NEW YORK, NY—July 15—Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world's largest bookseller, today announced the next two editions of its hit series "Upstairs at the Square"—recommended by
The New Yorker,
The Wall Street Journal,
New York,
The Village Voice,
Flavorpill,
Daily Candy and more—at the Union Square Barnes & Noble in Manhattan (33 East 17th Street). Featured guests join host Katherine Lanpher onstage for an unforgettable evening. Admission is free, and seating is first-come, first-served. No tickets or reservations are required.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 10th, 7pm: Rosanne Cash (
www.rosannecash.com) is one of America's pre-eminent singers and songwriters. Over the past thirty years she has recorded twelve albums, and has had 11 #1 singles. Her most recent album,
The List, a new collection of classic country songs, was released in the fall of 2009. The album features the single "Sea Of Heartbreak," a duet with Bruce Springsteen and vocal contributions by Elvis Costello, Jeff Tweedy (Wilco) and Rufus Wainwright. "Sea of Heartbreak" was nominated for a Grammy last year. The album will be eligible for Grammy consideration this year. On August 10th, Viking will publish Rosanne's much anticipated memoir,
Composed, in which Cash writes compellingly about her upbringing in Southern California as the child of country legend Johnny Cash, and of her relationships with her mother and her famous stepmother, June Carter Cash. In her account of her development as an artist she shares memories of recording her own first album on a German label; working her way to success; her marriage to Rodney Crowell, a union that made them Nashville's premier couple; her relationship with the country music establishment; taking a new direction in her music and leaving Nashville to move to New York; motherhood; dealing with the deaths of her parents, in part through music; the process of songwriting; and the fulfillment she has found with her current husband and musical collaborator, John Leventhal. Cash has written a compelling memoir that, in the tradition of M. F. K. Fisher's
The Gastronomical Me and Frank Conroy's
Stop-Time, is a series of linked pieces that combine to form a luminous whole.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 31st, 7pm: Kristin Hersh (
www.kristinhersh.com) is a songwriter and guitarist. She founded and plays in the band Throwing Muses, additionally performing with her other band 50FOOTWAVE and as a solo artist. In 1985, Hersh was just beginning to find her place in the world. After beginning her music career at the age of fourteen, the precocious child of unconventional hippies was enrolled in college while her band, Throwing Muses, was getting off the ground, amid buzzing rumors of a major label deal. Then, everything changed. Her emotional troubles were diagnosed as bipolar disorder, and - just after the band was signed - Hersh was processing news of a very different sort: she was pregnant. Suddenly, she found herself wondering whether antidepressants could be mixed with prenatal vitamins, how to balance a guitar on her swollen stomach, and whether a rock band could tour with an infant.
Written in beautifully evocative prose, and filled with unforgettable characters, Rat Girl (Penguin, August 31) is the story of one pivotal year in Hersh's extraordinary life, a year that taught her strength and forced her to grow up much faster than she'd planned.
Katherine Lanpher (
www.katherinelanpher.com) is an award-winning print and broadcast journalist, host of TIME Financial Toolkit on Time.com, contributing editor to More magazine, and substitute host for "The Takeaway," a collaboration of WNYC, PRI, the BBC and The New York Times. Springboard Press published her essay collection, Leap Days.
"Upstairs at the Square," which celebrated four years this June, has featured authors and musicians such as Nick Cave, David Lynch, William Gibson, Patti Smith, Vampire Weekend, Kurt Andersen, Japanther, David Carr, Antonio Monda, Elk City, Jesse Malin, Dito Montiel and more. An archive is available for free viewing at bn.com/upstairs (as well as iTunes), where "Upstairs at the Square" is enjoyed by listeners around the world in addition to its live audiences.
Guests confirmed for future editions of "Upstairs at the Square" this year include Per Petterson (September 14) and Nick Zinner & friends (September 20th).
ABOUT BARNES & NOBLE, INC.Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world's largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company, operates 723 bookstores in 50 states. Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble, also operates 639 college bookstores serving nearly 4 million students and over 250,000 faculty members at colleges and universities across the United States. Barnes & Noble is the nation's top bookseller brand for the seventh year in a row, as determined by a combination of the brand's performance on familiarity, quality, and purchase intent; the top bookseller in quality for the second year in a row and the number two retailer in trust, according to the EquiTrend® Brand Study by Harris Interactive®. Barnes & Noble conducts its online business through Barnes & Noble.com (
www.bn.com), one of the Web's largest e-commerce sites, which also features more than one million titles in its eBookstore (
www.bn.com/ebooks). Barnes & Noble customers can buy and read eBooks on the widest range of platforms, including NOOKTM by Barnes & Noble, eBook readers from partner companies, and hundreds of the most popular mobile and computing devices using free BN eReader software.
General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company's corporate website:
www.barnesandnobleinc.com.
