This Saturday, Litquake’s first-ever expansion into New York features 17 events in three hours, and kicks off at 6 pm in the Lower East Side. One of the first-hour highlights will be “Against the Grain” at Happy Ending, 302 Broome St., featuring readings by New Yorker contributors Rebecca Curtis, Sasha Frere-Jones, and Ben Greenman. Apparently signing on full-time to the Litquake cult, Greenman will then fly out to SF and read at our main festival events on October 8 and 11. There will be some sort of award for this, as soon as we figure out what that might be.

Jonathan Ames’ new graphic novel The Alcoholic is released next Tuesday from the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics, and fictionalizes the author’s descent into the holy trinity of writing, sex, and alcoholism. Illustrated by Dean Haspiel, who also did Michael Chabon’s Escapist. One scene even recreates Ames meeting the one and only Monica Lewinsky. Ames will appear at the Herbst October 3, on Litquake’s opening night.

The Bay Area’s Alice Walker from 1970, featured in a cool online slideshow of vintage book ads from the New York Times.