Get Out Tonight: N+1's Editors @ Elliott Bay Books

N+1, the NYC-based literary magazine, launched with a bang back in the fall of 2004. In the inaugural issue, the editors took aim Dave Eggers & the McSweeneys/Believer crowd, deriding them as "the regressive avant-garde," and at the iconic critic James Wood (then at The New Republic, now at The New Yorker) whom they called a "designated hater," and who--along with his TNR co-horts Leon Wieseltier and Dale Peck--they accuse of writing literary criticism that "was wholly negative. And, it eventually became clear, indiscriminately so."

Such fusillades against the literary establishment coming from the younger generation are nothing new, of course, but N+1 backed their assault with a group of editors that had enough promise to get them noticed. Leading the pack was Benjamin Kunkel, whose debut novel Indecision attracted massive critical notice (Jay McInerny lauded it in the NY Times Book Review) as the "next big literary thing." Since, he's gone on contributing to leading magazines and journals, including Dissent, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books. Mark Greif, a former staffer at The American Prospect, now reviews regularly for the London Review of Books. And Keith Gessen has a highly anticipated novel, All the Sad Young Literary Men due out in April.

N+1 Editors Keith Gessen & Chad Harbach // Elliott Bay Book Company // 7:30 pm // free