lucas Samaras, entitled XYZ.

The 8th annual New York City Short Film Festival opens today with a truly great lineup.

Head to 92Y Tribeca for the 5th annual Banned Book Party, hosted by Mike Edison. The evening will feature readings from banned books as well as musical performances by Edison himself, Bob Bert, Dee Pop, and Mickey Finn.

The Guggenheim presents the last of a series of screenings in conjunction with the Rineke Dijkstra exhibition, featuring the shorts Blind Kind, Blanche-Neige Lucie, and Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore.