The Center for Fiction

The Center for Fiction A home for writers and readers for over 200 years. We support and celebrate fiction through events, writing workshops, reading groups, awards, and more.

Visit our bookstore, café and bar, auditorium, and membership spaces in Downtown Brooklyn.

Unusual friendships; toxic friendships; dangerous friendships that lead to murder. A family living in the aftermath of t...
05/30/2026

Unusual friendships; toxic friendships; dangerous friendships that lead to murder. A family living in the aftermath of the Irish Famine, and an investigation of a famous American expat in Paris.

Melanie Fleishman’s recommendations this week feature a cast of characters as unique as they are memorable, their dynamics brought to life by astoundingly talented authors. Read her reviews in this week's Bookstore newsletter: https://tinyurl.com/4vt5mxs2.

🌈 Get ready for the ultimate literary Pride celebration—our fifth annual All Pride, No Prejudice, hosted this year by w...
05/29/2026

🌈 Get ready for the ultimate literary Pride celebration—our fifth annual All Pride, No Prejudice, hosted this year by writers and SNL alumni Auguste White and Celeste Yim! Join us as we come together in joy and affirmation to hear from some of today’s most creative voices in q***r literature. https://tinyurl.com/mpc36am4 🪩

This year’s featured authors are:
📖 Natalie Adler (Waiting on a Friend)
📖 Samantha Allen (Puck)
📖 Nicholas Boggs (Baldwin: A Love Story)
📖 Julián Delgado Lopera (Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You)
📖 John Glynn (The Lost Book of Lancelot)
📖 Jessica Handler (The World To See)
📖 Clarence A. Haynes (The Broken Hearts Agency)
📖 Roya Marsh (savings time)
📖 Rasheed Newson (There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood)
📖 Keith Ridgway (Dooneen)
📖 Paul Rudnick (The Tuxedo Society)

Whether you’re a lifelong reader looking to discover new books, a longtime fan of the featured authors, or someone in search of q***r joy, this is the can’t-miss literary party of the season!

Presented with support from Brooklyn Org.

It was hard to miss the crowd’s deep appreciation for Jeff Boyd at the launch of his new novel, HARD TIMES (Flatiron Boo...
05/27/2026

It was hard to miss the crowd’s deep appreciation for Jeff Boyd at the launch of his new novel, HARD TIMES (Flatiron Books). We can’t thank Xochitl Gonzalez enough for asking such great questions about the array of character perspectives, nuanced authority dynamics, class tensions, and sense of place in Boyd’s writing. Swipe through for a glimpse of the evening—and purchase your copy at CFF's bookstore! https://tinyurl.com/yevzyztk 📸

Indigenous people have shared and recorded their stories and histories for centuries—long before the first Europeans set...
05/26/2026

Indigenous people have shared and recorded their stories and histories for centuries—long before the first Europeans set foot on Turtle Island.

📚 Join us for an exploration of these narratives in a conversation moderated by scholar Joseph M. Pierce (Cherokee Nation), featuring novelists Eliana Ramage (Cherokee Nation) and Greg Sarris (Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria), along with historian Linford D. Fisher. The panel will bring together:

𖧹 Fisher's rich account of the long history of Indigenous enslavement and land dispossession

𖧹 Ramage's and Sarris's fictional depictions of an aspiring Cherokee astronaut, and a Depression-era shape-shifter, respectively, and

𖧹 Pierce's theorization of future worlds and imaginaries that illuminate Indigenous thought and practice

Get your tickets https://tinyurl.com/2kvb6vw8!

If you’re a member of The Center or a newsletter subscriber, you’ve already gotten a first look at our summer reading gr...
05/24/2026

If you’re a member of The Center or a newsletter subscriber, you’ve already gotten a first look at our summer reading group season. It’s especially rich with In Shorts—our one-night-only discussions of essential short works—like our winter session on Joan Didion’s The White Album led by Meredith Mann, the Interim Charles J. Liebman Curator of Manuscripts at New York Public Library Research.

After the group met, Mann invited participants to explore the archives, which have everything from dinner party menus, interview transcriptions, and annotated screenplays, to journals, letters to and from friends and colleagues, photographs, and more, spanning Didion’s tremendous career.

Members of the public with a library card can also explore the collection by making an appointment at [email protected]. Until then, swipe for a sneak peek!

📚 The theme of Melanie Fleishman's Bookstore column this week: Strangers in Strange Lands.A noted humorist is continuall...
05/23/2026

📚 The theme of Melanie Fleishman's Bookstore column this week: Strangers in Strange Lands.

A noted humorist is continually awed by his journeys; a Chinese American novelist explores how previous generations of his family viewed the world; a writer uses a (very) late pregnancy to explore female autonomy in our current world; and a Bulgarian author is transplanted to New York. You will also find a selection of excellent essays from an award-winning writer.

Read Melanie's reviews in full here https://tinyurl.com/4ecszhmu!

Back in March, we held a reunion for our Emerging Writer Fellows, welcoming alums from cohorts of the past and present. ...
05/21/2026

Back in March, we held a reunion for our Emerging Writer Fellows, welcoming alums from cohorts of the past and present. It was a great opportunity to catch up with each other (or meet for the first time), trade stories and give advice, and talk about their writing lives post-Fellowship.

We hope the good energy follows our 2026 cohort into their first reading tonight!

📍Members Lounge at The Center for Fiction

Join us for an evening with Amitav Ghosh, author of the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted Sea of Poppies, in conversation wit...
05/20/2026

Join us for an evening with Amitav Ghosh, author of the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted Sea of Poppies, in conversation with Ravi Agrawal, editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine, about Ghosh’s new novel, GHOST-EYE (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

Urgent and expansive, GHOST-EYE weaves together two plotlines to tell a story about reincarnation, family, and our fragile planet. Varsha Gupta, a young girl living in 1960s Calcutta, is struck by memories of a past life. Half a century later, her psychologist’s nephew Dinu, becomes immersed in Varsha’s tale through his involvement with a group of environmental activists—and buried memories of his own begin to resurface.

Don’t miss this expansive discussion of memory, our planet, and the connections that pursue us across time and place. Get your tickets here https://tinyurl.com/7jfynzcs!

Wondering what it takes to write an immersive—and transgressive—speculative tale as a debut author? Join us for a conver...
05/18/2026

Wondering what it takes to write an immersive—and transgressive—speculative tale as a debut author? Join us for a conversation with sci-fi and fantasy novelists Joseph Eckert, Thomas Elrod, and Isabel J. Kim. https://tinyurl.com/4tn585ss

Throughout their discussion, the panelists will consider sci-fi and fantasy’s place in the literary world, dive into the genres’ abilities to reinterpret familiar topics, and share their unique creative processes. Yume Kitasei, author of the post-apocalyptic novel Saltcrop, will moderate.

Address

15 Lafayette Avenue
New York, NY
11217

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 8pm
Tuesday 9am - 8pm
Wednesday 9am - 8pm
Thursday 9am - 8pm
Friday 9am - 8pm
Saturday 9am - 8pm
Sunday 9am - 8pm

Telephone

+12127556710

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