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Clive Thompson: Coders w/ Anil Dash
Tuesday March 26 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Programmers are among the most quietly influential people on the planet, and any serious engagement with the world demands an engagement with code and its consequences. Clive Thompson takes readers close to some of the great coders of our time, and unpacks the surprising history of the field, beginning with the first great coders, who were women.
Who exactly are the coders building today’s world? When most are college-educated, white men, how does that impact the digital world they are building? For example, if women or people of color had been involved in the early days of Twitter, would their experiences with bullying have shaped how the platform dealt with cyberbullying? Thompson also examines the intersection of coding and groundbreaking developments in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and virtual reality. Clive Thompson is a longtime contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired. He is the author of Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better. Anil Dash is the CEO of Glitch, the friendly community where millions of creators collaborate to discover and create apps together. He is recognized as one of the most prominent voices advocating for a more humane, inclusive and ethical technology industry through his work as an entrepreneur, activist and writer. Dash also hosts Function, a podcast exploring how tech is shaping culture and society, which leapt into the top 5 technology podcasts in Apple's store just after its launch in 2018. This event is free! 
Bryan Washington: Lot w/ Jia Tolentino
Wednesday March 27 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Around him, others live and thrive and die in Houston’s myriad neighborhoods: a young woman whose affair detonates across an apartment complex, a ragtag baseball team, a group of young hustlers, hurricane survivors, a local drug dealer who takes a Guatemalan teen under his wing, a reluctant chupacabra.
Bryan Washington’s brilliant, viscerally drawn world vibrates with energy, wit, and the infinite longing of people searching for home. With soulful insight into what makes a community, a family, and a life, Lot explores trust and love in all its unsparing and unsteady forms. Bryan Washington has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, BuzzFeed, Vulture, The Paris Review, Tin House, One Story, Bon Appétit, MUNCHIES, American Short Fiction, GQ, FADER, The Awl, and Catapult. He lives in Houston. Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at the New Yorker. She grew up in Texas, went to University of Virginia, and got her MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan. Trick Mirror, her first essay collection, will be published by Random House in 2019. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Duncan Hannah: 20th Century Boy w/ Gerry Howard
Thursday March 28 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Celebrated painter Duncan Hannah arrived in New York City from Minneapolis in the early 1970s as an art student hungry for experience, game for almost anything, and with a prodigious taste for drugs, girls, alcohol, movies, rock and roll, books, parties, and everything else the city had to offer. Taken directly from the notebooks Hannah kept throughout the decade, Twentieth-Century Boy is a fascinating, sometimes lurid, and incredibly entertaining report from a now almost mythical time and place. Full of outrageously bad behavior, naked ambition, fantastically good music, and evaporating barriers of taste and decorum, and featuring cameos from David Bowie, Andy Warhol, Patti Smith, and many more, it is a rollicking account of an artist’s coming of age.
Duncan Hannah was born in Minneapolis in 1952. He attended Bard College from 1971 to 1973 and Parsons School of Design from 1973 to 1975. His work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Art Institute. Twentieth Century Boy: Notebooks of the Seventies is his first book. Gerry Howard is executive editor and vice president of Doubleday Books. He received the 2009 Maxwell E. Perkins Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Field of Fiction, and has worked over the years with authors such as Paul Auster, Chuck Palahniuk, Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, Pat Barker, and Hanya Hanagihara. Howard’s essays and reviews have appeared in Bookforum, Tin House, American Scholar, London Review of Books, n+1, Salon, and other publications. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Storytime with Mika Song: A Friend for Harry
Saturday March 30 | 11:00AM - 12:00PM
In Classroom Six, second left down the hall, Henry has been on the lookout for a friend. A friend who shares. A friend who listens. Maybe even a friend who likes things to stay the same and all in order, as Henry does. But on a day full of too close and too loud, when nothing seems to go right, will Henry ever find a friend—or will a friend find him? With insight and warmth, this heartfelt story from the perspective of a boy on the autism spectrum celebrates the everyday magic of friendship.
Mika Song is a children's author/illustrator who makes stories about sweetly funny outsiders. She draws much inspiration from her childhood in Manila, Philippines and Honolulu, Hawaii. She is the author and illustrator of Tea with Oliver and Picnic with Oliver. Currently she is working on a graphic novel for young readers coming in 2020 from Random House Graphic. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Ruth Reichl: Save Me the Plums w/ Jeff Gordinier @ St. Ann's Church
Monday April 01 | 7:00PM - 9:00PM
Join Ruth Reichl and Books Are Magic as we celebrate her new memoir, Save Me the Plums with Jeff Gordinier at St. Ann's Church! 
Pat Cummings: Trace w/ Laurent Linn
Monday April 01 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
When Trace, a recently orphaned African American middle schooler, sees a ghost wearing old-fashioned clothing in the basement of the New York Public Library, he begins to learn more about his own family’s past.
Trace Carter doesn’t know how to feel at ease in his new life in New York. Even though his artsy Auntie Lea is cool, her brownstone still isn’t his home. Haunted by flashbacks of the accident that killed his parents, the best he can do is try to distract himself from memories of the past. But the past isn’t done with him. When Trace takes a wrong turn in the New York Public Library, he finds someone else lost in the stacks with him: a crying little boy, wearing old, tattered clothes. And though at first he can’t quite believe he’s seen a ghost, Trace soon discovers that the boy he saw has ties to Trace’s own history—and that he himself may be the key to setting the dead to rest. Author and/or illustrator of over 40 books for young readers, Pat Cummings also teaches children's book courses at Parsons and Pratt and holds a summer Boot Camp to bring writers and illustrators together with top editors and art directors. She serves on the boards of SCBWI, the Authors Guild and Authors League Fund and as Chair of the Founders Award Jury for the Society of Illustrators’ Original Art Show. Her debut middle grade novel, Trace and her most recent picture book, Beauty and the Beast, are both published by HarperCollins. Pat can be reached at write2me@patcummings.com or followed on Twitter @PatCummingsBook. Laurent Linn is the author/illustrator of the critically acclaimed YA novel Draw the Line, published to multiple starred reviews, that the New York Times called “epic.” He is also Art Director at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, where he collaborates on picture books, middle grade, and teen novels with both celebrated and new illustrators and authors. Laurent began his career as a puppet designer/builder in Jim Henson’s Muppet Workshop, creating characters for productions including the Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island films, and eventually becoming the Creative Director for the Sesame Street Muppets, winning an Emmy Award. www.laurentlinn.com This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Patricia Marx and Roz Chast: Why Don’t You Write My Eulogy Now So I Can Correct It? w/ Emily Flake
Tuesday April 02 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Every mother knows best, but New Yorker writer Patty Marx's knows better. Patty has never been able to shake her mother's one-line witticisms from her brain, so she's collected them into a book, accompanied by full color illustrations by New Yorker staff cartoonist Roz Chast. These snappy maternal cautions include:
If you feel guilty about throwing away leftovers, put them in the back of your refrigerator for five days and then throw them out. If you run out of food at your dinner party, the world will end. When traveling, call the hotel from the airport to say there aren't enough towels in your room and, by the way, you'd like a room with a better view. Why don't you write my eulogy now so I can correct it? Every child will want to buy this for mom on Mother's Day! Patricia Marx has been contributing to The New Yorker since 1989. She is a former writer for “Saturday Night Live” and “Rugrats,” and is the author of several books. Marx was the first woman elected to the Harvard Lampoon. She has taught screenwriting and humor writing at Princeton, New York University, and Stony Brook University. She was the recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship. Roz Chast has loved to draw cartoons since she was a child growing up in Brooklyn. She attended Rhode Island School of Design, majoring in Painting because it seemed more artistic. However, soon after graduating, she reverted to type and began drawing cartoons once again. Emily Flake is a cartoonist, writer, performer and illustrator living in Brooklyn, NY. Her work appears regularly in the New Yorker, the Nib, the American Bystander, and numerous other publications. Her book of cartoons and essays about parenting, Mama Tried, was published by Grand Central in 2015. She performs a hybrid of cartooning and standup at venues across New York City and beyond. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Lori Gottlieb: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone w/ Katie Couric
Wednesday April 03 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.
