To mark its centennial, Simon & Schuster also held a town hall in Midtown Manhattan on Monday night, with appearances by 35 of its most notable authors. The lineup included award-winning novelists like Jennifer Egan, John Irving and Anthony Doerr; best-selling nonfiction authors, among them Walter Isaacson, Bob Woodward, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Susan Orlean; and a sprinkling of public figures that included Jerry Seinfeld, Charlamagne Tha God and Hillary Clinton, who was briefly heckled by a protester who called her a war criminal before being escorted out.
Before the event, dozens of literary luminaries mingled in an upstairs lounge.
“I lost my mind when John Irving walked in,” said Lauren Billings, who writes best-selling romances with Christina Hobbs under the pen name Christina Lauren.
“I started tearing up when we talked to Judy Blume,” Hobbs added.
Blume, for her part, was equally star struck by the guest list. “The best thing is meeting all these writers whose books I sell in my bookstore,” said Blume, who has a bookstore in Key West, Fla., and was mid-conversation with the novelist Jesmyn Ward, standing a few feet from where the novelists Colm Toibin and Jennifer Egan were chatting.
“It’s a room full of famous nerds, basically,” Jason Reynolds, a blockbuster children’s and young adult novelist, said after surveying the crowd.
Judith Viorst, the author of more 40 books, among them the children’s classic “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day,” joked when she was onstage about being almost as old as Simon & Schuster. “It’s one of the rare occasions these days when I’m a little younger than the honoree,” said Viorst, who is 93.
