Author Ruth Ozeki to Speak at 92nd Street Y

Ruth Ozeki with Hannah Tinti: The Typing Lady

Wednesday, June 24, 2026 at 7:30 p.m.

The 92nd Street Y – 1395 Lexington Avenue
Accessible via Streaming

Admission: $35 in person | $25 streaming

Booker Prize finalist and award-winning author of The Book of Form and Emptiness Ruth Ozeki returns to The 92nd Street Y for a reading from her dazzling debut story collection, The Typing Lady.

Diving into the depths of childhood ambition, youthful desire, midlife reinvention, and the unsparing clarity of old age, Ruth Ozeki’s new collection brings us into eleven singular, richly imagined worlds and cements her as a writer at the height of her powers. A college student falls for her professor and learns to transmute longing into language. A disquieted husband watches as the ghost of his wife’s ambition roams the woods outside their home. A long-deceased Beat poet hijacks the mind of a young publishing assistant and rails against the state of modern literature. Intimate, expansive, and deeply philosophically engaged, Ozeki uncovers the human drive to record ourselves in language — and how language, over time, records us in return.

In a revelatory evening of reading and conversation about the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we abandon, and the stories we become, Ozeki and Tinti discuss the art of writing and the lives — real and imagined — that shape us.

To purchase in-person tickets or streaming access, please visit The 92nd Y’s website.

Ruth Ozeki (left) and Hannah Tinti

About Ruth Ozeki

Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. She is the award-winning author of four novels: My Year of Meats; All Over Creation; A Tale for the Time Being, which was a finalist for the 2013 Booker Prize; and The Book of Form and Emptiness, which was the winner of the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her novels have been translated and published in more than thirty countries. Her nonfiction work includes a memoir, The Face: A Time Code, and a documentary film, Halving the Bones. The Typing Lady and Other Fictions, published in June of this year, is her first collection of short stories.

She is affiliated with the Everyday Zen Foundation and is Professor Emerita of English Language and Literature at Smith College, where she was the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities. She divides her time between Western Massachusetts, New York City, and British Columbia. Learn more about Ozeki at her website.

About Hannah Tinti

Hannah Tinti is the author of the bestselling novel The Good Thief, which won The Center for Fiction’s first novel prize, and the short story collection Animal Crackers, a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her latest novel, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, is a national bestseller and is in development for television. She teaches creative writing at New York University’s MFA program and co-founded the Sirenland Writers Conference. Tinti is also the co-founder and executive editor of One Story magazine, which has won the AWP Small Press Publisher Award, CLMP’s Firecracker Award, a Whiting Prize, and the PEN/Magid Award for Excellence in Editing. Visit Tinit’s website.

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Art Song Suite about the Life of Beloved Japanese Poet

The Life of Misuzu Kaneko | Story, Poetry, and Art Songs

Saturday, November 15 from 4:00 p.m. until 5:00 p.m.

Thespis Theatre – 25-02 Newtown Avenue, Long Island City

Admission: Free

The world premiere of New York-based contemporary music composer Satoshi Kanazawa’s art song project based on beloved Japanese poet Misuzu Kaneko will take place at Thespis Theatre in Long Island City this Saturday, November 15.

Experience the remarkable yet tragic life of Kaneko (April 11, 1903 - March 10, 1930), who ended her own life at the young age of 26. This presentation is based on the book Are You an Echo? which introduces Kaneko’s poetry through a narrative by David Jacobson and English translation by Sally Ito and Michiko Tsuboi. Through evocative readings and live performance, Kaneko’s tender words and melodies transcend time, touching the heart with their beauty and depth.

Left: Misuzu Kaneko, photo courtesy of Preservation Association of Misuzu Kaneko Works. Right: Illustrations ©︎Toshikado Hajiri

Part 1: Book Reading Session

The first half of this event will be a book reading, telling Kaneko’s heartbreaking story. Actor Daniel Abse will read from Are You an Echo? while Marisa Karchin and Naoko Nakagawa will recite a selection of Kaneko’s poems.

PERFORMERS

• Daniel Abse – Book reading

• Marisa Karchin – English poem reading

• Naoko Nakagawa – Original poem reading

Part 2: Art Song Performance

Kanazawa, who has been working on this project for more than 20 years, will premiere the art song suite in the second half of the program. The suite features seven selected poems sung in

PERFORMERS

• Naoko Kanazawa – Soprano

• Marisa Karchin – Soprano

• Junko Ichikawa – Piano

• Satoshi Kanazawa – Composer

This program is made possible by the Queens Arts Fund New Work Grant and is supported by JULA publishing Bureau and DOUSEIKAI -Tokyo University of the Arts Alumni Association.

For more details and to RSVP, please visit Satoshi Kanazawa’s Eventbrite page.

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