Brooklyn Book Festival
Sunday 20 September, 2015
11am - 7pm, $0
Various locations
​The Internet: The Great Equalizer?
Brooklyn Law School Student Lounge, 250 Joralemon St
11:00am
The Internet: The Great Equalizer? The conventional wisdom is that the digital revolution was a democratizing force, ushering in a new era of equal participation and information sharing. Has this truth obscured a more complicated reality? Jon Ronson (So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed) looks at the overreach of virtual hordes, Astra Taylor (The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age) reveals the inequity and corporate exploitation behind the new landscape, and John Seabrook (The Song Machine), tech/culture reporter for the New Yorker, explores the possibilities and dangers of streaming services and other technologies revolutionizing music. Moderated by the host of WNYC’s “Note to Self” Manoush Zomorodi.
New York Review of Books Presents: Civil Rights & Policing
Brooklyn Law School Moot Courtroom, 250 Joralemon St
11:00am
New York Review of Books Presents: Civil Rights & Policing. In a discussion moderated by Robert Silvers, Editor of The New York Review of Books, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, essayist and novelist Darryl Pinckney, and Laurie Robinson, Co-Chair of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing and Member, Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections, will reflect on and discuss issues of race and bias as they relate to law enforcement, civil rights, and whether the recommendations of the White House Task Force, if implemented, can practically address and dismantle sources of conflict, deepening racial divisions, and high rates of incarceration in African-American and Latino populations in the U.S.
Concrete Jungle--Where Dreams are Made
St. Francis College Auditorium, 180 Remsen St
12:00pm
Concrete Jungle--Where Dreams are Made. John Leguizamo (Ghetto Klown) and Jonathan Lethem (Lucky Alan and Other Stories) come together to discuss how the city shaped them as storytellers--and how their stories have been adapted on stage, screen, across comics or books, and ever reinvented. Screen Projection. Moderated by Steph Opitz, Literary Director, Texas Book Festival.
That Global 70s Show
Borough Hall Media Room, 209 Joralemon St
12:00pm
That Global 70s Show. For American audiences, familiar images of the shaggy-haired 1970s are often evoked in literature, movies, and television. How did that pivotal decade play out in other parts of the world, and how does it powerfully inform the works of Mexican authorGuadalupe Nettel (The Body Where I Was Born), Chilean author Alejandro Zambra(My Documents), and Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov (The Physics of Sorrow) Moderated by Anderson Tepper.
The London Review of Books Presents: Fiction, Memoir, Criticism
Brooklyn Historical Society, 128 Pierrepont St
12:00pm
The London Review of Books Presents: Fiction, Memoir, Criticism. Panelists Renata Adler, Elif Batuman, and Gary Indiana and moderator Christian Lorentzen will discuss the panelists' writings in the modes of fiction, memoir, and criticism as well as current problems and possibilities in American journalism and literature.
Modern Families
North Stage, Cadman Plaza East
1:00pm
Modern Families. The memoirists here turn an eye on the eternal question: what is a family? Spanning a trailblazing journalist's love of rock'n'roll and women, the iconic New York working girls leading lives of spinsterhood, or the hilarious sideways stories of psychiatry and childhood, join these memoirists as we explore what it takes to make a life of one's own, featuringCharles Blow, Kate Bolick (Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own), Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors), and Robert Christgau (Going Into the City). Moderated by Lisa Lucas, Guernica.
The Lost Middle Class
Brooklyn Law School Moot Courtroom, 250 Joralemon St
1:00pm
The Lost Middle Class. Generations spent their lives aspiring to be "middle class" -- a home-owner, a college graduate, a successful professional with vacation and disposable income. Others struggled to live within its expectations. Join Pulitzer Prize winner Margo Jefferson (Negroland),Meghan Daum (Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House), and CUNY Graduate Center professor Stanley Aronowitz (The Death and Life of American Labor: Toward a New Worker's Movement) as they explore what happened to this dream. Moderated by Anna Holmes, founder Jezebel.com.
