Books are Magic

Bassey Ikpi: I'm Telling the Truth, but I'm Lying w/ Melissa Febos

Wednesday August 21 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

Bassey Ikpi was born in Nigeria in 1976. Four years later, she and her mother joined her father in Stillwater, Oklahoma —a move that would be anxiety ridden for any child, but especially for Bassey. Her early years in America would come to be defined by tension: an assimilation further complicated by bipolar II and anxiety that would go undiagnosed for decades.

By the time she was in her early twenties, Bassey was a spoken word artist and traveling with HBO’s Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam, channeling her experiences into art. But something wasn’t right—beneath the façade of the confident performer, Bassey’s mental health was in a precipitous decline, culminating in a breakdown that resulted in hospitalization and a diagnosis of Bipolar II.

Determined to learn from her experiences—and share them with others—Bassey became a mental health advocate and has spent the fourteen years since her diagnosis examining the ways mental health is inextricably intertwined with every facet of ourselves and our lives. Viscerally raw and honest, the result is an exploration of the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of who we are—and the ways, as honest as we try to be, each of these stories can also be a lie.

Bassey Ikpi is a Nigerian-born American spoken-word poet, writer, and mental health advocate. She has appeared on HBO's Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam five times and her poetry has opened shows for Grammy Award-winning artists.

Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir, Whip Smart (St. Martin’s Press 2010), and the essay collection, Abandon Me (Bloomsbury 2017), which was a LAMBDA Literary Award finalist, a Publishing Triangle Award finalist, an Indie Next Pick, and was widely named a Best Book of 2017. Febos is the inaugural winner of the Jean Córdova Nonfiction Award from LAMBDA Literary and the recipient of the 2017 Sarah Verdone Writing Award from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She has been awarded fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, The Barbara Deming Memorial Foundation, The BAU Institute, and Ragdale. Her essays have recently appeared in Tin House, Granta, The Believer, and The New York Times. She lives in Brooklyn.

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Mariama J. Lockington: For Black Girls Like Me w/ Liz Latty

Thursday August 22 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

Makeda June Kirkland is eleven-years-old, adopted, and black. Her parents and big sister are white, and even though she loves her family very much, Makeda often feels left out. When Makeda's family moves from Maryland to New Mexico, she leaves behind her best friend, Lena—the only other adopted black girl she knows—for a new life. In New Mexico, everything is different. At home, Makeda’s sister is too cool to hang out with her anymore and at school, she can’t seem to find one true friend.

Through it all, Makeda can’t help wondering: What would it feel like to grow up with a family that looks like me?

Through singing, dreaming, and writing secret messages back and forth with Lena, Makeda might just carve a small place for herself in the world.

Mariama J. Lockington is an adoptee, writer, and nonprofit educator. She has been telling stories and making her own books since the second grade, when she wore short-alls and flower leggings every day to school. Her work has appeared in a number of magazines and journals, including Buzzfeed News Reader, and she is the author of the poetry chapbook The Lucky Daughter. FOR BLACK GIRLS LIKE ME is Mariama's debut novel. She lives in Lexington, KY with her partner and dapple haired dachshund, Henry.

Liz Latty's writing has been featured in The Rumpus, The Establishment, HuffPost, The Feminist Wire, The Wayne Literary Review, HOLD: A Journal, and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook Split (Unthinkable Creatures Press, 2012) and has been awarded fellowships, grants, and residencies from the Lambda Literary Foundation, Poets & Writers Magazine, and Vermont Studio Center, among others. Her writing was included as a Notable Essay selection in Best American Essays 2017 and has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Liz currently teaches writing and reproductive politics at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School and lives in Brooklyn.

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Karen Abbott: The Ghosts of Eden Park w/ Susannah Cahalan and Ada Calhoun

Friday August 23 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

In the early days of Prohibition, long before Al Capone became a household name, a German immigrant named George Remus quits practicing law and starts trafficking whiskey. Within two years he’s a multi-millionaire. The press calls him “King of the Bootleggers,” writing breathless stories about the Gatsby-esque events he and his glamorous second wife, Imogene, host at their Cincinnati mansion, with party favors ranging from diamond jewelry for the men to brand-new Pontiacs for the women. By the summer of 1921, Remus owns 35 percent of all the liquor in the United States.

Pioneering prosecutor Mabel Walker Willebrandt is determined to bring him down. Willebrandt’s bosses at the U.S. Attorney’s office hired her right out of law school, assuming she’d pose no real threat to the cozy relationship they maintain with Remus. Eager to prove them wrong, she dispatches her best investigator, Franklin Dodge, to look into his empire. It’s a decision with deadly consequences. With the fledgling FBI on the case, Remus is quickly imprisoned for violating the Volstead Act. Her husband behind bars, Imogene begins an affair with Dodge. Together, they plot to ruin Remus, sparking a bitter feud that soon reaches the highest levels of government—and that can only end in murder.

Karen Abbott is the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City, American Rose, and, most recently, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy, named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal and the Christian Science Monitor. A native of Philadelphia, she now lives in New York City.

Susannah Cahalan is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of BRAIN ON FIRE: My Month of Madness, a memoir about her struggle with a rare autoimmune disease of the brain. She writes for the New York Post. Her work has also been featured in the New York Times, Scientific American Magazine, Glamour, Psychology Today, and other publications. She lives in Brooklyn.

Ada Calhoun is the author of St. Marks Is Dead, named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus Reviews and The Boston Globe; and Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give, one of the top ten memoirs of the year according to W magazine. Her next book, Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis, is due out in January 2020.

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Caleb Crain: Overthrow

Tuesday August 27 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

Join us for a dramatic reading of Caleb Crain’s Overthrow, featuring readers: Christine Smallwood, Jana Prikryl, Dan Smith, and Leon Neyfakh.

