Nathan Larson's THE DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM tour

Nathan Larson begins his tour for The Dewey Decimal System

this week! See below for all confirmed appearances

and check here for updates!

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Thurs., March 31, 7:00pm

Brooklyn Public Library

Dweck Center

Brooklyn Public Library

1 Grand Army Plaza

BROOKLYN, NY

*Akashic's fiction-writers Lonely Christopher, Nathan Larson, David Unger, and Kevin Holohan read poetry for the Brooklyn Independent series.

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Tues., April 5, 6:30pm

Mysterious Bookshop

58 Warren St.

NEW YORK, NY

*Book launch party/reception and short reading for Nathan Larson and Persia Walker

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Mon., April 18, 6:30pm

The Odyssey Bookshop

The Village Commons

9 College St

SOUTH HADLEY, MA

* Featuring Nina Revoyr, Nathan Larson, and Kevin Holohan

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Tues., April 19, 7pm

St. Marks Bookshop

31 3rd Ave.

NEW YORK

*Akashic All-Stars reading, featuring Kevin Holohan, Nathan Larson, Nina Revoyr, David Unger, and Persia Walker

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Wed., April 20, 6:30pm

Enoch Pratt Free Library

Central Branch, Poe Room

400 Cathedral St.

BALTIMORE, MD

*Featuring Nina Revoyr, Nathan Larson, and Kevin Holohan

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Thurs., April 21, 7:00pm

Gallery5

200 West Marshall St.

RICHMOND, VA

*Featuring Nina Revoyr, Nathan Larson, Kevin Holohan, David L. Robbins of Richmond Noir

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Sat., April 23, 1:00pm

Politics and Prose

5015 Connecticut Ave. NW

WASHINGTON DC

*Featuring Kevin Holohan, Nathan Larson, Nina Revoyr, and Persia Walker

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Wed., April 27, 7:00pm

Book Soup

8818 Sunset Blvd.

WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA

*Featuring Nathan Larson, Nina Revoyr, and Joseph Mattson (author of Empty the Sun: A Novel with Soundtrack by Six Organs of Admittance)

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Thurs., April 28, 7:00pm

Stories Books & Cafe

1716 W. Sunset Blvd.

LOS ANGELES, CA

*Featuring Nathan Larson, Nina Revoyr, and Joseph Mattson (author ofEmpty the Sun: A Novel with Soundtrack by Six Organs of Admittance)

*Presented by Stories Bookstore, Rare Bird Lit, and Akashic Books

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Sat., April 30, time TBA

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

University of Southern California

LOS ANGELES, CA

*Exact program details TBA

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Wed., May 4, 7:00pm

City Lights

261 Columbus Ave

SAN FRANCISCO, CA

*Featuring Nathan Larson and Nina Revoyr

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Thurs., May 5, 7:00pm

Pegasus Books Downtown

2349 Shattuck Ave.

BERKELEY, CA

*Featuring Nathan Larson and Nina Revoyr

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Thurs., May 12, time TBA

Happy Ending Lounge

302 Broome St.

NEW YORK, NY

*Part of the Animal Farm Reading Series

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Thurs., May 19, 7:00pm

WORD Bookstore

126 Franklin St.

BROOKLYN, NY

*Vol. 1 Brooklyn presents Civic Pride, Washington DC: featuring Nathan Larson, Sara Marcus, Zach Barocas, and Parul Sehgal

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Sun., June 5, 3:00pm

Sunday at Sunny's Reading Series

253 Conover St.

BROOKLYN, NY

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Tues., June 7, 8:00pm

Veronica People's Club

105 Franklin St.

BROOKLYN, NY

* Speak Easy: Conversations with Artists and Entrepreneurs

Nina Revoyr's WINGSHOOTERS tour

Nina Revoyr's national tour for Wingshooters begins
next week! Find her in the following states:

Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri,

Kansas, Florida, Massachusetts, New York,

Maryland, Virginia, DC, Connecticut, California

and find updated event information here.

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Wed., March 30, 7:30pm
Women & Children First
5233 N. Clark St.
CHICAGO, IL

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Thurs., March 31, 7:00pm
Books & Company
1039 Summit Ave.
OCONOMOWOC, WI

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Fri., April 1, 7:00pm
Next Chapter Bookstore
10976 N. Port Washington Rd.
MEQUON, WI

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Mon., April 4, 7:00pm
Micawber's Books
2238 Carter Ave.
ST. PAUL, MN

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Tues., April 5, 4:30pm
University of Dubuque
Couchman Reading Room, Myers Library
2000 University Avenue
DUBUQUE, IA

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Tues., April 5, 7:30pm
River Lights Bookstore
1098 Main St.
DUBUQUE, IA

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Wed., April 6, 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Bookstore
15 S. Dubuque St.
IOWA CITY, IA

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Thurs., April 7, 7:00pm
Subterranean Books
6275 Delmar
ST LOUIS, MO

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Sat., April 9, 3:30pm
Watermark Books & Cafe
4701 E. Douglas
WICHITA, KS

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Sat., April 16, 1:30pm
University of Central Florida Book Festival
Morgridge International Reading Center
UCF Arena, Suite A.
ORLANDO, FL
* Nina will participate on a panel with Dolen Perkins-Valdez entitled Conflicting Loyalties: Cross-racial Relationships, moderated by Dr. Cecilia Rodriguez Milanes. More information here.