Darkness and Light
Borough Hall Media Room, 209 Joralemon St
1:00pm
Darkness and Light. After darkness there is light, then again darkness. 2015 Man Booker International Prize winner László Krasznahorkai (Seiobo There Below),Andrés Neuman (The Things We Don’t Do), and Naja Marie Aidt (Rock, Paper, Scissors) explore the unsettling cycles and silences of everyday life, moments that are felt but rarely articulated—allowing the reader to glimpse the transcendent in the ordinary with new intensity. Moderated byGabriel Sanders.
Subverting Tropes: Household Appliances, Talking Dogs, and Robinson Crusoe
Borough Hall Media Room, 209 Joralemon St
2:00pm
Subverting Tropes: Household Appliances, Talking Dogs, and Robinson Crusoe Novelists Naja Marie Aidt (Rock, Paper, Scissors), André Alexis (Fifteen Dogs) and Christian Kracht (Imperium) in conversation about their respective use of a mystery, a moral fable, and an adventure story to explore what happens when a son discovers his criminal father's devastating secret in a broken toaster; dogs are given human consciousness and the power of speech; and a radical vegetarian and nudist anti-hero founds a South Seas colony dedicated to coconuts and sun. What do these clever subversions of tropes and genres have to teach us about ourselves? Moderated by Rivka Galchen.
Binary Stars
St. Francis McArdle, 180 Remsen St
2:00pm
Binary Stars. A man preoccupied with P words and women, a comedy of errors narrated by a fascinated onlooker, someone whose job and life revolves around authors meets one of his idols.Daniel Alarcón (At Night We Walk in Circles), Anakana Schofield (Martin John), and Jonathan Galassi (Muse) create realities where their characters revolve around their fixations with other people. Join them as they discuss building conflict and complicated characters. Moderated byCamille Perri, Cosmopolitan Magazine.
​Writing about Place in the Age of the Global City
Brooklyn Law School Moot Courtroom, 250 Joralemon St
2:00pm
Writing about Place in the Age of the Global City. Some cities belong to the hearts and minds of the world as much as to their own nation. Join Luc Sante, author of the New York classic Low Life, and the forthcoming The Other Paris; Vivian Gornick, one of New York's great chroniclers, and author of The Odd Woman in the City; and David Ulin, chronicler of the city of angels, Los Angeles. These writers discuss the role of cities, in particular New York, Paris and Los Angeles, in this globalized age. Moderated by Rich Benjamin, Searching for Whitopia.
Time Traveling
Borough Hall Courtroom, 209 Joralemon St
2:00pm
Time Traveling. Three writers discuss what riveted them to the time and location of their most recent novels and how the past speaks to the present. Jami Attenberg's Saint Mazie is set in early-20th-century New York; Marlon James's A Brief History of Seven Killings takes place in Jamaica in the 1970s, and Stewart O'Nan's West of Sunset follows F. Scott Fitzgerald to Hollywood in the 1930s. Moderated by Nicholas Laughlin, Bocas Lit Fest.
Redrawing Boundaries
St. Francis College Auditorium, 180 Remsen St
2:00pm
Redrawing Boundaries. In the work ofEduardo Halfon (The Polish Boxer), Geoff Dyer ( Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi), and Francine Prose (Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris1932 ), there are outsiders trying to get in, insiders trying to get out, and all types of boundary making and breaking—from a salacious race car driver, to a jaded journalist, to a nomadic professor. Moderated by Ryan Chapman(Conversation Sparks, BOMB Magazine).
​Case by Case
Brooklyn Law School Student Lounge, 250 Joralemon St
3:00pm
Case by Case. Three authors – Elisa Albert (After Birth), Paul Beatty (The Sellout), and Heidi Julavits (The Folded Clock) turn a satirical eye on motherhood, parental relationships, and societal expectations, looking at the lasting impact they have on the upbringing of their characters and narrators. Short readings and discussion. Moderated by Emily Gould(Friendship).