About the book:
One autumn night, as a grad student named Matthew is walking home from the subway, a handsome skateboarder catches his eye. Leif, mesmerizing and enigmatic, invites Matthew to meet his friends, who are experimenting with tarot cards. It’s easier to know what’s in other people’s minds than most people realize, the friends claim. Do they believe in telepathy? Can they actually do it? Though Matthew should be writing his dissertation on the poetry of kingship, he soon finds himself falling in love with Leif—a poet of the internet age—and entangled with Leif’s group as they visit the Occupy movement’s encampment across the river, where they hope their ideas about radical empathy will help heal a divided world and destabilize the 1%.

When the group falls afoul of a security contractor freelancing for the government, the news coverage, internet outrage, and legal repercussions damage the romances and alliances that hold the friends together, and complicate the faith the members of the group have—or, in some cases, don’t have—in the powers they’ve been nurturing. Elspeth and Raleigh, two of Leif’s oldest friends, will see if their relationship can weather the strains of criminal charges; Chris and Julia, who drifted into the group more recently, will have their loyalties tested; and Matthew, entranced by the man at the center of it all, will have to decide what he owes Leif and how much he’s willing to give him. All six will be forced to reckon with the ambiguous nature of transparency and with the insidious natures of power and privilege.

Caleb Crain has written for The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, n+1, and The New York Times Book Review. He is the author of the novel Necessary Errors and the critical study American Sympathy. He was born in Texas, grew up in Massachusetts, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Mary H. K. Choi: Permanent Record w/ Miss Info

Tuesday September 03 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

On paper, college dropout Pablo Rind doesn’t have a whole lot going for him. His graveyard shift at a twenty-four-hour deli in Brooklyn is a struggle. Plus, he’s up to his eyeballs in credit card debt. Never mind the state of his student loans.

Pop juggernaut Leanna Smart has enough social media followers to populate whole continents. The brand is unstoppable. She graduated from child stardom to become an international icon and her adult life is a queasy blur of private planes, step-and-repeats, aspirational hotel rooms, and strangers screaming for her just to notice them.

When Leanna and Pablo meet at 5:00 a.m. at the bodega in the dead of winter it’s absurd to think they’d be A Thing. But as they discover who they are, who they want to be, and how to defy the deafening expectations of everyone else, Lee and Pab turn to each other. Which, of course, is when things get properly complicated.

Mary H.K. Choi is a writer for the New York Times, GQ, Wired and the Atlantic. She has written comics for Marvel and DC, as well as a collection of essays called Oh, Never Mind. She is the host of Hey, Cool Job!, a podcast about jobs and Hey, Cool Life!, a podcast about mental health and creativity, and is a culture correspondent at VICE News Tonight on HBO. Emergency Contact is her first novel. Mary grew up in Hong Kong and Texas and now lives in New York. Follow her on Twitter at @ChoitotheWorld.

Minya Oh aka Miss Info has made her own unpaved way through the male-dominated worlds of music journalism, hip hop culture, and streetwear fashion. The proud daughter of Korean immigrants, Miss Info started her career as a writer/editor during the heyday of music outlets like Vibe, Rolling Stone, The Source, and MTV News...documenting the early days of icons including Nas, Pharrell, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, and more. She traded the pen for the mic, becoming an on-air personality for New York’s legendary radio station Hot97 FM. A decade of in-depth interviews and breaking news both on the radio and on her own site, missinfo.tv, made Miss Info one of the most trusted voices in hip hop culture. Moving from media to food and retail, Miss Info is currently the Style Director of luxury sneaker marketplaceStadium Goods, and the host of the FirstWeFeast’s ‘Food Grails,” which was nominated for a 2018 James Beard Award. As an outspoken woman and as an Asian-American in music and business, Miss Info has been featured by the New York Times, Buzzfeed, BusinessWeek, National Public Radio, ComplexCon, and Lifetime.

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TASTE x Adeena Sussman: Sababa w/ Matt Rodbard

Wednesday September 04 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

In Hebrew (derived from the original Arabic), sababa means “everything is awesome,” and it’s this sunny spirit with which the American food writer and expat Adeena Sussman cooks and dreams up meals in her Tel Aviv kitchen. Every morning, Sussman makes her way through the bustling stalls of Shuk Hacarmel, her local market, which sells irresistibly fresh ingredients and tempting snacks—juicy ripe figs and cherries, locally made halvah, addictive street food, and delectable cheeses and olives. In Sababa, Sussman presents 125 recipes for dishes inspired by this culinary wonderland and by the wide-varying influences surrounding her in Israel.

Americans have begun to instinctively crave the spicy, bright flavors of Israeli cuisine, and in this timely cookbook, Sussman shows readers how to use border-crossing kitchen staples—tahini, sumac, silan (date syrup), harissa, za’atar—-to delicious effect, while also introducing more exotic spices and ingredients. From Freekeh and Roasted Grape Salad and Crudo with Cherries and Squeezed Tomatoes, to Schug Marinated Lamb Chops and Tahini Caramel Tart, Sussman’s recipes make a riot of fresh tastes accessible and effortless for the home cook. Filled with transporting storytelling, Sababa is the ultimate, everyday guide to the Israeli kitchen.

Adeena Sussman has co-authored eleven cookbooks, including the New York Times #1 bestseller Cravings—and its New York Times bestselling follow-up, Hungry for More—with Chrissy Teigen. She is also the author of Short Stack Editions’ Tahini. A lifelong visitor to Israel, she moved there in 2015 after meeting an expat American who has since become her husband. She lives footsteps from Tel Aviv’s Carmel Market, where she shops and explores daily, taking inspiration from her adopted country’s seasonal and cultural culinary rhythms. She has written about Israeli food for Food & Wine, The Wall Street Journal, Epicurious, Gourmet, and many others.

Matt Rodbard is the Editor-in-Chief of TASTE.

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Crystal Hana Kim & Laura van den Berg: If You Leave me + The Third Hotel

Thursday September 05 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

When the Communist-backed army from the North invaded her village, sixteen-year-old Haemi Lee, along with her widowed mother and ailing brother, was forced to flee to a refugee camp along the coast. Now, for a few hours each night, she escapes her family’s makeshift home and tragic circumstances with her childhood friend Kyunghwan.

