Author Event! Natan Last's "Across the Universe"

Join us on February 12th at 6pm as we host Natan Last in conversation with Jeffrey Barbieri to discuss his latest book, Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle. Signed copies of the book will be available for purchase!

About the book:

An entertaining and eye-opening look at the history of crossword puzzles, who constructs them, and why crosswords matter as both a reflection of and influence on our culture
“Should be at the top of every gift guide for word nerds and puzzle enthusiasts everywhere.” —Chicago Review of Books
“A gridful of insight and pleasure.”—Stefan Fatsis, bestselling author of Word Freak and Unabridged
From Wordle to Spelling Bee, we live in a time of word game mania. Crosswords in particular gained renewed popularity during the COVID-19 lockdown, when games became another kind of refuge. Today, 36 million Americans solve crosswords once a week or more, and nearly 23 million solve them daily. Yet, as longtime New Yorker crossword contributor Natan Last will tell you, the seemingly apolitical puzzle has never been more controversial—or more interesting.
A surprisingly ubiquitous influence in the worlds of art, literature, and technology, as Last demonstrates, the puzzle and its most popular purveyors—including publications such as The New York Times, still the gold standard for word games—have in recent years been challenged for the way they prioritize certain cultures and perspectives as the norm, demoting others to obscurity. At the same time, the crossword has never been more democratic. A larger, younger, more tech-savvy, and solidaristic group of people have fallen in love with puzzle solving, ushering in a more inclusive community of constructors and challenging the very idea of what is “normal.”
With a critical eye toward the puzzle’s history, Natan Last explores the debates about the future of the crossword and investigates those who are determining its next phase, ultimately asking if the crossword can help us reshape the world. Across the Universe interrogates all the ways words—and the games we make using those words—change our culture, while bringing us into the world of those pushing for the crossword’s much-needed evolution.

About the author:

Natan Last is a writer and immigration policy advocate. He writes bimonthly crosswords for The New Yorker. His essays, poetry, and academic research appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Drift, Los Angeles Review of Books, Hyperallergic, Narrative, and elsewhere. He has worked for the UN, the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, the International Rescue Committee, and as an advisor to the federal government on refugee resettlement. He lives in his native Brooklyn.

About the moderator:

Jeffrey Barbieri is an essayist and poet who holds an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from Columbia College Chicago. He is also a 2020 Luminarts Creative Writing Fellow. He essays with a sociopolitical bent and is currently piecing together a collection on work and a found and lost love and light and play and decay. You can read his writing in The Seneca Review, Cagibi, and The Ocean State Review. He lives in Providence, where he curates a blog dedicated to the city’s abandoned mattresses.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Symposium Books Staff