Ben Lasman launches "Magazine," in conversation with Jonathan Safran Foer

Celebrate the publication of the inaugural title from local press Parade Ground Books, Ben Lasman's Magazine—a mordantly funny illumination of the absurdity and precariousness of the twenty-first-century media economy.

Ben will be joined by author Jonathan Safran Foer for a reading, conversation, and audience Q&A, followed by a book signing and reception.

About the book

In the shadow of a crumbling publishing industry, a band of ambitious and idealistic editors embark on a mission to launch the last great American magazine—to catastrophic and hilarious ends. Led by the utterly untrustworthy Lungs Kamov, The Horn promises a return to the Golden Age of print, bolstered by the talents of Anele Natkin, radical personal essayist, Gilda Burger-Barnes, investigative journalist with a trust fund, and Magazine’s narrator, the publication's long-suffering, hopelessly romantic managing editor. The voice that propels the novel, he is passionate and embattled, jaded but undefeated, in thrall to his dreams even as they push him deeper into the madness of the magazine.

Mordantly funny and peopled by a Dickensian multitude of writers, editors, reporters, reviewers, and interns, Magazine illuminates the absurdity and precariousness of the 21st-century media economy, in which perpetual crisis is set against undying belief in the importance of arts and letters.

“This book is a wonder. It is hilarious and astute, offering lacerating cultural commentary and heartbreaking insights into loneliness. Every sentence has something to offer. I loved it.”—Jonathan Safran Foer

About the author

Ben Lasman's fiction has been published in Granta, Tin House, Wired, The Iowa Review, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere. A journalist and editor, he is online manager for Library of America, the nonprofit publisher and literary organization. Magazine is his first novel.

About Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of the bestselling novel Everything Is Illuminated, named Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and the winner of numerous awards, including the Guardian First Book Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Prize. His other novels include Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and, most recently, Here I Am. He is also the author of the nonfiction books Eating Animals and We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast (2019). Foer was one of Rolling Stone's "People of the Year" and Esquire's "Best and Brightest,” and was included in The New Yorker magazine's "20 Under 40" list of writers. He lives in Brooklyn.

About Parade Ground Books

Parade Ground is a boutique fiction collective publishing novels of simple, uniform design. Based in Brooklyn, NY. paradegroundbooks.com