Focused on finishing school, Kyunghwan doesn’t realize his older and wealthier cousin, Jisoo, has his sights set on the beautiful and spirited Haemi—and is determined to marry her before joining the fight. But as Haemi becomes a wife, then a mother, her decision to forsake the boy she always loved to ensure the security of her family sets off a dramatic saga that will have profound effects for generations to come.

Crystal Hana Kim holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University and an MS in Education from Hunter College. She has received numerous awards, including PEN America’s Story Prize for Emerging Writers, along with fellowships and support from the Bread Loaf’s Writers Conference and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Born and raised in New York, she currently lives in Chicago. If You Leave Me is her first novel.

In Laura van den Berg’s surreal, mystifying, and deeply felt second novel, Clare, recently widowed, arrives in Havana, Cuba, to attend the 36th annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema, which her horror-loving film-professor husband, Richard, had purchased tickets for. The day after the screening of the movie Richard wanted most to see, Clare finds him standing outside the Museum of the Revolution. He’s wearing a white linen suit she’s never seen before, and he’s supposed to be dead.

Meticulously constructed and brimming with layered, poetic imagery, The Third Hotel follows Clare through her time in Havana as the distinction between reality and fantasy becomes increasingly blurred. In van den Berg’s Havana, animals escape from zoos and trains fly off the tracks while Clare follows her once-dead husband and charts her less-than-perfect marriage. As her search for clarity becomes increasingly opaque, the reader is forced to consider not only what is real and what is not, but what truths are lingering behind Clare’s own involvement in her husband’s disappearance and reemergence.

Laura van den Berg’s most recent novel, The Third Hotel, was an ABA IndieNext Pick, named a best book of 2018 by over a dozen outlets, and a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award. She is also the author of one previous novel, Find Me, and two story collections. Her honors include the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Bard Fiction Prize, and an O. Henry Award. Laura lives in Cambridge, MA, with her husband and dog, and is a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard. Her next story collection, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, is forthcoming from FSG in 2020.

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Etgar Keret: Fly Already w/ Elif Batuman

Friday September 06 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

There’s no one like Etgar Keret. His stories take place at the crossroads of the fantastical, searing, and hilarious. His characters grapple with parenthood and family, war and games, marijuana and cake, memory and love. These stories never go to the expected place, but always surprise, entertain, and move...

In “Arctic Lizard,” a young boy narrates a post-apocalyptic version of the world where a youth army wages an unending war, rewarded by collecting prizes. A father tries to shield his son from the inevitable in “Fly Already.” In “One Gram Short,” a guy just wants to get a joint to impress a girl and ends up down a rabbit hole of chaos and heartache. And in the masterpiece “Pineapple Crush,” two unlikely people connect through an evening smoke down by the beach, only to have one of them imagine a much deeper relationship.

The thread that weaves these pieces together is our inability to communicate, to see so little of the world around us and to understand each other even less. Yet somehow, in these pages, through Etgar’s deep love for humanity and our hapless existence, a bright light shines through and our universal connection to each other sparks alive.

Etgar Keret was born in Ramat Gan and now lives in Tel Aviv. A winner of the French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, the Charles Bronfman Prize, and the Caméra d'Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival, he is the author, most recently, of the memoir The Seven Good Years and story collections like The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God. His work has been translated into forty-five languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review, and The New York Times, among many other publications, and on This American Life, where he is a regular contributor.

Elif Batuman has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2010. She is the author of The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. The recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, and a Paris Review Terry Southern Prize for Humor, she also holds a PhD in comparative literature from Stanford University. The Idiot is her first novel. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

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Panel with Maika and Maritza Moulite: Dear Haiti, Love Alaine

Saturday September 07 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

Join us for a panel in discussion of Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite's new book, Dear Haiti, Love Alaine. The Moulite sisters will be joined by Ben Philippe and Debbie Rigaud, with Glory Edim of Well-Read Black Girl as moderator.

About the book:
You might ask the obvious question: What do I, a seventeen-year-old Haitian American from Miami with way too little life experience, have to say about anything?

Actually, a lot.

Thanks to “the incident” (don’t ask), I'm spending the next two months doing what my school is calling a "spring volunteer immersion project.” It’s definitely no vacation. I’m toiling away under the ever-watchful eyes of Tati Estelle at her new nonprofit. And my lean-in queen of a mother is even here to make sure I do things right. Or she might just be lying low to dodge the media sharks after a much more public incident of her own…and to hide a rather devastating secret.

All things considered, there are some pretty nice perks…like flirting with Tati’s distractingly cute intern, getting actual face time with my mom and experiencing Haiti for the first time. I’m even exploring my family’s history—which happens to be loaded with betrayals, superstitions and possibly even a family curse.

You know, typical drama. But it's nothing I can't handle.

Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite are self-professed bookworms who have been devouring YA for years. They grew up in Miami with two more Moulite sisters, a large extended family, a love for the ocean and their own Haitian culture. The character Alaine is an amalgamation of their experiences (to a certain degree) and their goal is to make Haitian culture and history more accessible through a fun, fast-paced, but also introspective story line that anyone can relate to.

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Nell Zink: Doxology w/ Emily Gould

Monday September 09 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

Pam, Daniel, and Joe might be the worst punk band on the Lower East Side. Struggling to scrape together enough cash and musical talent to make it, they are waylaid by surprising arrivals—a daughter for Pam and Daniel, a solo hit single for Joe. As the ’90s wane, the three friends share in one another’s successes, working together to elevate Joe’s superstardom and raise baby Flora.

On September 11, 2001, the city’s unfathomable devastation coincides with a shattering personal loss for the trio. In the aftermath, Flora comes of age, navigating a charged political landscape and discovering a love of the natural world. Joining the ranks of those fighting for ecological conservation, Flora works to bridge the wide gap between powerful strategists and ordinary Americans, becoming entangled ever more intimately with her fellow activists along the way. And when the country faces an astonishing new threat, Flora’s family will have no choice but to look to the past—both to examine wounds that have never healed and to rediscover strengths they have long forgotten.

