The fifteenth annual New Yorker Festival takes place over this weekend with the usual impressive line-up of actors, artists, and writers. They are discussing everything from whistle-blowing to sexual identity on television to Tolstoy, but this year, the festival is also debating a crucial topic: cats versus dogs.

In a mock trial on Saturday evening, experts and pet lovers will testify on behalf of each species. The canine team includes actor Jesse Eisenberg, Broadway animal trainer Bill Berloni, and former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson. It’s led by New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik, who says he needs no special tactics, as he has truth on his side, citing dogs’ versatility and the way they “domesticated themselves.” He says they “break into our circle of compassion” with their loyalty and devotion.

New Yorker staffer Ariel Levy’s cat team includes novelist Joyce Carol Oates, exotic cat breeder Anthony Hutcherson, and the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane. She says dogs lead us to expect absolute devotion, but cats, famously aloof, teach us the reality about relationships: “We can never know what another person, or being, is thinking.”

The judge is the New Yorker’s publisher, David Remnick, who is uniquely qualified, says Gopnik, as he “hates cats, hates dogs, and disapproves of anyone owing a pet.”

"It's not enough that we succeed. Cats must also fail."

( Leo Cullum. /The New Yorker)

Other highlights of the festival are conversations with composer Stephen Sondheim, actress and screen-writer Lena Dunham and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Tracy K. Smith is part of a poetry reading hosted by the magazine’s poetry editor Paul Muldoon. She said the festival is an opportunity to keep the oral tradition alive. “There’s something that happens in the voice that conveys meaning, it conveys mood and tone, and it catches us up in something that is almost pre-verbal.” 

Tracy K. Smith

(Tina Chang)

Smith’s poem “Duende” declares that “there’s always a question bigger than itself.” The festival is trying to answer some of them in its many dialogues and panels. These include discussions about the idea of homeland, crime fiction, sexual identity on television, and the chemistry of memory.

But for my money, the hot ticket is a master class in grammar offered by New Yorker proofreader Mary Norris. Full stop.

The fifteenth annual New Yorker Festival starts tonight, and runs through Sunday.