33 East 17th Street
New York City, New York 10003

NEW YORK, NY – July 6 – Barnes & Noble, Inc., the world’s largest bookseller, today announced the next edition of its hit series, “Upstairs at the Square” – recommended by The New Yorker, New York, Time Out New York, The Village Voice, WWD Scoop, Time Out London, and more – which celebrated three years this June, at the Union Square Barnes & Noble in Manhattan (33 East 17th Street at Union Square). On Tuesday, August 18th, at 7 p.m., breakthrough singer-songwriter Regina Spektor, whose new album is Far (Warner/Sire Records, June 23), and creative visionary Kurt Andersen, whose new book is Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America (Random House, July 28), will discuss and perform their work in conversation with cultural journalist Katherine Lanpher. Admission is free, and no tickets are required. Seating is available on a first-come, first-serve basis.

“It felt like those stories where a person sets out from their village, ties a sack on a stick and sets off to experience the world – and then comes back home.” That’s Regina Spektor ( www.reginaspektor.com) talking about the adventure she embraced making her dazzling new album, Far. “I come from wanting to arrange everything myself, basically directing myself,” she says of the evolution that ran from with the one-woman recordings she made at college in New York (the self-released 11:11 album) and through her initially-indie and eventual 2004 Sire Records debut Soviet Kitsch and Begin to Hope, her first truly “produced” recording. “As time went by I was slowly able to allow more and more participation. I keep learning.” Even as she listens back to the album and relives these experiences, she has trouble putting her finger on just what this represents in terms of the personal and artistic growth. “It's kind of like watching your own hair grow. Then all of a sudden you wake up and have long hair.”

Kurt Andersen ( www.kurtandersen.com) is the author of the bestselling novels Heyday and Turn of the Century. He is also the host and co-creator of the Peabody Award-winning public radio program Studio 360 and a prize-winning contributor to Vanity Fair. He was a co-founder of Spy magazine and the editor-in-chief of New York and he has been a columnist, critic, and essayist for The New Yorker, New York and Time. In his new book, Reset, Andersen notes, “This is the end of the world as we’ve known it. But it isn’t the end of the world.” Sparked by overwhelming reader response to his March 2009 Time magazine cover story, in Reset, Andersen explores the remarkable accomplishments of the last three decades and what comes next, now that our long party-hearty era has reached its inevitable end and the reset button has been pushed. What emerges is a historically illuminating, hopeful and forward-looking picture of how crisis has created opportunity and why we are much more equipped to recreate ourselves than we realize.

Katherine Lanpher (www.katherinelanpher.com) is an award-winning print and broadcast journalist, host of The Time Financial Toolkit on Time.com, contributing editor to More magazine, 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 three years in June, has paired authors such as William Gibson, Tom Wolfe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, David Lynch, Anna Gavalda, Min Jin Lee and Carlos Ruiz Zafón with musicians including Duncan Sheik and members of the cast of Spring Awakening, Japanther, Badly Drawn Boy, Sondre Lerche, Au Revoir Simone, Aimee Mann, Craig Finn and more. An archive of recordings is available on Barnes & Noble.com (www.bn.com/upstairs), where “Upstairs at the Square” is enjoyed by listeners around the world.

The fall season of “Upstairs at the Square” will premiere with Nick Cave on September 14.

Official Website: http://www.bn.com/upstairs

Added by LACerand on July 7, 2009