Nell Zink grew up in rural Virginia. She has worked in a variety of trades, including masonry and technical writing. In the early 1990s, she edited an indie rock fanzine. Her books include The Wall Creeper, Mislaid, Private Novelist, and Nicotine, and her writing has appeared in n+1, Granta, and Harper’s. She lives near Berlin, Germany.

Emily Gould is the author of And The Heart Says Whatever, Friendship, and the forthcoming Perfect Tunes. With Ruth Curry, she runs Emily Books, which sells and publishes books by women as an imprint of Coffee House Press. She is a contributor to Bookforum and The Cut. She teaches writing in New York City, where she lives with her family.

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Akwaeke Emezi: Pet w/ Christopher Myers

Tuesday September 10 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

There are no monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. Jam and her best friend, Redemption, have grown up with this lesson all their life. But when Jam meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colors and claws, who emerges from one of her mother’s paintings and a drop of Jam’s blood, she must reconsider what she’s been told. Pet has come to hunt a monster, and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption’s house. Jam must fight not only to protect her best friend, but also to uncover the truth, and the answer to the question—How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?

Acclaimed novelist Akwaeke Emezi makes their riveting and timely young adult debut with a book that asks difficult questions about what choices you can make when the society around you is in denial. Refinery29 proclaims, “The word hype was invented to describe books like this.”

Akwaeke Emezi makes their young adult debut with Pet on the inaugural Make Me a World list. An honoree on the National Book Foundation's "5 Under 35" list, a long-list nominee for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence, and a short-list nominee for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, Akwaeke continues to receive accolades for their adult debut, Freshwater. The autobiographical novel also received rave reviews from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, and the Los Angeles Times, among others, as well as starred reviews from Library Journal and Booklist. Their sophomore adult novel, The Death of Vivek Oji, is forthcoming in 2020 from Riverhead. Learn more about Akwaeke at Akwaeke.com or on Twitter at @azemezi.

Christopher Myers is a widely acclaimed author and illustrator living in New York. In addition to illustrating his own titles, he has worked with numerous authors, including E. E. Cummings, Zora Neale Hurston, and his father, Walter Dean Myers. The two worked together on the Caldecott Honor winner Harlem, as well as the Coretta Scott King Honor winners Black Cat and H.O.R.S.E. Most recently he collaborated with dancer Misty Copeland on the picture book Firebird. Myers is a versatile artist, working with photos, gouache, woodcuts, collage, and other artistic media. His fine arts have been exhibited at MoMA PS1, Contrasts Gallery in Shanghai, the Prospect Biennial in New Orleans, and currently at the Cooper Gallery at Harvard. Myers also codirected the documentary film Am I Going Too Fast? with Hank Willis Thomas, and recently designed a translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead into a performance called Go Forth, directed by Kaneza Schaal. He has written several notable essays, among them “Young Dreamers,” an eloquent reflection on Trayvon Martin and Ezra Jack Keats’s The Snowy Day, as well as the much-discussed “The Apartheid of Children’s Literature,” published in the New York Times in 2014.

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Pamela Paul + Maria Russo: How to Raise a Reader w/ Emma Straub

Thursday September 12 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

Do you remember your first visit to where the wild things are? How about curling up for hours on end to discover the secret of the Sorcerer’s Stone? Combining clear, practical advice with inspiration, wisdom, tips, and curated reading lists, How to Raise a Reader shows you how to instill the joy and time-stopping pleasure of reading.

Divided into four sections, from baby through teen, and each illustrated by a different artist, this book offers something useful on every page, whether it’s how to develop rituals around reading or build a family library, or ways to engage a reluctant reader. A fifth section, “More Books to Love: By Theme and Reading Level,” is chockful of expert recommendations. Throughout, the authors debunk common myths, assuage parental fears, and deliver invaluable lessons in a positive and easy-to-act-on way.

Pamela Paul is the editor of The New York Times Book Review and oversees books coverage at The New York Times, which she joined in 2011 as the children's books editor. She is also the host of the weekly Book Review podcast for The Times. She is the author and editor of five books: My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues, The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony, Pornified, Parenting, Inc., and By the Book. She is a former columnist for The Economist, Worth, and The New York Times Styles section. Her work has also appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Slate, Vogue, Psychology Today, Brown Alumni Magazine and other national publications.

Maria Russo is the children's books editor of The New York Times Books Review. She has been a writer and editor at the Los Angeles Times, The New York Observer, and Salon, and holds a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey with her husband and three children.

Emma Straub is the New York Times bestselling author of three other novels The Vacationers, Modern Lovers, Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures, and the short story collection Other People We Married. Her books have been published in twenty countries. She and her husband own Books Are Magic, this very bookstore.

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Oliver Baez Bendorf: Advantages of Being Evergreen w/ Brian Teare

Saturday September 14 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM

“Equal part prayer and potion and survival guide, Oliver Baez Bendorf’s remarkable Advantages of Being Evergreen is an essential book for our time and for all time. With rigorous compassion and great formal dexterity Bendorf imagines a new world for all of our animal selves in which we are truly seen and truly safe. At the same time these are poems that never shy from the shocking violence and cruelty of this world. I don’t know when I’ve read a book that is so gentle and ferocious at the same time. Over and over again people come together to make their individual and communal body whole, knowing all the while that so much of the world seeks to wreck even the simplest kinds of safety. Baez Bendorf is making a future grammar for the moment all of our vessels are free and held. I am living for the world these poems anticipate. And I’m so happy to be held by them in the times that keep coming on this endless road to safety. This is a book of the earth’s abiding wonder. And the body’s unbreakable ability to bloom.”

