Five for the New Pushcart

It’s not really fair, is it, to single out one writer as the highlight of a reading among putative equals, based solely on the whim of one faceless person at a keyboard. So anyway, Andre Dubus III will headline a reading from “Pushcart Prize XXXIX: Best of the Small Presses,” which is out this week. The reading happens on Friday, Nov. 21, at 7 p.m. — a bit of advance notice, this, for your scheduling convenience. The place? The Strand bookstore on Broadway at East 12th Street in Manhattan. Admission is by way of the purchase of the featured anthology, which goes for $19.99, or a $15 Strand gift card.

Bill Henderson of Springs, Pushcart’s founder and editor, will handle the introductions. The evening is a collaboration with the Writers Studio, founded by the poet Philip Schultz, who lives in East Hampton.

Mr. Dubus is the author of “House of Sand and Fog,” the quintessential late-20th-century immigrants’ story, involving striving, prideful newcomers from Iran and down-and-out native-born Americans seemingly intent on squandering their lives and opportunities. Published in 1999, the novel was a National Book Award finalist. Mr. Dubus is also the author of a memoir, “Townie,” which casts his father, the late, great short-story writer Andre Dubus, in a not-so-flattering light.

The other readers are David Means, whose book of stories “Assorted Fire Events” was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, Kim Addonizio, whose latest collection of poems is “The Palace of Illusions,” Michelle Seaton, a winner of a 2015 Pushcart Prize, and Jim White, a singer and songwriter on hand with his piece about David Byrne of Talking Heads fame.