Readings From His Work

Featuring Jim Fletcher, Ari Fliakos, Modesto Jimenez, Sibyl Kempson, Chris Kraus, Scott Shepherd, Kate Valk, and more.

Erje Ayden is a Turk who wrote in English. He lived in New York since the ’50s. His published works include the underground bestseller The Crazy Green of Second Avenue; Sadness at Leaving, the espionage novel English critics called a masterpiece; The Summer Frank O’Hara Died; and his recent collection of short stories, A Lost Cloud.

“Ayden is the traditional ‘foreigner’… an alien wherever he is, probing and disfiguring ordinary reality, accepting its most peculiar and neurotic aspects as quite unexceptional. Through his eyes we see an ‘Amerika’ as odd as Kafka’s; as funny and absurdly sad.” —Frank O’Hara