– Gabrielle Calvocoressi, author of Rocket Fantastic

Oliver Baez Bendorf’s debut full length collection, The Spectral Wilderness (Kent State U.) was selected by Mark Doty for the Stan & Tom Wick Poetry Prize. His second book, Advantages of Being Evergreen, won CSU Poetry Center’s Open Book Poetry Competition and will be published September 10, 2019. He won the Rane Arroyo Chapbook Prize for The Gospel According to X which will be published in Summer 2019. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, BOMB, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, and elsewhere. He has been a featured reader at New Orleans Poetry Festival, The White House, Sarah Lawrence College, NYPL Bryant Park Reading Room, Smith College, Fall For The Book Festival, Indiana University, Woodland Pattern, and elsewhere. A recipient of honors and fellowships from CantoMundo, Lambda Literary, Vermont Studio Center, and University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Creative Writing, Oliver was born in Iowa and he currently teaches creative writing at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. He is also a faculty member at the 2019 Conference on Poetry at The Frost Place in Franconia, NH.

Brian Teare is the author of six critically acclaimed books, most recently Companion Grasses, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award, The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven, and Doomstead Days, out from Nightboat Books. His honors include the Brittingham, Lambda Literary, and Publishing Triangle Awards, and fellowships from the NEA, the Pew Foundation, the American Antiquarian Society, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony. An Associate Professor at the University of Virginia, he lives in Charlottesville, where he makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books.

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Attica Locke: Heaven, My Home w/ Megan Abbott

Tuesday September 17 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

9-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; now he's alone in the darkness of vast Caddo Lake, in a boat whose motor just died. A sudden noise distracts him - and all goes dark.

Darren Matthews is trying to emerge from another kind of darkness; after the events of his previous investigation, his marriage is in a precarious state of re-building, and his career and reputation lie in the hands of his mother, who's never exactly had his best interests at heart. Now she holds the key to his freedom, and she's not above a little maternal blackmail to press her advantage.

An unlikely possibility of rescue arrives in the form of a case down Highway 59, in a small lakeside town where the local economy thrives on nostalgia for ante-bellum Texas - and some of the era's racial attitudes still thrive as well. Levi's disappearance has links to Darren's last case, and to a wealthy businesswoman, the boy's grandmother, who seems more concerned about the fate of her business than that of her grandson.

Attica Locke is the author of Pleasantville, which won the 2016 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was long-listed for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction; Black Water Rising, which was nominated for an Edgar Award; and The Cutting Season, a national bestseller and winner of the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. She was a writer and producer on the Fox drama Empire. A native of Houston, Texas, Attica lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter.

Megan Abbott is the award-winning author of nine novels, including Dare Me, The Fever and the bestselling You Will Know Me. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Paris Review and the Wall Street Journal. Formerly writer on HBO’s The Deuce, she is currently writing and executive producing a TV show based on her novel Dare Me, to begin airing in 2020. Her latest novel is Give Me Your Hand, which was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a CWA Dagger and an Anthony Award. She lives in Queens, New York.

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Books Are Magic x Brooklyn Book Festival: Jericho Brown and Tina Chang

Thursday September 19 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

Join us for an event with poets Jericho Brown and Tina Chang reading from their latest poetry collection, produced in partnership with the Brooklyn Book Festival. Jericho Brown’s The Tradition explores cultural threats on black bodies, resistance, and the interplay of desire and privilege in a dangerous era. Tina Chang’s Hybrida is a stirring and confident examination of mixed-race identity, violence, and history skillfully rendered through the lens of motherhood.

Jericho Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Brown’s first book, Please (2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets. He is also the author of the collection The Tradition (2019). His poems have appeared in Buzzfeed, The Nation, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Time, and The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry anthologies. He is an associate professor and the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta.

Tina Chang, Brooklyn Poet Laureate, is the author of Half-Lit Houses (2004), Of Gods & Strangers (2011), and most recently Hybrida (2019) which was named A Most Anticipated Book of 2019 by NPR, Lit Hub, The Millions, Oprah magazine, Publisher’s Weekly and was named a New York Times Book Review New & Noteworthy collection. She is also the co-editor of the W.W. Norton anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (2008). Chang teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2019 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL EVENT. Free and open to the public. Let us know you're coming on Facebook.

NYRB Book Club: Picture by Lillian Ross

Monday September 23 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM

Lillian Ross worked at The New Yorker for more than half a century, and might be described not only as an outstanding practitioner of modern long-form journalism but also as one of its inventors. Picture, originally published in 1952, is her most celebrated piece of reportage, a closely observed and completely absorbing story of how studio politics and misguided commercialism turn a promising movie into an all-around disaster. The charismatic and hard-bitten director and actor John Huston is at the center of the book, determined to make Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage—one of the great and defining works of American literature, the first modern war novel, a book whose vivid imagistic style invites the description of cinematic—into a movie that is worthy of it. At first all goes well, as Huston shoots and puts together a two-hour film that is, he feels, the best he’s ever made. Then the studio bosses step in and the audience previews begin, conferences are held, and the movie is taken out of Huston’s hands, cut down by a third, and finally released—with results that please no one and certainly not the public: It was an expensive flop. In Picture, which Charlie Chaplin aptly described as “brilliant and sagacious,” Ross is a gadfly on the wall taking note of the operations of a system designed to crank out mediocrity.

Lillian Ross (1918–2017), born Lillian Rosovsky, grew up in Syracuse and Brooklyn, New York. In 1945, she joined The New Yorker and was a staff writer there for seven decades. She was the author of eleven books, including Portrait of Hemingway, Vertical and Horizontal, Reporting,The Player, Here But Not Here, and Reporting Back: Notes on Journalism. She spent much of her life with the journalist and editor William Shawn. Her work is considered to be a major influence in the field of literary journalism.

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Books Are Magic x Red Ink Series: SECRETS

Thursday September 26 | 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, “Secrets,” will feature Kristen Arnett (Mostly Dead Things), Angie Cruz (Dominicana), Sion Dayson (As a River), and more TBA.

