Authors Night Goes Off-Site

   The eighth annual Authors Night, a cocktail party and book signing to benefit the East Hampton Library, will take place on Saturday from 5 to 7:30 p.m. The authors reception will be followed by 25 dinner parties held at private houses in the area, each in honor of one of the guest authors, who will attend.

    For the first time, the “under the tent” reception will be held off-site, at the Gardiner Farm at 36 James Lane in East Hampton. Alec Baldwin and Barbara Goldsmith, presiding founders of the event, will be joined by Ken Auletta, David Baldacci, Robert A. Caro, Dick Cavett, Lynn Sherr, and Dava Sobel, who are honorary co-chairs, as well as more than 120 other authors.

    Among the authors at the book signing will be Kelly Killoren Bensimon, Philip Galanes, Oz Garcia, Peter Kaminsky, Robert Klein, Hilary Knight, Lucette Lagnado, Katie Lee, Robert Lipsyte, Jeffrey Lyons, Kati Marton, Peter Matthiessen, Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, Michael Shnayerson, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Sam Talbot, Ali Wentworth, and Ruth Westheimer.

    Guests at the reception can meet with the authors, buy their books, and have them personally inscribed, as well as enjoy hors d’oeuvres, wine, and beer donated by local businesses.

    Authors Night is the library’s largest fund-raiser of the year, raising more than 10 percent of its annual operating budget, according to Dennis Fabiszak, the library’s director. “We like to say it’s the largest dinner party in the Hamptons,” he said, “because we will have more than 500 people at dinners related to the event.” Tickets, at $100 for the reception, or $250 for the reception and an 8 p.m. author dinner, are available online at authorsnight.org and at the library.

    Fewer authors will be in attendance this year than last, Mr. Fabiszak said, “but the number of best-selling authors at the event is much greater than any year we’ve had in the past. We’re very excited that Bob Caro is going to be back. He’s a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and is out with his newest book, the fourth in the Lyndon Johnson series” — “The Passage of Power,” which is reviewed in this issue.

    “We’re also excited that for the first time we have Robert Massie, who just won an American Library Association award.” Mr. Massie was awarded the association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction for “Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman.”

    “We think it’s going to be a great event with the two of them here,” Mr. Fabiszak said.