About the series
Founded in April 2015, LIC Reading Series celebrates literature and community in the great literary borough of Queens. The series meets on the second Tuesday of every month in the carriage house of LIC Bar, a classic 100-year-old watering hole in Long Island City. Our guests share brief readings and take part in a panel discussion moderated by our host and founder, Catherine LaSota.
LIC Reading Series audience, November 2018. Photo by Karl Jacob.
About our host
Catherine LaSota has lived in New York City for 20+ years and currently calls Long Island City, Queens home. In April 2015, she founded the LIC Reading Series, for which she hosts three critically-acclaimed writers in a panel discussion each month at LIC Bar. She is the Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University, and she is often exhausted due to being the mother of a toddler and a fairly new baby. Catherine writes about motherhood and penned a monthly column for Catapult titled "Portrait of the Artist as a New Parent." She is also an advanced certified SCUBA diver and holds an MFA in Sculpture from Parsons School of Design, and has a history of singing and playing her French horn with rock bands in the city.
Press & Testimonials
LIC Reading Series has been named One of the Coolest Reading Series in NYC by Time Out New York, and has been featured in The New York Times, LIC Courier, and Notable NYC, among other places.
Every month, we invite our featured readers to share an anecdote about Queens before reading from their work. Sometimes this inspires some very creative results:
"The Mayors of Long Island City"
by J. Robert Lennon
Find more fun stuff, like photos and video of previous events, on our media page!