Michele Filgate’s work has appeared in Longreads; The Washington Post; the Los Angeles Times; The Boston Globe; The Paris Review Daily; Tin House; Gulf Coast; O, The Oprah Magazine; BuzzFeed; Refinery29; and many other publications. Currently, she is an MFA student at NYU, where she is the recipient of the Stein Fellowship. She’s a contributing editor at Literary Hub and teaches at the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop and Catapult. What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About is her first book.

Kristen Arnett is a queer fiction and essay writer. She won the 2017 Coil Book Award for her debut short fiction collection, Felt in the Jaw, and was awarded Ninth's Letter's 2015 Literary Award in Fiction. She's a columnist for Literary Hub and her work has either appeared or upcoming at North American Review, The Normal School, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, Guernica, Electric Literature, Volume 1 Brooklyn, Bennington Review, Tin House Flash Fridays, The Guardian, Salon, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Mostly Dead Things is her first novel. She is represented by Pande Literary. You can find her on twitter here: @Kristen_Arnett

Angie Cruz is the author of the novels, Soledad, Let It Rain Coffee, a finalist in 2007 for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and, most recently, Dominicana. She has published work in The New York Times, VQR, Gulf Coast Literary Journal, and other publications, and has received fellowships from the New York Foundation of the Arts, Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony. She is founder and editor in chief of Aster(ix), a literary and arts journal, and is an associate professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.

Sion Dayson grew up in North Carolina and earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Utne Reader, and many other venues, and her writings often focus on travel, living abroad, and her literary hero, James Baldwin. Her popular blog paris (im)perfect explored the City of Light’s less glamorous side. After a decade in Paris, she now resides in Valencia, Spain. As a River (Jaded Ibis Press, September 2019) is her first novel.

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Author Panel: Empowering Children Through Books

Monday September 30 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM

Join us for a panel on educating, empowering and inspiring kids through books, featuring authors: Chana Ginelle Ewing (An ABC of Equality), Arabelle Sicardi (Queer Heroes), Jamia Wilson (Young, Gifted, and Black & Step Into Your Power) and Vanessa Willoughby (Vivienne Westwood) as moderator. All three authors are dedicated to writing books that inspire children, by giving them the language that they need to navigate today’s world and empower them to change it.

Women and identity advocate and entrepreneur, Chana Ginelle Ewing is the Founder and CEO of Geenie, a leading women’s empowerment platform centering the stories of Black women for personal growth. She is the author of the forthcoming children’s book An ABC of Equality, illustrated by Paulina Morgan (Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, Sept 2019).

Arabelle Sicardi is a queer Asian American writer whose work focuses on beauty, fashion, politics, and identity. They've written for teenVOGUE, them., ROOKIE, ALLURE, i-D, NYLON, and other publications. They were previously the Beauty Editor at BuzzFeed. Now they work full-time as a freelancer so they can spend time working on books, like this one.

Jamia Wilson is the executive director and publisher of the Feminist Press. She is a leading voice on feminist and gender justice issues whose words have appeared in and on the New York Times, The Guardian, BBC News, The Today Show, CNN, The Washington Post, Elle, Teen Vogue and more. Jamia is the co-author of Road Map for Revolutionaries: Resistance, Activism, and Advocacy for All. She is also a columnist for Rookie Magazine and has contributed to several books such as Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution. Jamia is an adjunct professor at the John Jay School for Criminal Justice and travels across the US – and beyond – to talk about race, feminism, leadership, and so much more.

Vanessa Willoughby is the Nonfiction Editor at School Library Journal. She is also the editor for Kindred Books, an imprint of the independent publisher Brain Mill Press, and a freelance writer. Her bylines include but are not limited to Hazlitt, Allure, Bitch, Hello Giggles, The Toast, and Broadly.

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Rob Newton: Seeking the South

Tuesday October 01 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

“There’s no genre of American cuisine as storied as Southern,” says Rob Newton. In his debut cookbook, Newton brings to life the regional distinctions and new influences that make up the changing face of Southern cuisine—a category of cooking as cutting-edge as any other in the world. As Southern regions’ demographics shift and food cultures bump up against one another, Chef Newton reveals just how diverse Southern cuisine really is.

As Newton explains, the pork and beans he grew up eating in the mountains of the Ozarks is very different from the shellfish-heavy food of the Lowcountry or the Cajun-influenced fare along the Gulf Coast. And though often overlooked, historically underrecognized populations have constantly reimagined what the Southern table looks like with their culinary contributions: Enslaved African cooks perfected fried chicken, Middle Eastern communities helped introduce spices such as sumac to the Mississippi Delta, and Korean and Mexican immigrants continue to reinvent the grilled meats and pickled vegetables that Southerners know and love.

In Seeking the South, Newton brings his unique perspective to show readers there’s much more to the food below the Mason-Dixon Line than meets the eye. Crisscrossing the South (the Upper and Deep South, Gulf Coast, Coastal Plains and Piedmont, and Lowcountry and Southeast Coast), Newton shares more than 125 recipes as old and familiar as Pork Hocks with Hominy, and as current as Okra with Sichuan Peppercorn and Black-Eyed Pea Falafel. To Newton, Southern cuisine delights because it is delicious and, above all, endlessly dynamic. In this cookbook, he brings this exciting evolution of flavors to your table.

Rob Newton is a chef and restaurateur. Raised in Arkansas, Newton worked in some of New York's top restaurants before opening his own, Seersucker, Nightingale Nine, and Black Walnut in Brooklyn. He resides in Nashville, where he is the executive chef at Gray & Dudley.

Matt Rodbard is the Editor-in-Chief of TASTE.

This event is free!

Robert Simonson: The Martini Cocktail w/ Talia Baiocchi

Friday October 04 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

A classic martini includes gin, vermouth, sometimes bitters, a lemon twist or olive, and lots of opinions—it’s these opinions that New York Times cocktail writer Robert Simonson uncovers in his exploration of the long and tangled history of the classic martini and its subtle variations. The book features examples of age-old recipes, such as the first martini recipe published in 1888, modern versions created by some of the world’s best bartenders, and martinis sought out by enthusiasts around the world, from Dukes Bar at the Dukes Hotel London to Musso and Frank Grill in Los Angeles. In The Martini Cocktail, you’ll discover everything you need to know about what components make a great martini, as well as a collection of 50 recipes to create your own drinks (and form your own opinions) at home.