As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients’ lives — a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can’t stop hooking up with the wrong guys — she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell. With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change. Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author who writes The Atlantic's weekly “Dear Therapist” advice column. A contributing editor for The Atlantic, she also writes for The New York Times Magazine, and appears as a frequent expert on relationships, parenting, and hot-button mental health topics in media such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, CNN, and NPR. Her most recent book, MAYBE YOU SHOULD TALK TO SOMEONE is in development for a television series at ABC. Learn more at LoriGottlieb.com or by following her @LoriGottlieb1 on Twitter. Katie Couric (@katiecouric) is an award-winning journalist, Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C) co-founder, and New York Times best-selling author. SU2C has raised over $623 million to fund scientific research teams. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Margaret, Irene, & Andrew Li: Double Awesome Chinese Food w/ Michael Harlan Turkell
Thursday April 04 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Too intimidated to cook Chinese food at home but crave those punchy flavors? Not anymore. Put down that takeout kung pao chicken and get in the kitchen! Full of irresistible recipes that marry traditional Asian ingredients with comforting American classics and seasonal ingredients, Double Awesome Chinese Food delivers the goods. The three fun-loving Chinese-American siblings behind the acclaimed restaurant Mei Mei take the fear factor out of cooking this complex cuisine, infusing it with creativity, playfulness, and ease.
Take the Double Awesome: flaky scallion pancakes stuffed with two oozy eggs, sharp cheddar, and garlicky pesto; could there be anything better? Ridiculously delicious and unexpected dishes like Cranberry Sweet and Sour Stir-fried Pork and Red Curry Frito Pie will become new staples for your cooking lineup. Throw a hands-on dumpling-making party and let your friends decide whether to serve them chewy and pan-seared or crackly and deep-fried. Packed with pro-cooking tips, sauces to amp up any meal, sustainable sourcing advice, and over 100 delicious recipes, this book is your ticket to making the Chinese food of your dreams any night of the week. Margaret, Irene, and Andrew Li are the sibling co-owners of a food truck and restaurant in Boston, Massachusetts. Their food truck, Mei Mei Street Kitchen, opened in 2012 and was soon awarded Boston’s Best Meals on Wheels by Boston Magazine. Their brick-and-mortar restaurant opened in late 2013 and was named Eater Boston’s Restaurant of the Year. Margaret (aka Mei) currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband and daughter and an ever-growing collection of cookbooks and board games. Irene is a four-time James Beard Rising Star Chef semi-finalist who loves rescue dogs and hip-hop dance videos. She lives in Boston with her husband. Andrew enjoys grilling, binge reading science fiction novels, and visiting every bouncy house in Greater Boston with his son, Jackson. Michael Harlan Turkell is an award-winning food photographer and cookbook author of "ACID TRIP: Travels in the World of Vinegar". He hosts The Food Seen podcast on Heritage Radio Network, as well as Food52's Burnt Toast podcast. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Amor Towles: A Gentleman in Moscow @ First Unitarian Church
Friday April 05 | 7:00PM - 9:00PM
Join Books Are Magic and Amor Towles as he celebrates the paperback release of his smash hit novel, A Gentleman in Moscow!
From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility—a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel. In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery. Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose. Amor Towles was born and raised in the Boston area. He graduated from Yale University and received an MA in English from Stanford University. An investment professional for more than twenty years, he now devotes himself full time to writing. His first novel, Rules of Civility, published in 2011, was a New York Times bestseller. Towles lives in Manhattan with his wife and two children. This event will take place at First Unitarian Congregational Society at 119 Pierrepont St. in Brookyn. Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Mary Laura Philpott: I Miss You When I Blink w/ Mari Andrew
Friday April 05 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Mary Laura Philpott thought she’d cracked the code: Always be right, and you’ll always be happy.
But once she’d completed her life’s to-do list (job, spouse, house, babies—check!), she found that instead of feeling content and successful, she felt anxious. Lost. Stuck in a daily grind of overflowing calendars, grueling small talk, and sprawling traffic. She’d done everything “right,” but she felt all wrong. What’s the worse failure, she wondered: smiling and staying the course, or blowing it all up and running away? And are those the only options? In this memoir-in-essays full of spot-on observations about home, work, and creative life, Philpott takes on the conflicting pressures of modern adulthood with wit and heart. She offers up her own stories to show that identity crises don’t happen just once or only at midlife; reassures us that small, recurring personal re-inventions are both normal and necessary; and advises that if you’re going to faint, you should get low to the ground first. Most of all, Philpott shows that when you stop feeling satisfied with your life, you don’t have to burn it all down and set off on a transcontinental hike (unless you want to, of course). You can call upon your many selves to figure out who you are, who you’re not, and where you belong. Who among us isn’t trying to do that? Mary Laura Philpott’s writing has been featured in print or online by the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, McSweeney's, Paris Review, and other publications. She's the founding editor of Musing, the online magazine of Parnassus Books (where she is a bookseller), as well as an Emmy-winning cohost of the literary interview show A Word on Words on Nashville Public Television. She lives in Nashville with her family. Visit her at MaryLauraPhilpott.com. Mari Andrew is a writer and illustrator living in New York who values optimism, resilience, vulnerability, and joie de vivre. In addition to her widely popular Instagram account, her writing and illustrations have appeared on BuzzFeed, NYLON, Paste, Bored Panda, and HelloGiggles, and she has a weekly feature on A Cup of Jo. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Storytime w/ Finn & Michael Buckley: Lenny the Lobster Can’t Stay for Dinner
Saturday April 06 | 11:00AM - 12:00PM
A choose-your-own-ending tale of a distinguished lobster and a fateful dinner party
When invited to a fancy dinner party, Lenny brings thoughtful gifts for the hosts and enthusiasm for whatever's in store. But when he's greeted with a pot of boiling water and lobster bibs, Lenny [and readers] must quickly decide: should he stay or go? This laugh-out-loud text by bestselling author Michael Buckley and his 10-year-old son Finn is stunningly accompanied by illustrations that demonstrate Catherine Meurisse's flare for the dramatic. Michael Buckley is the author of the New York Times bestselling series Sisters Grimm and N.E.R.D.S., as well as several other successful children's books. Finn Buckley is 10 years old, and this book is his first. Father and son live in Brooklyn, New York. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Erin Somers: Stay Up with Hugo Best w/ Blythe Roberson
Monday April 08 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
June Bloom is a broke, cynical twenty-nine-year-old writers’ assistant on the late-night comedy show, Stay Up with Hugo Best. Hugo Best is in his sixties, a beloved icon of TV and humor, and a notorious womanizer. After he unexpectedly retires and a party is held for his now unemployed staff, June ends up at a dive bar for an open-mic night and prepares for the sad return to the anonymous comedian lifestyle. What she’s not prepared for is a run-in with Hugo at that dive bar. Nor for the invitation that swiftly follows: Hugo asks June to come to his mansion in Greenwich for the long Memorial Day weekend. “No funny business,” he insists.
June, in need of a job and money, confident she can handle herself, but secretly harboring the remains of a childhood crush on the charming older comedian and former role model, accepts. The exact terms of the visit are never spelled out, but June is realistic and clear-eyed enough to guess. Even so, as the weekend unfolds and the enigmatic Hugo gradually reveals himself, their dynamic proves to be much more complicated and less predictable than she expected. At once hilarious and poignant, brilliantly incisive and terrifically propulsive, Stay Up with Hugo Best is an incredibly timely exploration of sexual politics in the #MeToo age, and the unforgettable story of one young woman’s poignant stumbling into adulthood. Erin Somers’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House Open Bar, Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, McSweeney’s, the Cincinnati Review, and many other publications. She holds an MFA from the University of New Hampshire and was a 2016 NYC Center for Fiction Emerging Writer Fellow and a 2016 Millay Colony resident. She lives in Beacon, New York with her husband and daughter. Stay Up with Hugo Best is her first novel. Blythe Roberson is a writer and comedian whose work has been published by the New Yorker, The Onion, ClickHole, VICE Magazine, and others. She works as a researcher at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Blythe is the author of How to Date Men When You Hate Men. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Amy Rose Spiegel: No One Does It Like You
Tuesday April 09 | 7:00PM - 8:30PM
Please join us as we celebrate the launch of Amy Rose Spiegel's No One Does It Like You with a reading featuring Laia Garcia, Jasmine Sanders, Thora Siemsen, Mayukh Sen, Jinnie Lee, and Maris Kreizman.
There are moments, hours, days when you’re just going through it. The sentences in this book are here to serve as bridges to a brighter state of mind. Eloquent language is paired with vibrant illustrations for a collection of charming and surprising affirmations that feel like they come not from a book, but from a true and wise friend who’s been where you’ve been. Amy Rose Spiegel is a writer and editor living in New York City. She is the author of Action: A Book About Sex and is currently a senior editor at Broadly, VICE’s channel dedicated to representing the multiplicity of female and LGBTQ+ identities. She previously served as an editor at Rookie and BuzzFeed. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, Rolling Stone, the FADER, the New Republic, and many other outlets. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Abby Wambach: WOLFPACK w/ Glennon Doyle at Plymouth Church
Tuesday April 09 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Books Are Magic is thrilled to host two-time Olympic gold medalist and activist Abby Wambach for her book, WOLFPACK: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game.
