Uptown at Night returns to the Members’ Room with a vibrant lineup of humorous storytellers and comedians including Joan Juliet Buck, Sloane Crosley, Patty Kiernan, Tom Perrotta, and James Harvey on keyboard. Sydney LeBlanc hosts.

Joan Juliet Buck's 2017 hilarious, heartbreaking memoir The Price of Illusion is set in 20th-century Paris, London, Italy, and New York. A contributor to Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Traveler, she then became the editor-in-chief of French Vogue. Today she writes, acts (Madame Brassart in Julie and Julia) and tells her stories. “The Ghost of The Rue Jacob” is a perennial hit on The Moth. Her 2020 Facebook diary was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She worked on her first two novels in an attic at the New York Society Library.

Sloane Crosley’s essay collections include the New York Times bestsellers I Was Told There’d Be Cake (a 2019 Thurber Prize finalist), How Did You Get This Number, and Look Alive Out There (a finalist for the 2019 Thurber Prize for American Humor) as well as the novel The Clasp. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and others. She is featured in The Best American Nonrequired Reading and in The Library of America’s 50 Funniest American Writers. Her new novel, Cult Classic, will be out from FSG in June 2022. (Photo by Ungano + Agriodimas)

Patty Kiernan is a recent convert to comedy and she’s off to an amazing start, with appearances at the New Talent Showcases of the Gotham Comedy Club, the West Side Comedy Club, and Caroline’s. Her comedy performances build on her previous career as an actor, launched in her first acting job at the precocious age of twelve. She has appeared in numerous movies, including After Midnight and American Southern, and on the TV series Another World. The multi-talented New Orleans native is also the author of an award-winning screenplay.

Tom Perrotta’s exquisite sense of humor is at the heart of his fiction, which includes bestselling novels and comic short stories. Two of his novels, Election and Little Children, were made into Oscar-nominated films, and his novel The Leftovers was adapted into a Peabody Award-winning HBO series. His other books include Bad Haircut, The Wishbones, Joe College, The Abstinence Teacher, Nine Inches and Mrs. Fletcher. Described as “an American Chekov” by The New York Times, he is now a screenwriter and producer as well as a much-loved fiction writer. 

James Harvey (keyboard) is a musical comedian, composer and playwright of a one-man show, The Bald-Faced Truth: Comedy Songs by James Harvey. His darkly comedic musical The Crack in the Ceiling was presented at the New York Musical Theatre Festival and the New York International Fringe Festival, where he won Overall Excellence in a Musical.

Uptown at Night is produced and directed by Sydney LeBlanc. 

Uptown at Night is sponsored by The Writing Life. The Writing Life events in 2021 are generously underwritten by Jenny Lawrence.