Robert Simonson about bars, bartenders, cocktails and spirits for The New York Times, where he has been a contributor since 2000, and Punch, where he is a contributing editor and the author of the column “Bar Review,” in which he critiques significant saloons across the country. His work, which has been nominated for a total of ten Spirited Awards and one IACP Award, has also appeared in Imbibe, Food & Wine, Saveur, Bon Appetit and many other publications. His books include “The Old-Fashioned” (2014); “A Proper Drink” (2016), the first history of the current cocktail renaissance; and “3-Ingredient Cocktails” (2017), which was nominated for a 2018 James Beard Award. He was also a primary contributor to "The Essential New York Times Book of Cocktails” (2015). His latest book, “The Martini,” will be released in fall 2019. He is the co-author, with Martin Doudoroff, of two apps, “Modern Classics of the Cocktail Renaissance” and the upcoming “The Martini,” which makes an excellent companion to the book of the same name. A native of Wisconsin, he lives in Brooklyn with his partner, Mary Kate Murray, and his son, Asher.

Talia Baiocchi is the Editor in Chief of PUNCH and the author of the James Beard Award-nominated Sherry (Ten Speed Press) and co-author of the forthcoming Spritz (Ten Speed Press, March 2016). She has written for The San Francisco Chronicle, Saveur, Bon Appétit and Elle, among many others. She has a degree in journalism and political science from New York University and has been featured in numerous publications, including Forbes as a member of the magazine’s 2013 “30 under 30” list. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

This event is free!

Lilly Dancyger: Burn It Down Panel

Wednesday October 09 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

Women’s anger—so long mocked, dismissed, or considered taboo—appears at first glance to be having a moment, from the 2017 relaunch of Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement, through the Women’s Marches around the world, to political analysis in the run-up to the 2020 election. Yet, as Lilly Dancyger writes in the introduction to Burn It Down: Women Writing about Anger (Seal Press, October 8, 2019), even “when asked specifically to write about their anger, many of the women in this book described it at first from a safe distance, explaining coolly and calmly what they were angry about.” We’ve been taught that angry women will be perceived as ugly, crazy, undeserving of love, and maybe even dangerous. As Dancyger puts it, “Millennia of conditioning is hard to unlearn.”

Even now, women’s anger is often made palatable by describing it as a tool for social change. But as Dancyger writes, “our anger doesn’t have to be useful to deserve a voice. Just as women who are so often reduced to sexual objects or baby-makers deserve to be considered as whole individuals on their own terms and for their own sakes, I wanted to give their anger space to exist solely for itself, without being packaged and used for someone else’s gain. That’s what this anthology is for.”

And so we meet Melissa Febos’ middle school camp counselor, screaming unabashedly at a male intruder on the female nude beach (it was a pretty unconventional summer camp). Meredith Talusan reflects on how differently her interaction with a male classmate would have unfolded if it had happened prior to her gender transition, or further down the road: “Because I was new to womanhood, I didn’t know I was supposed to let his blatant insult to my intelligence go.” Erin Khar describes anger subverted into guilt—but only for a time.

Lilly Dancyger is the memoir editor at Narratively, a contributing editor and writing instructor at Catapult, and assistant books editor at Barrelhouse. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Washington Post, The Guardian, New York Magazine, and many other outlets.

Melissa Febos is the author of the acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart (St. Martin’s Press 2010), and the essay collection, Abandon Me (Bloomsbury 2017), which was a LAMBDA Literary Award finalist and an Indie Next Pick. Girlhood is forthcoming from Bloomsbury in 2021.

Erin Khar’s debut memoir about her decade-long battle with opiate addiction is forthcoming from Park Row Books in winter 2020. Erin is also the managing editor at Ravishly, where she writes the weekly advice column, Ask Erin.

Meredith Talusan’s debut memoir, Fairest, is forthcoming from Viking/Penguin Random House.

This event is free!

Morgan Parker: Who Put This Song On? w/ Bridgette Bartlett Royall

Friday October 18 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

Trapped in sunny, stifling, small-town suburbia, seventeen-year-old Morgan knows why she’s in therapy. She can’t count the number of times she’s been the only non-white person at the sleepover, been teased for her “weird” outfits, and been told she’s not “really” black. Also, she’s spent most of her summer crying in bed. So there’s that, too.

Lately, it feels like the whole world is listening to the same terrible track on repeat—and it’s telling them how to feel, who to vote for, what to believe. Morgan wonders, when can she turn this song off and begin living for herself?

Loosely based on her own teenage life and diaries, this incredible debut by award-winning poet Morgan Parker will make readers stand up and cheer for a girl brave enough to live life on her own terms—and for themselves.

Morgan Parker is the author of Magical Negro (Tin House Books 2019), There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé (Tin House Books 2017) and Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night (Switchback Books 2015). Her debut book of nonfiction will be released in 2020 by One World. Parker received her bachelor's degree in anthropology and creative writing from Columbia University and her master's in poetry from NYU. Her poetry and essays have been published and anthologized in numerous publications, including the Paris Review; The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop; Best American Poetry 2016; the New York Times; and the Nation. Parker is the recipient of a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, winner of a 2016 Pushcart Prize, and a Cave Canem graduate fellow. Who Put This Song On? is her debut YA novel. Find her online at morgan-parker.com and on Twitter at @morganapple