Based on her inspiring, viral 2018 commencement speech to Barnard College’s graduates in New York City,New York Times bestselling author, two-time Olympic gold medalist and FIFA World Cup champion Abby Wambach delivers her empowering rally cry for women to unleash their individual power, unite with their pack, and emerge victorious together. Abby Wambach became a champion because of her incredible talent as a soccer player. She became an icon because of her remarkable wisdom as a leader. As the co-captain of the 2015 Women’s World Cup Champion Team, she created a culture not just of excellence, but of honor, commitment, resilience, and sisterhood. She helped transform a group of individual women into one of the most successful, powerful and united Wolfpacks of all time. In her retirement, Abby’s ready to do the same for her new team: All Women Everywhere. In WOLFPACK, Abby’s message to women is: We have never been Little Red Riding Hood. We Are the Wolves. We must wander off the path and blaze a new one: together. Abby Wambach is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, FIFA World Cup Champion, and the highest all-time international goal scorer for male and female soccer players. She is an activist for equality and inclusion and the New York Times bestselling author of Forward: A Memoir. Abby is co-founder of Wolfpack Endeavor, which is revolutionizing leadership development for women in the workplace and beyond through her champion mindset, individualized coaching, and team-bound focus. Abby lives in Florida with her wife and three children. Each ticket comes with a copy of Abby's book WOLFPACK. Tickets are nonrefundable. If you miss the event, in order to receive your book you will need to contact us within 30 days of the event. 
Hetty McKinnon: Family w/ Amanda Shapiro
Wednesday April 10 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Dreaming up flavorful yet nutritious meals, night after night, is one of the greatest challenges in home cooking. The secret to success is developing a repertoire of family classics—simple, adaptable, and nourishing recipes that you will want to cook time and time again. In Family, Hetty McKinnon shares her approach to modern, hearty, and healthy comfort food that is powered by vegetables. Some of these recipes are heirlooms, passed on from her mother, others are old family favorites, and many are healthier variations on much-loved food. With everything from a deconstructed falafel salad of roasted chickpeas and fresh greens to an earthy miso brown butter pasta with sage to sticky banana golden syrup dumplings, this book provides fun, uncomplicated food for everyone. Interwoven with McKinnon’s recipes are family stories from home cooks around the world. Family teaches home cooks how to build a repertoire of crowd pleasing, flavorful vegetarian meals and shows families how to successfully eat healthily together.
Hetty McKinnon is a cook and food writer with a passion for vegetables. In 2011, she established Arthur Street Kitchen, a local salad-delivery business run out of her inner-city terrace in Surry Hills, Sydney. In 2015, Hetty, with her family and Arthur Street Kitchen in tow, relocated to Brooklyn, New York City, where she writes about food and runs pop up food events and workshops out of her Brooklyn-based creative space, Neighborhood Studio. Amanda Shapiro is the editor of Healthyish, a site from Bon Appétit that covers the wide world of wellness through the lens of delicious food. Previously she was a freelance journalist covering gender and health for publications like Vice, BuzzFeed, and the Oxford American. She was born in San Francisco, home to the best farmers’ markets, and raised in New Haven, home to the best pizza. She likes to run long distances and never cook the same thing twice. Her dream meal involves sweet potatoes and salmon in some configuration with a chocolate tahini brownie for dessert. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Bon Appétit presents Kwame Onwuachi: Notes from a Young Black Chef w/ Joshua David Stein
Thursday April 11 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
By the time he was twenty-seven, Kwame Onwuachi had competed on Top Chef, cooked at the White House, and opened and closed one of the most talked about restaurants in America. In this inspiring memoir, he shares the remarkable story of his culinary coming-of-age. Growing up in the Bronx and Nigeria (where he was sent by his mother to “learn respect”), food was Onwuachi’s great love. He launched his own catering company with twenty thousand dollars he made selling candy on the subway, and trained in the kitchens of some of the most acclaimed restaurants in the country. But the road to success is riddled with potholes. As a young chef, Onwuachi was forced to grapple with just how unwelcoming the world of fine dining can be for people of color, and his first restaurant, the culmination of years of planning, shuttered just months after opening. A powerful, heartfelt, and shockingly honest memoir of following your dreams—even when they don’t turn out as you expected—Notes from a Young Black Chef is one man’s pursuit of his passions, despite the odds.
Kwame Onwuachi is the executive chef at Kith and Kin in Washington, D.C. Born on Long Island and raised in the Bronx and Nigeria, he trained at the Culinary Institute of America and worked at Per Se and Eleven Madison Park before opening his own restaurant. A former Top Chef contestant, Onwuachi has been named a 30 Under 30 honoree by both Zagat and Forbes. Joshua David Stein is an author and a journalist who lives in Kensington, Brooklyn. He is the editor-at-large of Fatherly and host of The Fatherly podcast. He is also a contributing editor to Food & Wine, former editor-in-chief of BlackBook, author of children’s books including Can I Eat That? and What's Cooking? and founding member of The Band Books, a musical group that turns children’s books into rock and roll. He is the co-author of the cookbook Food & Beer, U.S. editor for Where Chefs Eat and other stuff that makes him seem more accomplished than he actually feels, wearing underwear sitting on the sofa writing this bio. Christina Chaey is an associate editor at Bon Appétit where she edits the Home section of the magazine, writes for Basically, Healthyish, and Bonappetit.com, develops the occasional recipe, and makes the odd appearance on the podcast. Her two great loves are cycling and making soup. This event is free and in association with Bon Appétit. 
Odette Williams: Simple Cake w/ Alison Roman
Friday April 12 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
S’mores cupcakes. Rainbow birthday cake. Fruit-laden pavlovas. Everyone has a favorite style of cake, whether it’s citrusy and fresh or chocolatey and indulgent. All of these recipes and more are within your reach in Simple Cake, a love letter from Brooklyn apron and bakeware designer Odette Williams to her favorite treat. With easy recipes and inventive decorating ideas, Williams gives you recipes for 10 base cakes, 15 toppings, and endless decorating ideas to yield a treat—such as Milk & Honey Cake, Coconut Cake, Summer Berry Pavlova, and Chocolatey Chocolate Cake—for any occasion. Williams also addresses the fundamentals for getting cakes just right, with foolproof recipes that can be cranked out whenever the urge strikes. Gorgeous photography, along with Williams’s warm and heartfelt writing, elevate this book into something truly special.
Odette Williams is an Australian who now calls Brooklyn home. She is an avid home baker and cake eater. She is also the founder of OW Brooklyn, inspiring kids and families to slow down and explore the world of food and cooking together. Simple Cake is her first cookbook. Alison Roman is a cook, writer and author of Dining In, published by Clarkson Potter in Fall 2017. You can sign up for her newsletter here. Formerly the Senior Food Editor at Bon Appetit Magazine and BuzzFeed, her work has also appeared in the The New York Times, Cherry Bombe, Darling and Lucky Peach. In 2015 Short Stack Editions published her first book on her favorite ingredient, lemons. Originally from Los Angeles, she lives in Brooklyn where she tries to eat pizza for every meal, sometimes successfully. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Franny Choi: Soft Science w/ Angel Nafis, Shira Erlichman, and Cathy Park Hong
Saturday April 13 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Choi pairs complex pain with striking images, wrapping readers in mystical interpretations and then captures them within reality.
