William Corbett takes an expansive look at the ghosts, the landmarks, and the current denizens who make New York City so popular with the literary crowd. Ranging from Paul Auster to Zora Neale Hurston, from the Algonquin Round Table to the Nuyorican Poets Café, from Edgar Allan Poe to the Beat Generation, Corbett takes us on a dizzying ride through the literary highlights of New York. Illuminating a city rich in famous writers against a combustible mixture of cultures and commerce, Corbett shows us how New York"s multifaceted literary present has emerged from its constantly evolving past. New York Literary Lights travels through both time and place to provide an altogether enlightening, entertaining hybrid of history, gossip, and reference book.