The American Essay
Brooklyn Historical Society Library, 128 Pierrepont St
4:00pm
The American Essay. In a time when the form of the essay can be found online and on bestseller lists, these essayists have one maddening, fascinating topic in common: America, and what it means to explore our country and homeland in this day and age. It can be argued that Americans have perfected the essay, from Emerson to Coates, and our essays are squarely within this tradition. Come discuss the American essay in 2015 with Wendy S. Walters (Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal), Kent Russell (I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son), and Leslie Jamison (The Empathy Exams). Moderated by Phillip Lopate.
The Culture of Architecture
Brooklyn Law School Student Lounge, 250 Joralemon St
4:00pm
The Culture of Architecture. Pulitzer Prize–winning architectural critic Paul Goldberger (Building Art) and architect and architectural historian and essayist, Witold Rybcznski (Mysteries of the Mall and Other Essays) in conversation. Goldberger’s new book explores the life and work of Frank Gehry, and his influences on 21st Century architecture. Rybczynski’s collection of essays, which cast a critical eye on the impact of architecture on the modern world, span decades of his writing for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the New York Times and more. Moderated by Kelsey Keith, Curbed.
The New Latin American Literature: A View from Within
St. Francis College Auditorium, 180 Remsen St
4:00pm
The New Latin American Literature: A View from Within. A very special, freewheeling conversation among some of the leading lights of a new generation of Latin American writers—many of them both peers and friends—as they talk about how their work intersects, inspires, and speaks to each other across borders. Authors include Mexican writers Valeria Luiselli, Guadalupe Nettel, and Yuri Herrera; Chilean author Alejandro Zambra; and Argentine author Andrés Neuman. Moderated by Daniel Alarcón.
​The Art of Story
Brooklyn Historical Society, 128 Pierrepont St
5:00pm
The Art of Story. Two award-winning, master storytellers discuss their newest books and how their unique fictional voices emerge across different mediums and genres. Adrian Tomine’s Killing and Dying is his much anticipated collection of short graphic fiction, beautiful and haunting stories of modern life, and prolific author A.M. Homes newest work, May We Be Forgiven, also takes on dark topics in a nightmare-scape of suburbia. Moderated by Nicole Rudick, Paris Review. Screen Projection.
Community Bookstore presents: A Celebration of Elena Ferrante
St. Francis McArdle, 180 Remsen St
5:00pm
Community Bookstore presents: A Celebration of Elena Ferrante. The finale to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan quartet arrives this fall with the publication of The Story of the Lost Child, marking an end to one of this decade's most significant literary events. Join us for a panel discussion of Ferrante's saga, featuring Europa publisher Michael Reynolds,translator Ann Goldstein, author Lauren Groff, and Guernica publisher Lisa Lucas.
The Critic as Creator
Brooklyn Law School Moot Courtroom, 250 Joralemon St
5:00pm
The Critic as Creator. A cultural critic creates magic out of the mundane, using art as a window into the human condition. Join Jessica Hopper (The First Collection Of Criticism By A Living Female Rock Critic) and Geoff Dyer (Another Great Day at Sea and Otherwise Known as the Human Condition), in conversation with Jason Diamond as they discuss the way criticism can make you think sideways, as art--from music to photography--intersects with politics, history, feminism, and even the art of thinking about art itself.
The Nation at 150
St. Ann & The Holy Trinity Church, 157 Montague St
5:00pm
The Nation at 150. 2015 marks the 150th anniversary of The Nation magazine. The story of The Nation is also the story of America’s hidden history of resistance and struggle against racial discrimination, economic injustice and intolerance. That opposition has had many names from the patrician reformers of the 1860s to more recent fights against corporate globalization, free trade, economic inequality, the destruction of the environment and police brutality. Join a conversation about The Nation and the social change movements it has long chronicled with Katrina vanden Heuvel(The Nation: 150th Anniversary), Greg Grandin (Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman), Patricia J. Williams (The Blind Goddess: A Reader on Race and Justice) and MSNBC host Chris Hayes (Twilight of the Elites)