Soft Science explores queer, Asian American femininity. A series of Turing Test-inspired poems grounds its exploration of questions not just of identity, but of consciousness—how to be tender and feeling and still survive a violent world filled with artificial intelligence and automation. We are dropped straight into the tangled intersections of technology, violence, erasure, agency, gender, and loneliness. Franny Choi is a queer, Korean-American poet, playwright, teacher, organizer, pottymouth, GryffinClaw, & general overachiever. She is the author of two poetry collections, Soft Science (Alice James Books, 2019) & Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014), as well as a chapbook, Death by Sex Machine (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). She has received awards from the Poetry Foundation & the Helen Zell Writers Program, as well as fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center & the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. Franny is a Senior News Editor for Hyphen Magazine & hosts the Poetry Foundation podcast VS along with fellow poet Danez Smith. Angel Nafis is the author of BlackGirl Mansion (Red Beard Press, 2012). She earned her BA at Hunter College and her MFA in poetry at Warren Wilson College. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed Reader, them, Poetry Magazine, The BreakBeat Poets anthologies series and elsewhere. Nafis is the recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, Millay Colony, the Poetry Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Founder and curator of the Greenlight Bookstore Poetry Salon, she is also half of the ODES FOR YOU Tour with poet, musician, and visual artist Shira Erlichman, and with poet Morgan Parker, she runs The Other Black Girl Collective. Reading poems and facilitating workshops across the country she lives and works in Brooklyn. Shira Erlichman is a poet, musician and visual artist. In Hebrew Shira means poem and song. A three time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work can be found in The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed Reader, and PBS NewsHour’s Poetry Series, among others. She was awarded a residency by the Millay Colony, the James Merrill Fellowship by the Vermont Studio Center, and the Visions of Wellbeing Focus Fellowship at AIR Serenbe. Her poetry book "Odes to Lithium" is forthcoming in September 2019 and her children's book Be/Hold is out in April 2019. Israeli-born, raised in Massachusetts, she now lives in Brooklyn. Learn more at www.officialshira.com Cathy Park Hong's latest poetry collection, Engine Empire, was published in 2012 by W.W. Norton. Her other collections include Dance Dance Revolution, chosen by Adrienne Rich for the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Translating Mo'um. Hong is the recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She is the poetry editor of the New Republic and is a professor at the Rutgers-Newark University MFA program. Her book of essays, Minor Feelings, will be published by One World/Random House in Spring 2020. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Helen Ellis: Southern Lady Code w/ Ann Napolitano and Hannah Tinti
Monday April 15 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Helen Ellis has a mantra: “If you don’t have something nice to say, say something not-so-nice in a nice way.” Say “weathered” instead of “she looks like a cake left out in the rain.” Say “early-developed” instead of “brace face and B cups.” And for the love of Coke Salad, always say “Sorry you saw something that offended you” instead of “Get that stick out of your butt, Miss Prissy Pants.” In these twenty-three raucous essays Ellis transforms herself into a dominatrix Donna Reed to save her marriage, inadvertently steals a $795 Burberry trench coat, witnesses a man fake his own death at a party, avoids a neck lift, and finds a black-tie gown that gives her the confidence of a drag queen. While she may have left her home in Alabama, married a New Yorker, forgotten how to drive, and abandoned the puffy headbands of her youth, Helen Ellis is clinging to her Southern accent like mayonnaise to white bread, and offering readers a hilarious, completely singular view on womanhood for both sides of the Mason-Dixon.
Helen Ellis is the acclaimed author of Eating the Cheshire Cat and the national bestseller AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE. She is a poker player who competes on the national tournament circuit. Raised in Alabama, she lives with her husband in New York City. Ann Napolitano is the author of the novels A Good Hard Look and Within Arm’s Reach. She is also the Assistant Editor of One Story literary magazine. She received an MFA from New York University; she has taught fiction writing for Brooklyn College’s MFA program, New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies and for Gotham Writers’ Workshop. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children. Hannah Tinti is the author of the bestselling novel The Good Thief, which won The Center for Fiction’s first novel prize, and the story collection Animal Crackers, a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her new novel, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, is a national bestseller and has been optioned for television. She teaches creative writing at New York University’s MFA program and co-founded the Sirenland Writers Conference. Tinti is also the co-founder and executive editor of One Story magazine, which won the AWP Small Press Publisher Award, CLMP’s Firecracker Award, and the PEN/Magid Award for Excellence in Editing. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
The Rumpus x Books Are Magic: National Poetry Month Celebration at Invisible Dog
Tuesday April 16 | 7:00PM - 9:00PM
The Rumpus and Books Are Magic are proud to present an evening of poetry in celebration of National Poetry Month! This reading will be held at the Invisible Dog Arts Center (51 Bergen St., Brooklyn, NY 11201).
With readings from Andrés Cerpa, Hafizah Geter, Donika Kelly, Rachel McKibbens, Nicole Sealey, and Emily Skaja. Emceed by Cortney Lamar Charleston. This event is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase, and authors will be on hand to sign books following the reading. Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Sally Rooney: Normal People w/ Emma Straub
Tuesday April 16 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He’s popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marianne’s house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers—one they are determined to conceal.
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other. Sally Rooney was born in the west of Ireland in 1991. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta and The London Review of Books. Winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 2017, she is the author of Conversations with Friends and the editor of the Irish literary journal The Stinging Fly. Emma Straub is from New York City. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Modern Lovers and The Vacationers. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published by Tin House, The Paris Review Daily, Time, Slate, and the New York Times, and Rookie. She lives with her husband in Brooklyn, where she co-owns Books Are Magic. This event is free and in collaboration with the Irish Arts Center. Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Myla Goldberg: Feast Your Eyes w/ Joshua Ferris
Wednesday April 17 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
After discovering photography as a teenager through her high school's photo club, Lillian rejects her parents' expectations of college and marriage and moves to New York City in 1955. When a small gallery exhibits partially nude photographs of Lillian and her daughter Samantha, Lillian is arrested, thrust into the national spotlight, and targeted with an obscenity charge. Mother and daughter's sudden notoriety changes the course of both of their lives and especially Lillian's career as she continues her quest for artistic legitimacy and recognition.
The story is inspired by well-known photographers Sally Mann and Diane Arbus. There are also aspects of Patti Smith's story here, in the making of a young woman artist in New York City. The perfect read for those who loved Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers or Alice McDermott's The Ninth Hour. Myla Goldberg is a bestselling novelist, winner of the Borders New Voices Prize, a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN award, the NYPL Young Lions award, and the Barnes & Noble Discover award, and recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation grant. She writes and teaches in Brooklyn, where she lives with her husband Jason Little and their two daughters. Joshua Ferris is the bestselling author of three novels, Then We Came to the End, The Unnamed and To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. He was a finalist for the National Book Award, winner of the Barnes and Noble Discover Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and was named one of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40”writers in 2010. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, and Best American Short Stories. He lives in New York. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Sarah Blake: Naamah
Thursday April 18 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
With the coming of the Great Flood—the mother of all disasters—only one family was spared, drifting on an endless sea, waiting for the waters to subside. We know the story of Noah, moved by divine vision to launch their escape. Now, in a work of astounding invention, acclaimed writer Sarah Blake reclaims the story of his wife, Naamah, the matriarch who kept them alive. Here is the woman torn between faith and fury, lending her strength to her sons and their wives, caring for an unruly menagerie of restless creatures, silently mourning the lover she left behind. Here is the woman escaping into the unreceded waters, where a seductive angel tempts her to join a strange and haunted world. Here is the woman tormented by dreams and questions of her own—questions of service and self-determination, of history and memory, of the kindness or cruelty of fate.
In fresh and modern language, Blake revisits the story of the Ark that rescued life on earth, and rediscovers the agonizing burdens endured by the woman at the heart of the story. Naamah is a parable for our time: a provocative fable of body, spirit, and resilience. Sarah Blake is the recipient of a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her writing has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Threepenny Review, Slice, and elsewhere. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Red Ink Series: Authenticity
Friday April 19 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
Red Ink is a quarterly series curated and hosted by Michele Filgate, and co-sponsored by Literary Hub. Red Ink makes one think of vitality, blood, the monthly cycle, correcting history, and making a mark on the world. This dynamic series focuses on women writers, past and present. The next discussion, “Authenticity,” will feature Mira Jacob (Good Talk), Jennifer Pastiloff (On Being Human), Deborah Landau (Soft Targets), Grace Talusan (The Body Papers), and Hannah Tinti.
Storytime w/ Adam Rubin & Daniel Salmieri: High Five
Saturday April 20 | 11:00AM - 12:00PM
Discover the lost art of the high five and improve your slapping skills just in time for the annual high five contest! From hand-limbering stretches to lessons on five-ing with finesse, readers are guided through a series of interactive challenges, each goofier than the next.
Acclaimed creative duo Adam Rubin and Daniel Salmieri have dreamed up another one-of-a-kind, laugh-out-loud book that kids will beg to read again and again. Adam Rubin is the New York Times best-selling author of a half dozen critically acclaimed picture books, including Dragons Love Tacos, Dragons Love Tacos 2: The Sequel, Secret Pizza Party, and Robo-Sauce. He spent ten years working as a creative director in the advertising industry before leaving his day job to write full-time. Adam has a keen interest in improv comedy, camping, and magic tricks. Daniel Salmieri has illustrated many fantastic picture books, including Secret Pizza Party and the New York Times bestsellers Dragons Love Tacos, Dragons Love Tacos 2: The Sequel, and Robo-Sauce. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, constantly drawing and painting images of ninja turtles, dinosaurs, and fighter jets (not in the same scene...), and graduated from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. This event is free! 
