Tag Archives: authors

Brooklyn Book Festival, Next Week/Next Weekend

In case you haven’t heard:

bkbf-logo-headerBrooklyn Book Festival
Sunday, September 18 (10am-6pm, rain or shine)
BKBF Children’s Day: Literary Celebration for Families and Children
Saturday September 17th (10am-4pm, rain or shine)
Full Week of Literary “Bookend” Events
September 12th – 18th

The Brooklyn Book Festival is the largest free literary event in New York City, presenting an array of national and international literary stars and emerging authors. One of America’s premier book festivals, this hip, smart diverse gathering attracts thousands of book lovers of all ages to enjoy authors and the festival’s lively literary marketplace.

AUTHORS INCLUDE Margaret Atwood, Margo Jefferson, Faith Erin Hicks, Russell Banks, Phoebe Gloeckner, Chester Brown, Salman Rushdie, Libba Bray, Stephanie Danler, Gayle Forman, Pete Hamill, Jacqueline Woodson, Angela Flournoy, Helen Garner, Karin Slaughter, Bruce Schneier, Rebecca Traister, Marjorie Liu, Sayed Kashua, Esmeralda Santiago, Thomas Frank, Ralph Nader, Nicole Dennis-Benn, Yusef Komunyakaa, Joyce Carol Oates, A.O. Scott, Hua Hsu, Rob Sheffield, Yoss, Jessica Valenti, Cecily von Ziegesar, Ocean Vuong, Ed Yong and hundreds more.

Interview with Joy Williams in VICE

I’ve never read Joy Williams, but now I’m going to seek her out. All because of this article by Lincoln Michel. She does a great job of spelling out what a short story should do, while giving her view of humanity and mentioning the current corporate nature of writing workshops. (Agree or disagree?)

“What Is the Best Kurt Vonnegut Book?” in The Oyster Review

ph_0111201286-Vonnegut

Literary folks from all over give their takes here. Cat’s Cradle comes out the winner among them. As for me, I’d say that one or Slaughterhouse-Five. I think Breakfast of Champions is my least favorite. I also think about Player Piano, his first book, quite a bit, for its attack on corporations and bureaucracy. His essays from In These Times in A Man Without a Country are worth checking out, too.

Brooklyn Book Festival Is September 21

Their Book End Events begin on the 15th. Everything’s here on the site. 

Thurston Moore is back this year. I also see John Leguizamo and Bob Saget on the list of authors giving talks and readings. Jonathan Lethem, Paul Auster, Zadie Smith and Salman Rushdie are all on the list, too, which is huge and far-reaching. You can check it out here.

The Novelist and His/Her Protagonist

Cool essay by Catherine Lacey in BuzzFeed about being interviewed about your book and being mistaken for your protagonist. Somebody once said, all fiction is memoir, or something like that. Maybe it is, but not exactly.

She says:
I realized that when reporters tease out similarities between novelists and their protagonists, it’s not only boring and lazy, but offensive to the whole point of writing fiction.

Literary Encounters, This Thursday April 3 at Community Bookstore

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Jamaica Kincaid in conversation with Lauren K. Alleyne

Thursday, April 3rd at 7pm
Community Bookstore (143 7th Ave, Brooklyn)

Sackett Street is thrilled to co-host Literary Encounters, a new series from Adelphi University’s MFA program, Guernica, Community Bookstore, and Sackett Street.

This event is FREE and open to the public.
RSVP via Facebook

Next Sackett Street Reading Is April 7 at BookCourt

 

Come out for one of the best reading series in NYC!

The Sackett Street Writers’ Series at BookCourt features readings by talented SSWW members and alumni.

The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop was founded in 2002 by writer Julia Fierro, and what began as eight writers meeting in the kitchen of a Brooklyn brownstone has developed into a creative home for over 2000 writers.

Picked as a a “Top alternative to MFA programs” by Poets & Writers, as the “Best substitute for an MFA” by The L Magazine, and as the “Best resource for developing writers” by Brooklyn Magazine,  Sackett Street offers writing workshops throughout the NYC area.

Today, Sackett Street writers live in all boroughs of New York City, and across the world, and many return to the workshops for multiple sessions. Alumni have been accepted at top MFA Creative Writing programs and writing conferences, have won fellowships and awards, and have completed and published short fiction and poetry collections, novels and memoirs.

