Patti Smith's 'Just Kids' is a finalist for NYC's summer book club

For the third year, the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment and BuzzFeed Book Club are holding “One Book, One New York” this summer, a citywide book club that encourages people throughout NYC to read the same book at the same time. Finalists for 2019’s book of the summer have been announced, and beginning on April 1 you can vote on which one readers throughout the city will read together in July. Just Kids, Patti Smith‘s 2010 memoir about her early, struggling days in NYC with Robert Mapplethorpe, is one of this year’s options. The others, which are all also by female authors, are A Place for Us (Fatima Farheen Mirza), Nilda (Nicholasa Mohr), Another Brooklyn (Jacqueline Woodson), and Free Food for Millionaires (Min Jin Lee). 2500 copies of the nominated books have been donated by publishers to library branches in the five boroughs.

Voting is open throughout April, and the winning book and author will be chosen in May. Four nominated authors and Nicholasa Mohr’s son David Mohr will appear at The New York Public Library’s Celeste Bartos Forum on April 23 for a live author talk – free registration is open now. The winning author will appear in conversation at Symphony Space on May 10 as part of the Pen America World Voices Festival, and at Center for Fiction in September (exact date TBA).

Patti has also shared a new single with Soundwalk Collective, “The New Revelations of Being,” which you can listen to below. It’s the first single from The Peyote Dance, due out May 31 via Bella Union, and the first part of an upcoming-three album project inspired by three French poets, The Perfect Vision.

Patti plays two of the first shows at the soon-to-reopen Webster Hall in May – both are currently sold out.