Rachel Cline: The Question Authority w/ Lisa Miller
Monday April 22 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
A middle-aged woman enters into a negotiation with her childhood best friend and confronts the damage done by their eighth grade teacher, who molested them both.
Nora Buchbinder—formerly rich and now broke—would be the last woman in Brooklyn to claim #MeToo, but when a work assignment reunites her with her childhood best friend, Beth, she finds herself in a hall of mirrors. Was their eighth grade teacher Beth's lover or her rapist? Where were the grown-ups? What should justice look like, after so much time has passed? And what can Nora do, now? Nora’s memories, and Beth’s, and those of their classmates, their former teacher, and members of his family, bring to light some of the ways we absorb and manage unbearable behavior. From denial to reinvention, self-pity to self-righteousness, endless questioning to intransigent certainty, readers will recognize the ripples sent into the lives of others by one broken man. Rachel Cline, author of the novels What to Keep and My Liar, has written for the New York Times, New York, More, SELF, and Tin House magazines, and is a produced screen and television writer. For five years, she was a screenwriting instructor at the University of Southern California and has taught fiction writing at New York University, Eugene Lang College, and Sarah Lawrence College. She has been a resident at Yaddo, a fellow at Sewanee, and a Girls Write Now mentor. She lives in Brooklyn Heights, a few blocks from where she grew up. Lisa Miller is a contributing editor at New York magazine, covering politics, culture, education, mental health, parenting, and gender, among other topics. She writes features for the magazine, and regular columns for New York’s women’s site The Cut. She is the former religion columnist for the Washington Post and a former senior editor of Newsweek magazine, and author of Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife. In 2014, she was nominated for a National Magazine Award and featured in Best Magazine Writing, and in 2017 she was on the team that produced the ASME-award winning video "Guns and Empathy." She is a three-time winner of the New York Newswomen's award for feature writing and has won the prestigious Wilbur Award for religion reporting numerous times. She has appeared on MSNBC, CBS This Morning, Nightline, The O’Reilly Factor, and The Colbert Report, among other outlets, and has been a guest lecturer at Yale University, Columbia University, Syracuse University, and Emory University. She graduated from Oberlin College and lives in Brooklyn. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Jennifer Epstein: Wunderland w/ Chris Bohjalian
Tuesday April 23 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Inspired by a true story, Jennifer Cody Epstein’s Wunderland is an ambitious, multigenerational saga that crosses decades, borders, and warzones. Drawn together by shared idealism and mutual bookishness, Ilse Fischer and Renate Bauer form a passionate friendship that will be ripped apart by Germany’s race laws--and a shocking betrayal. Three decades later, struggling East Village artist Ava Fisher receives her estranged mother Ilse’s ashes in the mail—along with a trove of unsent letters to a woman named Renate Bauer. It’s a discovery that will launch Ava onto the gritty streets of 1980’s New York City—and on a collision course with a dark revelation about both her mother’s hidden past that will shake her to her very core.
Hailed as “a devastating tale bound for bestseller lists,” “a vividly written and stark chronicle of Nazism and its legacies” and “an absorbing exploration of friendship, betrayal, and coming to terms with the past” in starred reviews by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus and Booklist, Wunderland draws readers into the lives of complex, flawed characters whose worlds intersect in ways both life-affirming and tragic, right up until the novel’s stunning conclusion. The result is a propulsive, page-turning narrative that deep-dives into the secrets we keep from others, the lies we tell ourselves, and humanity’s potential for both unspeakable evil and immense goodness….and a story that resonates startlingly amid today’s troubled world. Jennifer Cody Epstein is the author of the international bestseller The Painter from Shanghai, and The Gods of Heavenly Punishment, and winner of the 2014 Asian Pacific Association of Librarians Honor award for outstanding fiction. She has written for The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, Self, Mademoiselle, and many others. She has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University and an MA in international affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters. Chris Bohjalian is the author of twenty books, including The Guest Room; Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands; The Sandcastle Girls; Skeletons at the Feast; The Double Bind; and Midwives which was a number one New York Times bestseller and a selection of Oprah's Book Club. Chris's work has been translated into more than thirty languages, and three novels have become movies (Secrets of Eden, Midwives, and Past the Bleachers). Chris lives in Vermont and can be found at www.chrisbohjalian.com or on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Litsy, and Goodreads. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Leanne Shapton presents Guestbook: Ghost Stories
Wednesday April 24 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
What haunts us? What can’t we let go of? A tennis prodigy collapses after his wins, crediting them to an invisible, not entirely benevolent presence. A series of ghosts appear at their former bedsides, some distraught, some fascinated, to witness their unfamiliar occupants. A woman returns from a visit to Alcatraz with an uncomfortable feeling. The spirit of a prisoner has attached himself to you, a friend tells her. He sensed the empathy you had for those men.
In more than two dozen stories and vignettes accompanied by an evocative curiosity cabinet of artifacts and images—found photographs, original paintings, Instagram-style portraits—Guestbook beckons us through the glimmering, unsettling evidence that marks our paths through life. Leanne Shapton is an artist and author of several books, including Swimming Studies (winner of the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography), Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, and a coauthor of the New York Times-bestselling Women in Clothes. She is also the cofounder of J&L Books, a nonprofit publisher of art and photography books. She lives in New York City. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
TASTE presents Priya Krishna: Indian-ish
Thursday April 25 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Indian food is everyday food! This colorful, lively book is food writer Priya Krishna’s loving tribute to her mom’s “Indian-ish” cooking—a trove of one-of-a-kind Indian-American hybrids that are easy to make, clever, practical, and packed with flavor. Think Roti Pizza, Tomato Rice with Crispy Cheddar, Whole Roasted Cauliflower with Green Pea Chutney, and Malaysian Ramen.
Priya’s mom, Ritu, taught herself to cook after moving to the U.S. while also working as a software programmer—her unique creations merging the Indian flavors of her childhood with her global travels and inspiration from cooking shows as well as her kids’ requests for American favorites like spaghetti and PB&Js. The results are approachable and unfailingly delightful, like spiced, yogurt-filled sandwiches crusted with curry leaves, or “Indian Gatorade” (a thirst-quenching salty-sweet limeade)—including plenty of simple dinners you can whip up in minutes at the end of a long work day. Throughout, Priya’s funny and relatable stories—punctuated with candid portraits and original illustrations by acclaimed Desi pop artist Maria Qamar (also known as Hatecopy)—will bring you up close and personal with the Krishna family and its many quirks. Priya Krishna is a food writer who contributes to the New York Times, The New Yorker, Bon Appétit, and more. She is also the author of the college-centric cookbook Ultimate Dining Hall Hacks, and formerly worked for Lucky Peach. Priya will be in conversation with Matt Rodbard, the Editor-in-Chief of TASTE. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Brenda Shaughnessy: The Octopus Museum w/ Evan James
Friday April 26 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
This collection of bold and scathingly beautiful feminist poems imagines what comes after our current age of environmental destruction, racism, sexism, and divisive politics.
Informed by Brenda Shaughnessy's craft as a poet and her worst fears as a mother, the poems in The Octopus Museum blaze forth from her pen: in these pages, we see that what was once a generalized fear for our children (car accidents, falling from a tree) is now hyper-reasonable, specific, and multiple: school shootings, nuclear attack, loss of health care, a polluted planet. As Shaughnessy conjures our potential future, she movingly (and often with humor) envisions an age where cephalopods might rule over humankind, a fate she suggests we may just deserve after destroying their oceans. These heartbreaking, terrified poems are the battle cry of a woman who is fighting for the survival of the world she loves, and a stirring exhibition of who we are as a civilization. Brenda Shaughnessy was born in Okinawa, Japan, and grew up in Southern California. She is the author of four books of poetry, including So Much Synth, Human Dark with Sugar--winner of the James Laughlin Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award--and Our Andromeda, which was a New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books of 2013. She is an assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, Newark. She lives in New Jersey. Evan James is an award-winning writer whose personal essays and fiction have appeared in such publications as the Oxford American, Travel + Leisure, and The New York Times, among others. He received an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has received fellowships from Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Carson McCullers Center, The Elizabeth Kostova Foundation, The University of Iowa, and the Lambda Literary Writers’ Retreat, where he was a 2017 Emerging LGBTQ Voices Fellow. He has taught at The University of Iowa, The Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, and Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Born in Seattle, he now lives in New York and teaches creative writing and English at Pierrepont School in Westport, Connecticut. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Storytime with Shira Erlichman: Be/Hold
Saturday April 27 | 11:00AM - 12:00PM
In Be/Hold: A Friendship Book visual artist, poet, and musician Shira Erlichman opens with the line, “Sweetheart, sometimes when I’m feeling blue I put my ear to the wind & listen for you,” building a one-of-a-kind story of friendship from her love of compound words (i.e. toothbrush, windbreaker, behold) in a book that uplifts, encourages, and honors the people we care about most.
