FOUND IN TRANSLATION

The PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature collaborates with McSweeney’s tonight to break it down Tower of Babel-style—but nothing is getting lost in translation. Converging at Joe’s Pub this evening, McSweeney’s contributors, including Michal Ajvaz, José Luís Peixoto, Francesco Pacifico, and others, will read excerpts from their works that have been translated into other languages—in those languages. Sounds like a good reason to brush up on your high school French and Spanish. (This global literature festival kicked off Monday and runs through May 5.)

An Evening with McSweeney’s

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CHEERS NEW YORK

Bars and cocktail culture have become an inextricable part of New York City life, from after-work happy hours to neighborhood dives to late-night hotspots. They’re where friends meet, where new friendships are forged, and where the community comes together. Celebrating their place in the city, writer Rosie Schaap who pens the “Drink” column for The New York Times Magazine, reads from her memoir, “Drinking With Men,” tonight at South in Park Slope, the very watering hole at which she tends bar and most likely found glassfuls of inspiration.

Drinking with Men: A Memoir by Rosie Schaap

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GO TO THE LIBRARY

Even if you haven’t read John Irving, there’s a good chance you’ve seen one of his movies. His blockbuster page-turners read like films, which is probably why five of his 13 published novels have been adapted for the big screen—one even picked up an Oscar. Since his debut with “Setting Free the Bears,” Irving has become a titan of new American lit, receiving countless awards and literary honors. Now he’s in town to kick off the spring 2013 season of LIVE at the NYPL, and making his only New York appearance for the paperback release of “In One Person,” which fittingly features a librarian.

John Irving at the New York Public Library

BOOK IT

The publishing company behind rock-star writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz is throwing a holiday party tonight at the Brooklyn Brewery—and you’re invited. Riverhead Books is teaming up with lit mag Granta “for a bookish holiday party to end all bookish holiday parties,”says Flavorpill.com. It’s $15 at the door and all proceeds from the event benefit PEN. Throw on a party dress and some specs to sample homemade holiday cookies from Brooklyn-based novelist Emma Straub (“Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures”), get down to ’80s hits, and update your winter reading list.

Riverhead Books and Grantas Holiday Benefit

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HURRY UP, WE’RE DREAMING

Back in the ’80s, architectural historian Anthony W. Robins was commissioned to write a book about the World Trade Center as part of the Classics of American Architecture series. A landmarks expert, Robins’ book on the Twin Towers was first published in 1987, and now 25 years later, he’s releasing a new edition chronicling the WTC’s evolution, reports the NYT’s City Room blog. His inspiration? “[To remind people] of a more innocent time, when the center stood as a symbol, certainly, of hubris, wealth and power, but also of the conviction that in New York City, Americans could do anything to which they set their minds.”Call it an Empire State of Mind, but it still rings true today.

New Glimpses of the Twin Towers’ Past

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WONDROUS LIFE

Head out to Brooklyn tonight for MacArthur Grant-winning writer Junot Diaz’s discussion of his latest book “This Is How You Lose Her.”Once again honing in on the subject of love, a topic that made “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”a page-turner, Diaz’s latest looks at “the infinite longing and inevitable weakness of the human heart.”It’s a reflection on relationships “[taking] place in a floating world between the Dominican Republic and the Eastern Seaboard, between Spanish and English,”explains the New York Times. His first book in five years, and only his third, the Times put it quite succinctly, “It is, like the other two, excellent.”

November 15 at 6:30pm, Brooklyn NY

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