Cake friends,
We’re so excited to be hosting a free outdoor reading series about the taste of memory, summer, and New York City at Little Island on September 4, 5, and 6.
Join us each day for a completely new experience, featuring one conversation and four original readings commissioned especially for this event series, hosted by our co-founder Aliza Abarbanel. Each hour-long session will close with a mini group writing exercise to build a communal archive of the taste of summer 2026— materials provided, but bring your own notebook and pen if you like (and perhaps a blanket for sitting too).
The inspiration for this series comes from the idea of New York as a public archive of cultural memory. Live here long enough and you’ll see ghosts—old apartments, former workplaces, a beloved restaurant that’s now a soulless coffee chain. Food and memory are so commonly intertwined that it’s essentially a trope. But the root of tropes are truth. We started wondering: what if we asked this question seriously? Does time have a taste? The resulting commissioned pieces are largely elegies to past lives, dearly departed restaurants, and New York’s constant evolutions. It’s a series about endings, but also about beginnings.
Friday: Readings by writers Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Fran Tirado, Stephanie Wambugu, and Savannah Sobrevilla. Conversation with Aliza and Phoebe Tran, with food available from Phoebe’s pop-up Bé Bếp.
Saturday: Readings by writers Hilary Leichter, Mychal Denzel Smith, Nicolaia Rips, and Eric Kim. Conversation with Aliza and cookbook author Ifrah F. Ahmed. Food available from our friends at the pop-up Mr Jong.
Sunday: Readings by writers Leslie Jamison, Larissa Pham, Sahir Ahmed, and Doreen St. Félix. Conversation with journalist Erik Piepenburg and Florent Morellet, owner/operator of the legendary all-night Meatpacking District diner Florent from 1985–2008. Food available from an exciting to-be-announced bake sale.
We’re truly inspired by the lineup of writers who agreed to write for this series—awarded novelists and cookbook authors; staff writers at GQ, the New Yorker, i-D, and beyond. Many have written for Cake Zine before, and some are new to our fold.
We’d love for you to join us at one or all of these events—each day is something entirely new. Reading starts at 5 p.m. sharp; come earlier to grab a good seat on the grass and get snacks from our friends selling food in the Playground. Stay after for more excellent programming, including a dance party from Papi Juice on Friday—full event calendar here.
It’s free to attend, all ages, and no RSVP is required. Just show up! Questions? Email us: hellocakezine@gmail.com. We’ll see you in the Glade.
Read: Ruby Tandoh on Britain’s modern “golden age” of ice cream, driven by independent makers and a rich variety of regional styles, for .
Make: Cool down with ’s recipe for cold brew tea.
Check out: An offbeat zine about a psychedelic foot-shaped ice cream released in the ‘80s, made by Forbidden Fruit contributor (and our James Beard Award winner!) .
Eat: Forbidden Fruit contributor is serving smoked mussels ice cream fudge sundaes (?!) with Patagonia Provisions in Brooklyn this Saturday, Aug 8. Get details here.
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