Shira Erlichman is a poet, musician and visual artist. In Hebrew Shira means poem and song. A three time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work can be found in The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed Reader, and PBS NewsHour’s Poetry Series, among others. She was awarded a residency by the Millay Colony, the James Merrill Fellowship by the Vermont Studio Center, and the Visions of Wellbeing Focus Fellowship at AIR Serenbe. Her poetry book "Odes to Lithium" is forthcoming in September 2019. Israeli-born, raised in Massachusetts, she now lives in Brooklyn. Her favorite compound word is see-saw. Learn more at www.officialshira.com This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Camonghne Felix: Build Yourself a Boat
Tuesday April 30 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
“Camonghne Felix is a brilliant writer, thinker, imaginer, builder—a young leader who shifts and opens the possibilities for a more just, better lit world, with each step, each word, each question.” —Kathy Engel
This is about what grows through the wreckage. This is an anthem of survival and a look at what might come after. A view of what floats and what, ultimately, sustains. Build Yourself a Boat redefines the language of collective and individual trauma through lyric and memory. Camonghne Felix, M.A. is a poet, a writer, speaker, & political strategist living in New York City. She received an M.A. in Arts Politics from NYU, an MFA from Bard College, & has received Fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo & Poets House. Her first full-length collection of poems, Build Yourself a Boat, was a 2017 University of Wisconsin Press Brittingham & Pollak Prize finalist, a 2017 Fordham University Poets Out Loud semi-finalist, & is forthcoming from Haymarket Books in 2019. The author of the chapbook Yolk, she was recently listed by Black Youth Project as a "Black Girl From the Future You Should Know." Felix's work has been published in BuzzFeed, Poetry Magazine,Apogee, The Offing, the Academy of American Poets website, & more. She's also been featured in New York Women's Foundation Magazine, Brooklyn Poets, Politico, Teen Vogue digital, Huffington Post & more. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Erika Swyler: Light From Other Stars w/ Maris Kreizman
Thursday May 02 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Eleven-year-old Nedda Papas is obsessed with becoming an astronaut. In 1986 in Easter, a small Florida Space Coast town, her dreams seem almost within reach—if she can just grow up fast enough. Theo, the scientist father she idolizes, is consumed by his own obsessions. Laid off from his job at NASA and still reeling from the loss of Nedda’s newborn brother several years before, Theo turns to the dangerous dream of extending his living daughter's childhood just a little longer. The result is an invention that alters the fabric of time.
Amidst the chaos that erupts, Nedda must confront her father and his secrets, the ramifications of which will irrevocably change her life, her community, and the entire world. But she finds an unexpected ally in Betheen, the mother she’s never quite understood, who surprises Nedda by seeing her more clearly than anyone else. Decades later, Nedda has achieved her long-held dream, and as she floats in antigravity, far from earth, she and her crewmates face a serious crisis. Nedda may hold the key to the solution, if she can come to terms with her past and the future that awaits her. Erika Swyler’s writing has appeared in Catapult Story, VIDA, The New York Times, and elsewhere. Her bestselling first novel, The Book of Speculation, was one of BuzzFeed’s 24 Best Fiction Books of 2015, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. She lives on Long Island, NY, with her husband and a mischievous rabbit. Maris Kreizman has hosted readings and moderated literary panels at various bookstores, conferences, and festivals across the country. She is the creator of Slaughterhouse 90210, a blog and book (Flatiron Books, 2015) that celebrates the intersection of literature and pop culture. A former book editor (Free Press/S&S) and former editorial director of Book of the Month, she is also an essayist and critic whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, Vanity Fair, BuzzFeed, Publishers Weekly, The Ringer, The Toast, The Hairpin, The Cut, Vulture, Glamour, Esquire, GQ, OUT Magazine, and more. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Ayşegül Savas: Walking on the Ceiling w/ Katie Kitamura
Friday May 03 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
After her mother’s death, Nunu moves from Istanbul to a small apartment in Paris. One day outside of a bookstore, she meets M., an older British writer whose novels about Istanbul Nunu has always admired. They find themselves walking the streets of Paris and talking late into the night. What follows is an unusual friendship of eccentric correspondence and long walks around the city.
M. is working on a new novel set in Turkey and Nunu tells him about her family, hoping to impress and inspire him. She recounts the idyllic landscapes of her past, mythical family meals, and her elaborate childhood games. As she does so, she also begins to confront her mother’s silence and anger, her father’s death, and the growing unrest in Istanbul. Their intimacy deepens, so does Nunu’s fear of revealing too much to M. and of giving too much of herself and her Istanbul away. Most of all, she fears that she will have to face her own guilt about her mother and the narratives she’s told to protect herself from her memories. Ayşegül Savaş grew up in Turkey and Denmark. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Guernica, and elsewhere, and was shortlisted for the Glimmer Train Fiction Prize and the Graywolf Emerging Writers Award. She has an MFA from the University of San Francisco. She teaches at the Sorbonne and lives in Paris. Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel, A Separation, was a finalist for the Premio von Rezzori and a New York Times Notable Book. It was named a best book of the year by over a dozen publications, translated into 16 languages, and is being adapted for film. Her two previous novels, Gone to the Forest and The Longshot, were both finalists for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. A recipient of fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and Santa Maddalena, Katie has written for publications including The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, BOMB, and Triple Canopy. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Juliet Grames: The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna w/ Amor Towles
Tuesday May 07 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
In her rugged Italian village, Stella is considered an oddity—beautiful and smart, insolent and cold. Stella uses her peculiar toughness to protect her slower, plainer baby sister Tina from life’s harshest realities. But she also provokes the ire of her father, Antonio, a man who demands subservience from women and whose greatest gift to his family is his absence.
When the Fortunas emigrate to America on the cusp of World War II, Stella and Tina must come of age side by side in a hostile new world with strict expectations for each of them. Soon Stella learns that her survival is worthless without the one thing her family will deny her at any cost: her independence. In present-day Connecticut, one family member tells this heartrending story, determined to understand the persisting rift between the now elderly Stella and Tina. A richly told debut, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna is a tale of family transgressions as ancient and twisted as the olive branch that could heal them. Juliet Grames was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and grew up in a tight-knit Italian-American family. A book editor, she has spent the last decade at Soho Press, where she is associate publisher and curator of the Soho Crime imprint. This is her first novel. Amor Towles was born and raised in the Boston area. He graduated from Yale University and received an MA in English from Stanford University. An investment professional for more than twenty years, he now devotes himself full time to writing. His first novel, Rules of Civility, published in 2011, was a New York Times bestseller. Towles lives in Manhattan with his wife and two children. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Storytime w/ Ann Patchett: Lambslide
Wednesday May 08 | 4:00PM - 5:00PM
On the farm there was a flock of lambs who believed that everything was done especially for them....
So when they overhear Nicolette and the rest of the Farmer family say something about winning a school election by a landslide, they mistakenly hear the word LAMBSLIDE. Un-baa-lievable! Could this be? A slide made JUST for lambs?! With humor, curiosity, and just the right amount of entitlement, the lambs search the entire farm for the special slide. When they can’t spot one, there’s only one thing to do: take a vote! Ann Patchett and Robin Preiss Glasser have collaborated for the first time to create a book that is an absolute riot! Children and adults will enjoy this sidesplitting play on words as they too anxiously wait to hear the election results: Will the lambs ever get to slide down a lambslide? Ann Patchett is the author of eight novels and three works of nonfiction. She is the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, England's Orange Prize, and the Book Sense Book of the Year, and was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. Ann has written about many things, but by far, she has had the most fun writing about this flock of happy, grumpy, confident, and pushy lambs. She is the co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, Karl, and their dog, Sparky. You can visit her at annpatchett.com. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Lara Prior-Palmer: Rough Magic w/ Josephine Rowe
Wednesday May 08 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
At the age of nineteen, Lara Prior-Palmer discovered a website devoted to “the world’s longest, toughest horse race”—an annual competition of endurance and skill that involves dozens of riders racing a series of twenty-five wild ponies across 1,000 kilometers of Mongolian grassland. On a whim, she decided to enter the race. As she boarded a plane to East Asia, she was utterly unprepared for what awaited her.
