"Upstairs at the Square" w/ CRAIG FINN + CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE September 13, 2007

NEW YORK, NY (August 14, 2007) -- Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, today announced the next event in its new series, “Upstairs at the Square,” held at the Union Square Barnes & Noble in Manhattan (33 East 17th Street at Union Square). On Thursday, September 13, at 7pm, Craig Finn of The Hold Steady, makes a rare solo appearance, and Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whose new novel is Half of a Yellow Sun (Anchor, September 2007), discuss and perform their work. Journalist Katherine Lanpher hosts the program. Admission is free, and no tickets are required. Seating is available on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Originally from Minneapolis, Craig Finn is the New York-based singer and guitarist for The Hold Steady (www.theholdsteady.com), whose latest album is Boys and Girls in America (Vagrant). As NPR has observed, “The Hold Steady might just be the best bar band in America. With its riff-heavy mixture of classic rock and Craig Finn’s lyrically dense storytelling, the group crafts intricately detailed musical universes that have already made it a critical darling and fan favorite.” Please note that this appearance features Craig Finn only and not the full band.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and longlisted for the Booker. Praised by Time magazine as “a gorgeous, pitiless account of love, violence and betrayal during the Biafran war,” Half of a Yellow Sun is a masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by The Washington Post Book World as “the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe.” Adichie’s second novel re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed. Half of a Yellow Sun (www.halfofayellowsun.com) won the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for fiction.

Katherine Lanpher is an award-winning print and broadcast journalist. Springboard Press recently published her first book, Leap Days: Chronicle of a Midlife Move.

This summer, “Upstairs at the Square” celebrated a year of truly innovative cultural programming, having paired authors such as Paul Auster, David Lynch, Anna Gavalda, Armistead Maupin, and Gary Shteyngart with musicians including Badly Drawn Boy, Duncan Sheik and members of the cast of Spring Awakening, Sondre Lerche, Au Revoir Simone, Aidan Moffat, Elk City and more. A full archive of recordings of all twelve previous events is available on Barnes & Noble.com (bn.com/upstairs), where “Upstairs at the Square” is enjoyed by listeners around the world in addition to its live audiences.

About Barnes & Noble, Inc.
Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company, operates 793 bookstores in 50 states. For the fourth year in a row, the company is the nation’s top bookseller brand, as determined by a brand’s overall strength based on its combination of familiarity, quality and purchase intent, according to the EquiTrend® Brand Study by Harris Interactive®. Barnes & Noble conducts its online business through Barnes & Noble.com (www.bn.com), one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites.

General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company’s corporate Web site: http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com.

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Official Website: http://www.bn.com/upstairs