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Mon., April 18, 6:30pm
The Odyssey Bookshop
The Village Commons
9 College St
SOUTH HADLEY, MA
* Featuring Nina Revoyr, Nathan Larson, and Kevin Holohan

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Tues., April 19, 7pm
St. Marks Bookshop
31 3rd Ave.
NEW YORK, NY
* Akashic All-Stars reading, featuring Kevin Holohan, Nathan Larson, Nina Revoyr, David Unger, and Persia Walker

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Wed., April 20, 6:30pm
Enoch Pratt Free Library
Central Branch, Poe Room
400 Cathedral St.
BALTIMORE, MD
* Featuring Nina Revoyr, Nathan Larson, and Kevin Holohan

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Thurs., April 21, time TBA
Gallery5
200 West Marshall St.
RICHMOND, VA
* Featuring Nina Revoyr, Nathan Larson, and Kevin Holohan

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Sat., April 23, 1:00pm
Politics and Prose
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
WASHINGTON DC
* Featuring Kevin Holohan, Nathan Larson, Nina Revoyr, and Persia Walker

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Sun., April 24, 7:00pm
Bluestockings Bookstore
172 Allen St.
NEW YORK, NY

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Mon., April 25, 7:30pm
New Canaan Library
151 Main St.
NEW CANAAN, CT
* Presented by Elm Street Books and New Canaan Library

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Wed., April 27, 7:00pm
Book Soup
8818 Sunset Blvd.
WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA
* Featuring Nathan Larson, Nina Revoyr, and Joseph Mattson (author of Empty the Sun: A Novel with Soundtrack by Six Organs of Admittance)

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Thurs., April 28, 10am - 3pm
Valley Beth Shalom Temple
15739 Ventura Blvd.
ENCINO, CA
* Brandeis of San Fernando Valley luncheon

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Thurs., April 28, 7:00pm
Stories Books & Cafe
1716 W. Sunset Blvd.
LOS ANGELES, CA
* Featuring Nathan Larson, Nina Revoyr, and Joseph Mattson (author of Empty the Sun: A Novel with Soundtrack by Six Organs of Admittance)
* Presented by Stories Bookstore, Rare Bird Lit, and Akashic Books

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Sat., April 30, time TBA
Los Angeles Times Festival of Books
University of Southern California
LOS ANGELES, CA
* Exact program details TBA

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Tues., May 3, 7:00pm
M is for Mystery
86 East Third Ave.
SAN MATEO, CA

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Wed., May 4, 7:00pm
City Lights
261 Columbus Ave
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
* Featuring Nathan Larson and Nina Revoyr

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Thurs., May 5, 7:00pm
Pegasus Books Downtown
2349 Shattuck Ave.
BERKELEY, CA
* Featuring Nathan Larson and Nina Revoyr

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Sat., May 14, 9:00am - 3:30pm
Women's Literary Festival of Santa Barbara
Fess Parker's DoubleTree Resort
633 East Cabrillo Blvd.
SANTA BARBARA, CA
* Exact program details TBA

UPCOMING NYC EVENTS

Akashic Books has four amazing upcoming events in NYC!

See below for details, and click here for more information.

Kevin Holohan: Raining on Your Parade?

An op-ed from Kevin Holohan, author of The Brothers' Lot

Whenever St. Patrick’s Day rolls around, I am asked how I plan to celebrate. This is a difficult question for me because, even though I was born and raised in Ireland, I am unsure what exactly is being celebrated. A Welshman who Christianized Ireland? Guinness? Irishness? And if so, whose Irishness?

Growing up in Dublin I always had a strange sense of never being quite Irish enough. Dublin and its surrounding area were disparagingly known as “The Pale,” synonymous with a suspicious level of Anglicization. Dublin was policed and priested in large part with people from “the country,” as everything outside Dublin was known. This amounted to a garrison attitude both from the police and the church toward those strange tainted city dwellers. I remember being stopped walking home after missing the last bus by one of those six-foot-plus cops. “Hev ooo enny ihdintificaytion? Where’re ye going? Where’re ye comin from? Where d’ye live?” they would ask. It often seemed that a prerequisite for being stationed in Dublin was a deep suspicion and dislike of the place and its people.