Riders often spend years preparing to compete in the Mongol Derby, a course that recreates the horse messenger system developed by Genghis Khan, and many fail to finish. Prior-Palmer had no formal training. She was driven by her own restlessness, stubbornness, and a lifelong love of horses. She raced for ten days through extreme heat and terrifying storms, catching a few hours of sleep where she could at the homes of nomadic families. Battling bouts of illness and dehydration, exhaustion and bruising falls, she decided she had nothing to lose. Each dawn she rode out again on a fresh horse, scrambling up mountains, swimming through rivers, crossing woodlands and wetlands, arid dunes and open steppe, as American television crews chased her in their Jeeps. Lara Prior-Palmer was born in London in 1994. She studied conceptual history and Persian at Stanford University. In 2013, she competed in the 1,000-kilometer Mongol Derby in Mongolia, sometimes described as the world’s toughest and longest horse race, and became the first woman to win the race, and the youngest person ever to finish. Rough Magic is her first book. Josephine Rowe was born in 1984 in Rockhampton, Australia, and grew up in Melbourne. In the United States, her writing has appeared in Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Iowa Review, The Paris Review Daily, The Common, and Freeman’s. She holds fellowships from the Wallace Stegner program in fiction at Stanford University, the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, the Omi International Arts Center, and Yaddo. She was the winner of Australia’s Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize in 2016 and has been named one of The Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelists. Her debut novel, A Loving, Faithful Animal, was long-listed for the 2017 Miles Franklin Literary Award and selected as a New York Times Editors’ Choice. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Celeste Ng: Little Fires Everywhere w/ Mira Jacob
Thursday May 09 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned - from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
Enter Mia Warren - an enigmatic artist and single mother - who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town—and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs. Celeste Ng is the author of the New York Times bestselling novels Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere. Her writing has been awarded the Pushcart Prize, the Massachusetts Book Award, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, among other honors. She earned an MFA from the University of Michigan and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. To learn more about her and her work, visit celesteng.com or follow her on Twitter (@pronounced_ing). Mira Jacob is the author and illustrator of Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations. Her critically acclaimed novel, The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing, was a Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers pick, shortlisted for India’s Tata First Literature Award, and longlisted for the Brooklyn Literary Eagles Prize. It was named one of the best books of 2014 by Kirkus Reviews, the Boston Globe, Goodreads, Bustle, and The Millions. Her writing and drawings have appeared in The New York Times, Electric Literature, Tin House, Literary Hub, Guernica, Vogue, the Telegraph, and Buzzfeed, and she has a drawn column on Shondaland. She currently teaches at The New School, and she is a founding faculty member of the MFA Program at Randolph College. She is the co-founder of Pete’s Reading Series in Brooklyn, where she spent 13 years bringing literary fiction, non-fiction, and poetry to Williamsburg. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, documentary filmmaker Jed Rothstein, and their son. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
LaTonya Yvette: Woman of Color w/ Erin Boyle
Friday May 10 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
LaTonya Yvette, the blogger and stylist behind the eponymous site, is unapologetically candid about life’s trials, including motherhood, love, death, and racism. Her first book, Woman of Color, is part memoir, part lifestyle guide—packed with moving essays, gorgeous original and archival photographs, and practical style and beauty advice. At the very heart, though, it’s about LaTonya’s experience growing up as a woman of color in Brooklyn.
Each beautifully designed chapter covers a different topic—the meaning behind her name, how vitiligo has shaped her definition of beauty, her childhood hairstyles, raising her children as a 20-something mom—and ends with thoughtful advice and lifestyle takeaways like how to tie a headwrap or incorporate new, bold colors into your wardrobe. Woman of Color is real life, real style for women from all walks of life. In it, LaTonya has written a love letter to women, filling this book with vulnerable, imperfect truths from a black woman blogger, a voice not often seen on bookstore shelves. LaTonya Yvette is a stylist and lifestyle blogger. Her eponymous blog covers motherhood, style, and beauty. She lives in Brooklyn with her two children, River and Oak. Erin Boyle is the writer and photographer behind the lifestyle blog, Reading My Tea Leaves, where she writes about all things slow, simple, and sustainable. Erin’s first book, Simple Matters, came out in January, 2016. It’s a nod to the growing consensus that living simply and purposefully is more sustainable not only for the environment, but for our own happiness and well-being, too. Erin embraces the notion that “living small” is beneficial and accessible to us all—whether we’re renting a tiny apartment or purchasing a three-story house. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and two young children. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Jayson Greene: Once More We Saw Stars
Monday May 13 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
As the book opens: two-year-old Greta Greene is sitting with her grandmother on a park bench on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. A brick crumbles from a windowsill overhead, striking her unconscious, and she is immediately rushed to the hospital. But although it begins with this event and with the anguish Jayson and his wife, Stacy, confront in the wake of their daughter’s trauma and the hours leading up to her death, Once More We Saw Stars quickly becomes a narrative that is as much about hope and healing as it is about grief and loss. Jayson recognizes, even in the midst of his ordeal, that there will be a life for him beyond it—that if only he can continue moving forward, from one moment to the next, he will survive what seems unsurvivable. With raw honesty, deep emotion, and exquisite tenderness, he captures both the fragility of life and absoluteness of death, and most important of all, the unconquerable power of love. This is an unforgettable memoir of courage and transformation—and a book that will change the way you look at the world.
Jayson Greene is a contributing writer and former senior editor at Pitchfork. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Grantland, and GQ, among other publications. This is his first book. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son. This event is free! 
Rachel Kushner: The Mars Room
Tuesday May 14 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
It’s 2003 and Romy Hall, named after a German actress, is at the start of two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility, deep in California’s Central Valley. Outside is the world from which she has been severed: her young son, Jackson, and the San Francisco of her youth. Inside is a new reality: thousands of women hustling for the bare essentials needed to survive; the bluffing and pageantry and casual acts of violence by guards and prisoners alike; and the deadpan absurdities of institutional living, portrayed with great humor and precision.
Stunning and unsentimental, The Mars Room is “wholly authentic…profound…luminous” (The Wall Street Journal), “one of those books that enrage you even as they break your heart” (The New York Times Book Review, cover review)—a spectacularly compelling, heart-stopping novel about a life gone off the rails in contemporary America. It is audacious and tragic, propulsive and yet beautifully refined and “affirms Rachel Kushner as one of our best novelists” (Entertainment Weekly). Rachel Kushner is the bestselling author of The Flamethrowers, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times Top Ten Book of 2013; Telex from Cuba, a finalist for the National Book Award; and The Mars Room. She lives in Los Angeles. This event is free! 
John Glynn: Out East w/ Tucker Bellingrath
Wednesday May 15 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
They call Montauk the end of the world, a spit of land jutting into the Atlantic. The house was a ramshackle split-level set on a hill, and each summer thirty one people would sleep between its thin walls and shag carpets. Against the moonlight the house's octagonal roof resembled a bee's nest. It was dubbed The Hive.
In 2013, John Glynn joined the share house. Packing his duffel for that first Memorial Day Weekend, he prayed for clarity. At 27, he was crippled by an all-encompassing loneliness, a feeling he had carried in his heart for as long as he could remember. John didn't understand the loneliness. He just knew it was there. Like the moon gone dark. OUT EAST is the portrait of a summer, of the Hive and the people who lived in it, and John's own reckoning with a half-formed sense of self. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, The Hive was a center of gravity, a port of call, a home. Friendships, conflicts, secrets and epiphanies blossomed within this tightly woven friend group and came to define how they would live out the rest of their twenties and beyond. Blending the sand-strewn milieu of George Howe Colt's The Big House, the radiant aching of Olivia Liang's The Lonely City, OUT EAST is a keenly wrought story of love and transformation, longing and escape in our own contemporary moment. John Glynn is an editor at Hanover Square Press, an imprint of HarperCollins. He grew up in Longmeadow, Massachusetts and lives in New York City. Out East is his first book. Tucker Bellingrath works for the creative collective Beekman Social and runs the viral Instagram account @gaybestfriend. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Kathleen Alcott: America Was Hard to Find
Thursday May 16 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Ecuador, 1969: An American expatriate, Fay Fern, sits in the corner of a restaurant, she and her young son Wright turned away from the television where Vincent Kahn becomes the first man to walk on the moon.
