Jonathan Ames

Brooke Geahan, the 20-something founder of the Accompanied Literary Society, has made a career of throwing scruffy readers and writers together with scenesters and socialites, and using the dim light of glamorous venues to make them look significantly more attractive than they might elsewhere. She was up to her old tricks on Wednesday, Sept. 25, when the Accompanied Literary Society threw a party in conjunction with Diesel, in the penthouse of a new luxury condominium in Tribeca called One York, at the intersection of Canal and Sixth Avenue.

The gathering was in honor of "Flash Fiction," a public art project of sorts in which 10 short stories—commissioned from authors such as Jonathan Ames, Colum McCann, Sloane Crosley, Jonathan Lethem, and Jay McInerney—were screened on the side of the building.  read more »

Now that HBO has hired Tina Brown and Frank Rich for consulting gigs, Felix Gillette wonders, "So what’s next?" He also notes, "the truly free-range journalist-consultant—one with a broad editorial mandate to roam here and there gnawing lustfully on some projects while trampling others willy-nilly—remains a rare and exotic beast."

Speaking of television, Doree Shafrir meets Bravo's Flipping Out host Jeff Lewis, "a deeply neurotic man who treats his staff like a dysfunctional family and has managed to turn his obsessive-compulsive disorder to his advantage."

John Koblin looks at this past week's New York Times Magazine and writes, "Sex sells, of course—but this was not Maxim. And women writers in Manhattan could be forgiven for a slightly sickly feeling as they regarded the images. This again?" Plus: Slicing the SATC Pie.  read more »

“I’m interrogating a minor, and then I’ll be with you,” writer and amateur pugilist Jonathan Ames told the Transom at a benefit for the literary magazine Open City on Thursday, May 22.  read more »

Storied East Village literary haunt KGB Bar is shopping a new paperback fiction anthology to publishers this week, called The Greatest Stories Ever Read, according to literary agent Peter Steinberg, who is representing the book to publishers. The anthology, billed as "a greatest hits collection" of writing that has been read at KGB over the course of its 15-year history, will feature short works by Jonathan Lethem, George Saunders, Jonathan Ames, Norman Rush, Sam Lipsyte, and Daniel Handler. Francine Prose and Chuck Palahniuk have also agreed to contribute to the book once a contract has been signed.

The stories will be accompanied by brief testimonials from the authors about their experience reading at KGB, according to Mr. Steinberg.  read more »