Fran Lebowitz Comes to Roy Thomson Hall in April 2024

Roy Thomson Hall welcomes back one of the world’s most insightful social commentators and award-winning author and journalists, Fran Lebowitz on Thursday, April 18, 2024.

Tickets are available this Friday, September 22 via www.roythomsonhall.com/tickets or 416-872-4255.

Fran Lebowitz’ essays and interviews offer her acerbic views on current events and the media – as well as pet peeves including tourists, baggage-claim areas, after-shave lotion, adults who roller skate, children who speak French, or anyone who is unduly tan. The NewYorkTimes Book Review calls Lebowitz an “important humorist in the classic tradition.” Purveyor of urban cool, Lebowitz is a cultural satirist whom many call the heir to Dorothy Parker.

Lebowitz on frankness: “Spilling your guts is exactly as charming as it sounds.”

Lebowitz on herself: “Success didn’t spoil me, I’ve always been insufferable.”

This is Lebowitz off the cuff. Her writing — pointed, taut and economical — is equally forth- right, irascible, and unapologetically opinionated.

Lebowitz worked odd jobs, such as taxi driving, belt peddling, and apartment cleaning (“with a small specialty in Venetian blinds”), before being hired by Andy Warhol as a columnist for Inter- view. That was followed by a stint at Mademoiselle. Her first book, a collection of essays titled Metropolitan Life, was a bestseller, as was a second collection, Social Studies. By turns ironic, facetious, deadpan, sarcastic, wry, wisecracking, and waggish, Lebowitz’s prose is wickedly entertaining. Her two books are collected in The Fran Lebowitz Reader, with a new preface by the author. Most recently, a limited documentary series, Pretend It’s a City, directed by Martin Scorsese, premiered on Netflix in 2021, and was nominated for the 2021 Emmys in the Outstanding Documentary Or Nonfiction Series category.

Lebowitz was named to Vanity Fair’s International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 2008. She remains a style icon. Lebowitz lives in New York City, as she does not believe that she would be allowed to live anywhere else.