Bridgette Bartlett Royall is an award-winning content creator with nearly two decades of experience in media. A Fashion Institute of Technology graduate who also holds a certificate in journalism from New York University, she is presently the Books Editor at Essence magazine. Royall has contributed to several books herself as a writer and researcher including Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul (Essence), He Never Came Home: Interviews, Stories, and Essays from Daughters on Life Without Their Fathers (Agate) and The Obamas: The White House Years (Essence). In 2010 Royall launched Black Bridal Bliss, an online planning resource catering to Black brides. In February 2013, Royall was featured in her own episode of TLC’s reality television show Something Borrowed, Something New. Royall for has provided her bridal and lifestyle expertise to a host of outlets including The Chicago Tribune, The Grio, PEOPLE, Refinery 29, Teen Vogue and Huffington Post Weddings. In 2019 she launched Black Baby Bliss and subsequently the Black Baby Bliss Book Club after giving birth to her son Langston in January of the same year. Royall has long been an advocate for children’s literacy and looks forward to expanding this platform. Of all the positions Royall has held during her career, the title of mother is by far her most challenging and most rewarding. The Queens, New York native enjoys traveling, spending time with family and thinks HGTV House Hunters and Law & Order: SVU marathons are golden.

This event is free!

Storytime with Marisabina Russo and Hannah Stark

Saturday October 19 | 11:00AM - 12:00PM

Join us for a double storytime reading with Marisabina Russo, author of The Bunnies Are Not in Their Beds, and Hannah Stark, author of Trucker and Train.

Marisabina Russo, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, is an award winning children’s book author and illustrator. She began her career as a freelance illustrator contributing spots and covers to The New Yorker as well as many other magazines and newspapers. Her first picture book, THE LINE UP BOOK, won the International Reading Association Award in 1986 and remains in print over 30 years later. She has written and illustrated 32 picture books and young adult novels including LITTLE BIRD TAKES A BATH, I WILL COME BACK FOR YOU; A FAMILY IN HIDING DURING WORLD WAR II (A Junior Library Guild Selection and Oppenheim Portfolio Platinum Award winner), ALWAYS REMEMBER ME; HOW ONE FAMILY SURVIVED WORLD WAR II (American Library Association Notable Book), A VERY BIG BUNNY (Junior Library Guild Selection, Bank Street Best Books), and THE BUNNIES ARE NOT IN THEIR BEDS. Her books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, and Hebrew. She is currently working on a graphic memoir.

Hannah Stark grew up watching her mom, Marisabina Russo, create picture books in her studio. She remembers a house filled with children's books as well as bags of teaching materials because her father was a teacher. Today Hannah's home is filled with picture books and teaching materials, too. Hannah has been teaching elementary school in the New York City Public Schools for fifteen years. She loves making and sharing resources for other educators and teaching kids to write. She was inspired to write her debut book, TRUCKER AND TRAIN, while playing with her sons, Jackson and Travis. When not writing or teaching, Hannah can be found taking road trips and train rides to unfamiliar places.

This event is free!

Storytime with Carson Ellis: The Shortest Day

Friday October 25 | 4:00PM - 5:00PM

So the shortest day came,
and the year died…

As the sun set on the shortest day of the year, early people would gather to prepare for the long night ahead. They built fires and lit candles. They played music, bringing their own light to the darkness, while wondering if the sun would ever rise again. Written for a theatrical production that has become a ritual in itself, Susan Cooper’s poem "The Shortest Day" captures the magic behind the returning of the light, the yearning for traditions that connect us with generations that have gone before — and the hope for peace that we carry into the future. Richly illustrated by Carson Ellis with a universality that spans the centuries, this beautiful book evokes the joy and community found in the ongoing mystery of life when we celebrate light, thankfulness, and festivity at a time of rebirth. Welcome Yule!

Carson Ellis is the author and illustrator of the bestselling picture books Home and Du Iz Tak? (a Caldecott Honor book and the recipient of an E.B. White Read Aloud Award). She has illustrated a number of books for kids including bestsellers The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart, The Composer Is Dead by Lemony Snicket, and The Wildwood Chronicles by Colin Meloy (who happens to be her husband). Carson has been awarded silver medals by the Society of Illustrators for her work on Wildwood Imperium and on Dillweed's Revenge by Florence Parry Heide. She's the illustrator-in-residence for Colin's band, The Decemberists, and received a Grammy nomination in 2016 for the design of their last LP, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World. She's also an occasional maker of editorial illustration, having worked for The New York Times, Poetry Magazine, and The New Yorker, among many others, and an even more occasional fine artist represented by Nationale in Portland. Carson lives on a farm in Oregon with Colin, their two sons, one cat, two llamas, two goats, one sheep, ten chickens, a family of barn owls and an unfathomable multitude of tree frogs.

This event is free!

Kevin Wilson: Nothing to See Here w/ Emma Straub

Tuesday November 05 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

Lillian and Madison were the unlikeliest of roommates at their elite boarding school: Madison, the daughter of a prominent Atlanta family, being groomed for greatness; Lillian, a scholarship student, plucked out of nowhere based solely on her intellect and athletic prowess. The two were as tight as could be, reveling in their unique weirdnesses, until Lillian had to leave the school unexpectedly.

Years later, the two have lost touch, but Madison writes and begs Lillian for help. Her husband’s twin stepkids are moving in with them and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there’s a catch: the twins can spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a disturbing but beautiful way.

Disbelieving at first but ultimately too intrigued by these strange children, Lillian agrees. And as they hunker down in the pool house, Lillian and the twins learn to trust each other—and stay cool—just as Madison’s family is bracing for a major announcement. It all seems impossible to manage, but Lillian soon accepts that she and the children need each other, urgently and fiercely.With a white-hot wit and a big, tender heart, Kevin Wilson has written a most unusual story of deep parental love that proves to be his best book yet.

Kevin Wilson is the author of the novels The Family Fang, a New York Times bestseller adapted into an acclaimed film starring Nicole Kidman, and Perfect Little World, as well as the story collections Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, and Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine. He lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, with his wife and two sons.

Emma Straub is the New York Times bestselling author of three other novels The Vacationers, Modern Lovers, Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures, and the short story collection Other People We Married. Her books have been published in twenty countries. She and her husband own Books Are Magic, this very bookstore.

This event is free!