Years earlier, Fay and Vincent meet at a pilots’ bar in the Mojave Desert. Both seemed poised for reinvention—the married test pilot, Vincent, as an astronaut; the spurned child of privilege, Fay, as an activist. Their casual affair ends quickly, but its consequences linger. Though their lives split, their senses of purpose deepen in tandem, each becoming heroes to different sides of the political spectrum of the 1960s and ’70s: Vincent an icon with no plan beyond the mission for which he has single-mindedly trained, Fay a leader of a violent leftist group whose anti-Vietnam actions make her one of the FBI’s most wanted. With her last public appearance, a demonstration that frames the Apollo program as a vehicle for distracting the American public from its country’s atrocities, Fay leaves Wright to contend with her legacy, his own growing apathy, and the misdeeds of both his mother and his country. Born in 1988 in Northern California, Kathleen Alcott is the author of the novels Infinite Home and The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets. Her short stories and nonfiction have appeared in Zoetrope: All Story, ZYZZYVA, The Guardian, Tin House, The New York Times Magazine, The Bennington Review, and elsewhere. In 2017, she was shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award; her short fiction has been translated into Korean and Dutch. She divides her time between New York City, where she teaches fiction at Columbia University, and Vermont, where she serves as a 2018-2019 visiting professor at Bennington College. This event is free! 
Amanda Stern: Little Panic w/ Piper Weiss
Friday May 17 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
The world never made any sense to Amanda Stern--how could she trust time to keep flowing, the sun to rise, gravity to hold her feet to the ground, or even her own body to work the way it was supposed to? Deep down, she knows that there's something horribly wrong with her, some defect that her siblings and friends don't have to cope with.
Growing up in the 1970s and 80s in New York, Amanda experiences the magic and madness of life through the filter of unrelenting panic. Plagued with fear that her friends and family will be taken from her if she's not watching-that her mother will die, or forget she has children and just move away-Amanda treats every parting as her last. Shuttled between a barefoot bohemian life with her mother in Greenwich Village, and a sanitized, stricter world of affluence uptown with her father, Amanda has little she can depend on. And when Etan Patz disappears down the block from their MacDougal Street home, she can't help but believe that all her worst fears are about to come true. Amanda Stern is the author of thirteen books: eleven for children written under pseudonyms, a novel, and most recently the memoir LITTLE PANIC: Dispatches from an Anxious Life. She is also the creator and founder of the critically acclaimed music and literary event series Happy Ending which ran from 2003-2018. She lives in Brooklyn with her daughter Busy, who just happens to be a dog. Piper Weiss is the author of the memoir You All Grow Up and Leave Me, named one of the best books of 2018 by Marie-Claire, Town and Country and PopSugar. She has served in senior editorial positions at New York Daily News, Yahoo and HelloGiggles. Her recent work has appeared in Lenny Letter, Crime Reads, Hazlitt and elsewhere. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Storytime w/ Sheetal Sheth: Always Anjali
Saturday May 18 | 11:00AM - 12:00PM
Anjali and her friends are excited to get matching personalized license plates for their bikes. But Anjali can't find her name. To make matters worse, she gets bullied for her "different" name, and is so upset she demands to change it. When her parents refuse and she is forced to take matters into her own hands, she winds up learning to celebrate who she is and carry her name with pride and power. A timeless story about appreciating what makes us special and honoring our differences.
Sheetal Sheth is an acclaimed actress known for her provocative performances in a wide range of memorable roles on film and television. She has starred in over 20 feature films and many TV shows and has earned a loyal following. Sheetal has become a favorite in the independent film world. She won 3 Best Actress nods in the festival circuit for THE WORLD UNSEEN, 1 for her role in WINGS OF HOPE, and most recently for GRIN. In 2012, fans voted her ‘Favorite Movie Actress’ in AfterEllen’s Visibility Awards. She just completed filming on the feature, HUMMINGBIRD, which she also produced. Sheetal has represented such brands as Reebok and CHI hair care. She regularly speaks on panels and forums internationally and takes an active interest in politics. She served in President Clinton's AmeriCorps and is currently on the advisory board of Equality Now and an ambassador for The Representation Project. This is her first children's book, which was published to wide praise and is already in it's 2nd printing. www.sheetalsheth.com This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Storytime w/ Sergei Urban: TheDadLab
Sunday May 19 | 11:00AM - 12:00PM
With more than 3 million fans, TheDadLab has become an online sensation, with weekly videos of fun and easy science experiments that parents can do with their kids. These simple projects use materials found around the house, making it easier than ever for busy moms and dads to not only spend more quality time with their children but also get them interested in science and technology.
In this mind-blowing book, Sergei Urban takes the challenge off-screen with fifty step-by-step projects, including some that he has never shared online before. Each activity will go beyond the videos, featuring detailed explanations to simplify scientific concepts for parents and help answer the hows and whys of their curious children. Learn how to: explore new fun ways to paint; make slime with only two ingredients; defy gravity with a ping-pong ball; produce your own electricity, and more! With TheDadLab, parents everywhere will have an easy solution to the dreaded “I’m bored” complaint right at their fingertips! Sergei Urban is a stay-at-home father who started TheDadLab as a way to share fun activities others can do from home while educating their children and spending more quality time with them. All of his ideas are inspired by his sons and what he has lying around his house. Originally from Latvia, Sergei now lives in London with his wife and two sons. He has a master's in economics and runs TheDadLab full-time. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Thomas Page McBee: Amateur w/ Darnell L. Moore
Monday May 20 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
In this “refreshing and radical” (The Guardian) narrative, Thomas McBee, a trans man, sets out to uncover what makes a man—and what being a “good” man even means—through his experience training for and fighting in a charity boxing match at Madison Square Garden. A self-described “amateur” at masculinity, McBee embarks on a wide-ranging exploration of gender in society, examining sexism, toxic masculinity, and privilege. As he questions the limitations of gender roles and the roots of masculine aggression, he finds intimacy, hope, and even love in the experience of boxing and in his role as a man in the world. Despite personal history and cultural expectations, “Amateur is a reminder that the individual can still come forward and fight” (The A.V. Club).
“Sharp and precise, open and honest,” (Women’s Review of Books), McBee’s writing asks questions “relevant to all people, trans or not” (New York Newsday). Through interviews with experts in neuroscience, sociology, and critical race theory, he constructs a deft and thoughtful examination of the role of men in contemporary society. Amateur is a graceful and uncompromising look at gender by a fearless, fiercely honest writer. Thomas Page McBee was the first transgender man to ever box in Madison Square Garden. He is the author of Amateur and an award-winning memoir, Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness, and Becoming a Man, which was named a best book of 2014 by NPR Books, BuzzFeed, Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly. Thomas’s writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Pacific Standard, The New York Times, Playboy, and Glamour. He lives in Brooklyn. Darnell L. Moore is the head of Strategy and Programs at BreakthroughUS. He is also a columnist at LogoTV.com and NewNowNext.com, and a former editor at large at CASSIUS and senior editor at Mic, where he hosted their widely viewed digital series The Movement. His writings have been published in Ebony, Advocate, Vice, Guardian and MSNBC. Moore is a writer-in-residence at the Center of African American Religion, Sexual Politics, and Social Justice at Columbia University, has taught at New York University, Rutgers, Fordham, and Vassar, and was trained at Princeton Theological Seminary. In 2016 and 2018, he was named one of The Root 100, and in 2015 he was named one of Ebony magazine's Power 100 and Planned Parenthood's 99 Dream Keepers. Darnell divides his time between Brooklyn and Atlanta. Follow him on Twitter: @Moore_Darnell This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Anna Pitoniak: Necessary People
Tuesday May 21 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Stella Bradley is beautiful, rich, and very good at getting herself into trouble. Violet Trapp is smart, self-aware, and laser-focused on escaping her humble background--especially after Stella gives her a glimpse into a world of glamour and wealth. They are best friends, and from the moment they meet in college, they know their roles: Stella in the spotlight, and Violet behind the scenes.
After graduation, Violet moves to New York and lands a job in cable news, where she works her way up from intern to assistant to producer, and to a life where she's finally free from Stella's shadow. Until Stella decides to use her connections, beauty and charisma to land a job at the same network. Stella soon moves in front of the camera, becoming the public face of the stories that Violet has worked tirelessly to produce-and taking all the credit for it. But Violet isn't giving up so easily. As she and Stella strive for success, they each reveal just how far they'll go to get what they want--even if it means destroying the other person along the way. Anna Pitoniak graduated from Yale, where she majored in English and was an editor at the Yale Daily News. She worked for many years in book publishing, most recently as a Senior Editor at Random House. She grew up in Whistler, British Columbia, and now lives in New York City. This event is free! 
Casey Cep: Furious Hours w/ Patrick Radden Keefe
Thursday May 23 | 5:18PM - 5:18PM
Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell’s murderer was acquitted—thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend.
Sitting in the audience during the vigilante’s trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more years working on her own version of the case. Now Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South. At the same time, she offers a deeply moving portrait of one of the country’s most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success, and the mystery of artistic creativity. Casey Cep is a writer from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. After graduating from Harvard she earned an M.Phil. at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The New Republic, among many other publications. This is her first book. Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and the author of three books, most recently the New York Times bestseller "Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland." This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. |