WASHINGTON HEIGHTS — New Jersey is moving uptown as radio station WFMU-FM plans to host a Listener Meetup Group literary reading on Monday.
The Garden State-based station is moving into Washington Heights' pop-up bookstore Word Up, located in a vacant storefront at 4157 Broadway.
It's planning to broadcast readings by fiction writers including Kurt Gottschalk, Amanda Nazario and Bronwyn Carlton.
Also on the July 11 reading list are uptown authors Mike Diana, Carlo Quispe, Caitriona Ni Threasaigh, Joakim Saflund, K. Abigail Walthausen, Steve Hann, Thera Webb and Nikkiesha N. McLeod, who are represented by neighborhood-based publishers Kaboom! Press and Fractious Press.
Word Up is a temporary bookstore that opened in the Heights in mid-June as part of a collaboration between the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, landlord Vantage Residential and Veronica Liu, a Washington Heights resident and the managing editor for publisher Seven Stories Press.
The store has been so popular among neighborhood residents that it will remain open well past its scheduled closing date of July 14.
The site has hosted art shows, book readings and musical performances nearly every evening since opening.
"I hope that it stays here because the community really needs resources for artists, writers, actors, actresses and musicians," said Emile Tatum, who posted on the bookstore's blog.
"The children would benefit greatly from such a resource."
Word Up is open from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday and noon to 4 p.m. on weekends.
