On January 24, SMITH is having a very special event at the 92nd Street Y to celebrate the release our next Six-Word Memoir book, It All Changed in an Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure.. We’ll talk about the brilliance of brief writing with A.J. Jacobs, Amy Sohn, and Ben Yagoda, and have lots of audience participation (so come armed with a Six-Word Memoir). We’re also holding a contest: What’s your Six-Word Memoir about your life in New York? From “Husband. Kids. Park Slope. You know,” “Girls from the Bronx are different,” “New Yorker: everything pisses me off,” and New York’s own Neil LaBute who says, in six words, “Writing is easy. Life is hard,” everyone has a New York story (even folks who don’t live here). And everyone loves a prize. We have a bunch of great ones.

• SIX people will have their Six-Word Memoir turned into a song by Michael Hearst of One Ring Zero;
• SIX people will get free admission to the event and be invited on stage to read his or her memoir;
• SIX people will be picked, at random, to win a gift package of Harper books, including the newest Six-Word Memoir book, It All Changed in An Instant.

All SMITH readers get 25 percent discounted admission. Use the code: SWM when purchasing tickets.

Submit your six on yourself/NYC in the comments area of this post by January 18, 5pm EST.

Photo: “Ghosts of New York,” courtesy of Flickr user thomashawk.