From today through Monday, purchasing a Believer subscription or renewing your existing one will get you a second half-year (January through June) subscription for free. (In other words, a gift subscription for a friend, enemy, or blood relative.)

We don’t think there’s ever been a better time to subscribe, either: the January 2010 issue features conversations with Ruth Reichl, Francis Ford Coppola, Aleksandar Hemon, and recent National Book Award-winner Colum McCann.

To get the half-year gift sub, all you have to do is enter the second shipping address in the comments section during checkout — but it's only available until Monday (December 7, 2009). Click here to get started!

On Monday, December 7, 2009, from 6:30-8:30pm, the Believer will throw a party in San Francisco in celebration of the much-slavered-over 2009 Art Issue. Readers will include Michelle Tea, Jeff Chang, Eames Demetrios, and Michael Paul Mason. There will also be appearances by profoundly special and secret guests, including you. It all happens at the Electric Works gallery, located at 130 8th Street at Mission. For directions, see the Contact page on sfelectricworks.com.

We were saddened to hear of the passing last week of novelist Donald Harington. Harington’s novels, set in the fictional Arkansas town of Stay More, were the subject of Izzy Grinspan’s essay “A Dream of a Small But Unlost Town” from our February 2006 issue. You can read the full piece here. “Stay More might be small, isolated, and doomed to ruin, but it’s still teeming with wild life.”

Javier Marías, Believer Books author and former columnist, will be making the following U.S. appearances in November and December 2009:

11/30: The 92nd St Y, with Paul Auster.

12/1: Princeton University.

12/2: Yale University, at the Whitney Humanities Center.

12/3: The New York Public Library.

We are pleased to announce the publication of Tamler Sommers’s A Very Bad Wizard. The book is a collection of interviews that Sommers conducted with ten acclaimed researchers in the burgeoning field of moral psychology. Steven Pinker called it “a thought-provoking and entertaining tour of one of the frontiers of human knowledge—the roots of our moral sense.”

Buy your copy online at the McSweeney’s Store, or at independent booksellers nationwide.

The Believer is joining forces with Stereogum for a free CMJ party at the Studio at Webster Hall in NYC, on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009, at 8pm.

The line-up includes Cold Cave, The Golden Filter, Free Energy, Glasser, plus DJ sets from Dum Dum Girls, Telepathe, and others. The show’s free, but it’s RSVP only — go here to reserve your space.

More details are available here.

On Saturday, October 17, 2009, at 8:30pm, the Believer will present readings by poets Joshua Clover, Troy Jollimore, and Rae Armantrout at the Latin America Club in San Francisco, as part of Litquake’s LitCrawl 2009. The event is free. More info is available here.

Greil Marcus, with Werner Sollors, is the editor of A New Literary History of America, just published by Harvard University Press. Samples of this impressive book, along with more information, are at newliteraryhistory.com.

Paul Collins’s latest book, The Book of William: How Shakespeare’s First Folio Conquered the World, is out, and he’ll be reading at the Wordstock festival in Portland, Oregon, this Sunday (October 11, 2009), at 5pm at the Powell’s Books Stage.

The Believer is proud to present a special advance screening of An Education, written and produced by Nick Hornby, at the Embarcadero Center Cinema in San Francisco on Wednesday, October 7, at 8:30 p.m.

The ticket price includes a screening of the film followed by a Q&A with Hornby, along with a free copy of Housekeeping vs. the Dirt, one of Hornby’s collections of columns from the Believer.

Tickets can be purchased here.

Now on sale: Our first ever daily planner, 52 Weeks, Heads, and Quotes, filled with illustrations by Charles Burns and quotes from Believer interviews. You can see page samples here, and you can buy the book here.

“Animal Collective is only one of many bands striving for something more resonant than a catchy melody. At their most potent, these artists make big, constantly evolving sounds that redraw the universe around us in deep Kandinsky colors.” New in Online Exclusives: Judy Berman’s essay “Concerning the Spiritual in Indie Rock”.

Also on Wednesday, August 5, 2009 in NYC: McSweeney’s and Believer contributors Jessica Anthony, Joe Hagan, James Hannaham, Arthur Phillips, and Brandon Stosuy will participate in a reading and discussion as part of the “Word for Word” series at the Bryant Park Reading Room. The event is at 12:30pm, and admission is free. Click here for more info.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009, at 7pm, Joe’s Pub, NYC: Brandon Stosuy will be reading from his in-progress oral history of American black metal (first excerpted in the Believer here), with assistance from Matt Luem.

The event, which is part of the Happy Ending Reading & Music Series, will also feature readings by Rachel Cohen and Lawrence Weschler, as well as music by Colin Stetson and Buke & Gass. Alec Hanley Bemis and series founder Amanda Stern will co-host.

Click here for more info, and click here for tickets.

Just out, our new anthology of articles and essays: Read Hard: Five Years of Great Writing from the Believer.

Stephen Elliott and Ross Simonini will be reading on behalf of the Believer with Joe Meno, tonight (June 9) at 7pm at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. More info here.

On Mon, June 1, 2009, BAMcinématek and the Believer present screenings of One P.M., directed by D.A. Pennebaker and Jean-Luc Godard, at BAM Rose Cinemas in Brooklyn. Film issues (containing the related DVD anthology JLG in USA) will be on sale, and curator Jacob Perlin will introduce the films. Showtimes: 4:30, 6:50, and 9:15pm. More info here.

Believer readers are invited to a special advance screening of the new film Away We Go, written by Dave Eggers & Vendela Vida and directed by Sam Mendes, on Friday, May 1, in San Francisco. Click here for more info.

The Believer is proud to have been nominated for a 2009 Utne Independent Press Award, in the category of Arts Coverage.

The Believer is on Twitter! Follow us here!

Will Eno’s superb Thom Pain (based on nothing), a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, is currently playing in its San Francisco premiere at the Cutting Ball Theater, recently extended through May 9. Click here for tickets.

“What do you think about people who see you as a role model, as a pioneering professional female philosopher?” — “I think they’re pretty silly. They have no idea how different things used to be.” Marjorie Grene, 1910-2009.

Just out on Knopf: Blake Bailey’s Cheever: A Life, an excerpt of which ran in our June 2008 issue as “John Cheever on the Rocks”.