Upstairs at the Square: Badly Drawn Boy + Dana Spiotta March 7, 2007

NEW YORK, NY (February 13) – Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, today announced the next event in its new series, “Upstairs at the Square,” held at the Union Square Barnes & Noble in Manhattan (33 East 17th Street at Union Square). On Wednesday, March 7th, at 7PM, singer-songwriter Badly Drawn Boy, whose new album is Born in the U.K. (Astralwerks), and Dana Spiotta, whose latest novel, Eat The Document (Scribner, 2006), was a National Book Award finalist, discuss and perform their work. Journalist Katherine Lanpher hosts the program. Admission is free, and no tickets are required. Seating is available on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Named by Q Magazine as one of “50 Bands To See Before You Die,” Badly Drawn Boy (astralwerks.com/badly_drawn_boy), aka Damon Gough, has been on everyone’s shortlist since winning the Mercury Prize for his 2000 debut, The Hour of Bewilderbeast. He continues his winning streak of heartfelt, charming, sublimely melodic songs –from the About A Boy soundtrack to Have You Fed The Fish? to One Plus One Is One – with his fifth album, Born in the U.K. Described as honest, often wincingly so, and upfront, Gough is a musician who does things his way. Where One Plus One Is One was an intimate, introspective album, Born In The U.K., which Gough describes as “the most difficult record I’ve made to date,” is more inclusive. “It is an album with which I want to embrace the wider world,” he says.

Dana Spiotta (danaspiotta.com) grew up mostly in California. In 1993 she moved to New York City. She was the managing editor (with Jodi Davis) of The Quarterly for two years. Scribner published her first novel, Lightning Field, in 2001. It was a New York Times Notable Book of the year and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the West. The New York Times called her second novel, Eat the Document, “stunning” and described it as “a book that possesses the staccato ferocity of a Joan Didion essay and the razzle-dazzle language and the historical resonance of a Don DeLillo novel.”

Katherine Lanpher katherinelanpher.com is an award-winning print and broadcast journalist. Springboard Press recently published her first book, Leap Days: Chronicle of a Midlife Move.

The next “Upstairs on the Square” will take place on Wednesday, April 11th, at 7PM, and features author Ian Rankin and musician Aidan Moffatt (formerly of Arab Strap).

Audio downloads of all seven previous events are available on Barnes & Noble.com (bn.com/upstairs).


About Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company, operates 801 bookstores in 50 states. For the fifth year in a row, the company is the nation’s top retail brand for quality, according to the EquiTrend® Brand Study by Harris Interactive®. Barnes & Noble conducts its online business through Barnes & Noble.com (www.bn.com), one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites and the number one online bookseller for quality among e-commerce companies, according to the latest EquiTrend survey.

General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company’s corporate Web site: http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com.


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