LIVE from NYPL: SPY Magazine: The Funny Years, the 20th Anniversary with GRAYDON CARTER, KURT ANDERSEN, GEORGE KALOGERAKIS & DAVID CARR

SPY: The Funny Years
A Loving, 20th Anniversary Interrogation

During its heyday, from 1986 through 1993, Spy magazine broke important ground in journalism and design, defining smartness for its generation. It was a once-in-a-lifetime creation that shaped the zeitgeist and succeeded (for a while) against all odds.

In the process, it introduced into the currency Separated at Birth, Naked City, The Fine Print, Log-Rolling in Our Time, Blurb-o-Mat, those hilarious (and now ubiquitous) charts, the inside stories on The New York Times and Hollywood, plus countless arresting covers, investigative features, and entertaining deconstructions of pretty much everyone who was anyone during the late 80s and early  90s an often grisly but always entertaining cast of churlish dwarf billionaires, beaver-faced moguls, bull-whip-wielding uber-agents, knobby-kneed socialites and, of course, short-fingered vulgarians.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Spy's creation and the publication of Spy: The Funny Years, the definitive anthology containing some of the magazine?s funniest and most creative work along with the ultimate insiders? account of how it all came to be, the book?s authors?founding editors Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen, and original writer and editor George Kalogerakis will be on hand for a discussion with New York Times media columnist and reporter David Carr.

About Graydon Carter

Graydon Carter has been editor of Vanity Fair since 1992 and has won every award a magazine editor can win. He also produced the Emmy and Peabody-award winning documentary 9/11 and The Kid Stays in the Picture?about the legendary producer Robert Evans. Prior to joining Vanity Fair, Mr. Carter was editor of The New York Observer and a staff writer for Life and Time.

About Kurt Andersen

Kurt Andersen is author of Turn of the Century, and his second novel, Heyday, will be published in March. He is host and co-creator of the public radio show Studio 360, and writes a column for New York magazine. Previously, he edited New York, co-founded Inside.com, and was a critic and columnist for The New Yorker and Time. He has also created television programs, and written screenplays and an off-Broadway revue.

About George Kalogerakis

George Kalogerakis, a deputy editor of Spy at its launch and the magazine's senior writer for several years, is now the deputy op-ed editor of The New York Times. He has worked as a writer and editor for many magazines, including Vanity Fair, Vogue, New York, and Travel + Leisure.

About David Carr

David Carr writes a column on media issues for the Monday Business section of The New York Times and also covers popular culture for the newspaper. During the season, he writes a daily blog about the Academy Awards as the Carpetbagger. He has been a contributing writer for The Atlantic Monthly and New York Magazine, and Inside.com. Before that, he lived in middle places and came to know New York only through Spy. He was disappointed when he moved here and found out that Spy often engaged in parody, but has since recovered.