In the 1920s and ’30s, after the Irish Republic gained independence from Britain, the politicians preempted post-revolutionary disappointment about the lack of any real redistribution of wealth or agrarian reform with a reconstructed Irishness, peopled with noble Celts speaking fluent Gaelic, exemplars of simple, almost unworldly rural values that would have been too poeticized and unfamiliar even to those in the countryside. These myths proved astonishingly long lasting.

I recall standing on Dublin’s O’Connell Street as a boy, watching the Patrick’s Day parade in the freezing drizzle. On the back of a flatbed coal delivery truck, a group of women, kitted out like extras from The Playboy of the Western World, gathered about a false hearth, presumably regaling one another with yarns of the “rare aul times.” Even in the 1970s this constructed notion of Irishness was anachronistic and mostly wishful, in marked contrast to how most people in the country actually lived.

In time, these rather homemade floats were replaced with marching bands modeled on American high school bands, and later with a Riverdancified sexiness featuring neo-medieval frolics, fireworks, and massive papier mâché heads.

Yet Ireland was not so much a nation living a lie –- it was a nation trying to live up to some unattainable, unachievable dream of itself. At least for a while in the ‘90s there seemed to be oodles of cash.

But behind that newly confident construct, there was still a disconnect between the story we told ourselves about our identity and the way we really lived. In that nowhere zone between myth and reality was the moral vacuum where clerics scrambled to cover up decades of child abuse while politicians, captains of industry, and pillars of society created a speculative bubble and played casino with the economy. The former had relied since independence on some twisted complicity and symbiosis with the ruling apparatus; the latter banked on knowing that when they went bust, the taxpayers could always be bullied and frightened into paying.

Meanwhile, the state left the running of hospitals, schools and reformatories to the church. The corrosive effects of this untold power, exercised in almost total secrecy, on all concerned –- perpetrators, victims and enablers –- can still only be guessed at. Certainly each report of abuse that comes out only adds to the catalog of horrors from the Celtic gulag of state-approved, church-run orphanages reformatories, industrial schools, and Magdalene Laundries.

Now, having lived in New York for fifteen years, somewhat distanced and maybe a bit deracinated, I have some clue as to why I felt puzzled by the idea of Irishness I grew up with. It was an unachievable, aspirational myth designed to keep the eyes of Ireland off the ball until eventually, tragically, it hit us all square in the face –- twice, in fact, in the form of the church sex-abuse scandals and the implosion of the Celtic Tiger bubble.

The Irish are still known for their storytelling, but perhaps the most dangerous story of all is the one we’ve been telling ourselves for so many years. For the first time since independence, in the light of these church scandals and the financial implosion, we have a chance to tell a new, honest story of ourselves that will encompass the complex modern world. Maybe we can take off the green-tinted glasses and really talk about what we see without being accused of raining on anyone's parade.

Sneak Peek: GO FISH by Mr. Fish

Akashic Books is proud to present

a selection of political cartoons by Mr. Fish,

from his forthcoming book, GO FISH.

This debut volume of political cartoons from the revered Mr. Fish spans

politics, popular culture, the economic crisis, the Obama presidency, and much more,

where nobody--right, left, nor middle--is safe from his razor-edged satire.

The volume also includes original essays from Mr. Fish.

(please click to enlarge the images)

Mr. Fish has been a freelance writer and cartoonist for eighteen years, publishing under both his real name (Dwayne Booth) and the penname of Mr. Fish with many of the nation's most reputable and prestigious magazines, journals, and newspapers. In addition to his weekly cartoon forHarper's and daily contributions to Truthdig, he has also contributed to theLos Angeles Times, the Village Voice, the LA Weekly, the Atlantic, theHuffington Post, Vanity Fair, Mother Jones, the Advocate, Z Magazine, theUtne Reader, Slate.com, MSNBC.com, and others. He has also worked for National Public Radio. In May 2008 he was presented with a first place award by the Los Angeles Press Club for editorial cartooning. In May 2010 he was awarded the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Editorial Cartooning from the Society of Professional Journalists. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and twin daughters.

Media Beat: Johnny Temple

Akashic Books publisher Johnny Temple

joined GalleyCat editor Jason Boog

for MediaBistro's Media Beat interview show --

watch the three-part interview below!

"We in the publishing business need to complain less about how no one reads

and accept the fact that culture changes. This is a good thing -- popular culture evolves."

"All of us book publishers these days are inundated with submissions --

so many people are writing and there is a great diversity of voices

being published. But the flip-side of that is that it is crowded."

"The culture is going to keep on moving. We have to remain relevant."