Performer Bio(s):

Kelly Braffet is the author of the novel Save Yourself. Her previous works include the novels Josie and Jack and Last Seen Leaving, and her writing has been published in The Fairy Tale Review, Post Road, and several anthologies. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University and currently lives in upstate New York.

Richard Fulco received an MFA in Playwriting from Brooklyn College. His plays have been either presented or developed at The New York International Fringe Festival, The Playwrights’ Center, The Flea, Here Arts Center, Chicago Dramatists and the Dramatists Guild. His stories, reviews and interviews have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Failbetter, The Rusty Toque, the Daily Vault and American Songwriter. He is the founder of the online music magazine Riffraf. There Is No End to This Slope is his first novel.

Ted Thompson’s debut novel, The Land of Steady Habits, will be published by Little, Brown in late March 2014. His stories have appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, Best New American Voices and Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, among other publications. He received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and fellowships from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Ledig House, and the Truman Capote Trust. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their dog, Raisin, and is a proud faculty member at the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop.

Caeli Wolfson Widger’s debut novel, Real Happy Family, has been described in reviews as a “page-turner that strikes the balance between humor and heart”; a member of the “Tolstoyan literary tradition, offer[ing] both a scathing social critique and a sympathetic look at relationships and moral indiscretions ; a “sharply funny [skewering] of Hollywood fame-seekers” and “an unsparing take on damaged family ecosystems [that] makes for compulsive reading.” She lives with her husband and three children in Santa Monica, where she teaches writing workshops and is completing her second novel.

Kevin Barry in The Rumpus

I love these Rumpus author interviews. They keep me going as a writer. Here’s an excerpt from one with Kevin Barry, whose work I know nothing about, but hopefully will very soon:

Rumpus: Can fiction writers avoid revealing themselves in their work?

Barry: Not at all. In fiction, I think, your soul is pinned onto the page in every sentence you write. I think you can hide in an essay. You can hide in a piece of nonfiction. You can put on facades, and so forth. I don’t think you can do that in fiction. I think everything about you, despite all your best efforts, will come out on the page.

Rumpus: You said last night it’s easier to lie in nonfiction.

Barry: I’ve always thought that. Especially with that debate that was current for a while—after the David Shields book Reality Hunger—“Has fiction had its day? Or, “Are we tiring of what seems like a false presentation of supposed realities?” But I think fiction is a truer mode, because it’s so hard to lie there. You have less control in fiction. You can get away with less there. And that’s what makes it magical. That’s what makes it really interesting.

Read the whole thing here.

Brooklyn Book Fest Is This Sunday

I hear Tony Danza’s gonna be there. I can’t wait. Here are the details for this year’s BBF:
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2012
10am-6pm
Brooklyn Borough Hall and Plaza

209 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn NY 11201

BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL BOOKEND EVENTS
SEPTEMBER 17-23, 2012

2012 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL: A RECORD 280+ AUTHORS, MORE THAN 104 PANELS CONFIRMED FOR SEPTEMBER 23; OVER 50 “BOOKEND” EVENTS MAKE A FULL-WEEK FESTIVAL

Paul Auster, Carol Higgins Clark, Tony Danza, Jimmie Walker, Edwidge Danticat, Pete Hamill, Joyce Carol Oates, Colson Whitehead, Dennis Lehane, Esmeralda Santiago, Terry McMillan, Sapphire, Billy Collins, Earl Lovelace, Christopher Hayes, Dan Savage, Isabel Wilkerson, Pankaj Mishra, Karl Ove Knausgård, Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez, Adrian Tomine, Gordon Korman, R.J. Palacio, Judith Viorst, Libba Bray and many, many more to headline Festival

Click here for the full press release and here for a full schedule

 

Joe Meno’s Electric Lit Interview

This was my favorite part of the interview that will stick with me for some time:

Joe Meno: …When I look at the last twelve years, it seems like the trend in publishing is to write these big, 700-page books, where there’s this certain tone that feels a little bit sarcastic, or there’s this bombardment of information about economics or World War II. As I was writing the book, I thought, Well, that’s real interesting, and it’s an interesting use of the novel. But you could also use the novel to do this really small thing. This thing that would never be a film, or never be a TV series, because it’s only about these two people.

There’s a bunch of novels that follow that, they just haven’t been produced here in the last fifteen years or so. Books like Goodbye, Columbus, or a number of French novels from the 50s that have this really beautiful, bare, focused quality.