In a twist on the popular “New Year New You” theme, memoirists Alan Kaufman (Drunken Angel), Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation, More, Now, Again), David Carr (The Night of the Gun) and Mary Karr (Lit), with moderator Susan Shapiro, discuss grappling with some of their most personal and darkest moments and how they have come to terms with their addictions now that they are in recovery.

In his new memoir, Drunken Angel, poet and novelist Alan Kaufman gives a vivid depiction of his descent into the alcohol that took him to the brink of death and the harrowing road he traverses back to recovery. The story is a blend of blunt honestly and disarming pathos, woven into an ultimately uplifting narrative of loss, addiction and redemption. Mary Karr is an award-winning poet and best-selling memoirist. She is the author of Lit, the long-awaited sequel to her critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling memoirs The Liars’ Club and Cherry. A born raconteur, she brings to her lectures and talks the same wit, irreverence, joy, and sorrow found in her poetry and prose. In the now classic Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel describes her harrowing battle with clinical depression and her follow-up memoir, More, Now, Again, is a brutally honest account of the days after the literary success of Prozac Nation as she became hooked on Ritalin and cocaine. In The Night of the Gun, David Carr, a reporter and columnist for The New York Times, uses his investigative skills to write about one of the darkest stories he has ever covered—his own.

The panel will be moderated by Susan Shapiro, a Manhattan journalism professor and author of the new addiction book Unhooked: How to Quit Anything; Speed Shrinking, a comic novel about food addiction;a nd the acclaimed memoir Lighting Up: How I Stopped Smoking, Drinking and Everything Else I Loved In Life Except Sex.