ALL LIT UP

Suggested pickup lines for the 2016 PEN Literary Awards, April 11,2016

SCOTT JACOBSON

MIKE SACKS

TED TRAVELSTEAD

Roses are red, violets are blue, come up to my room and let us . Wait, where are you going? /-N Do you not like poetry?

I'm here tonight to sow my Joyce Carol Oates. You in? A

I missed the award for best coffee-table book about baby animals. „ Who won?

Like my pocketsquare? David Foster Wallace once sneezed into it.

Is that a pen in your pocket or am I just a master of re-purposing threadbare cliches?

I'm no Karl Ove Knausgaard, but I can give you six exhaustive, 500-page volumes on why you should go home with me.

Can you keep a secret? I'm Elena Ferrante. Unless you're straight, in which case I'm Thomas Pynchon.

I didn't know they'd have a cotton-candy machine here! Wait. That's Leon Wieseltier.

I nicknamed my libido Salman Rushdie. It disappeared from sight for years, but now it's back with a vengeance!

I'm not a PEN nominee, but I have selfpublished an e-book about a duck that solves murders