Books are Magic

Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Wolitzer: To Night Owl From Dogfish

Saturday February 16 | 2:00PM - 3:00PM

Avery Bloom, who's bookish, intense, and afraid of many things, particularly deep water, lives in New York City. Bett Devlin, who's fearless, outgoing, and loves all animals as well as the ocean, lives in California. What they have in common is that they are both twelve years old, and are both being raised by single, gay dads.

When their dads fall in love, Bett and Avery are sent, against their will, to the same sleepaway camp. Their dads hope that they will find common ground and become friends-and possibly, one day, even sisters.

But things soon go off the rails for the girls (and for their dads too), and they find themselves on a summer adventure that neither of them could have predicted. Now that they can't imagine life without each other, will the two girls (who sometimes call themselves Night Owl and Dogfish) figure out a way to be a family?

Holly Goldberg Sloan was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan and spent her childhood living in Holland, Istanbul, Turkey, Washington DC, Berkeley, California and Eugene, Oregon. After graduating from Wellesley College and spending some time as an advertising copywriter, she began writing and directing family feature films, including Angels in the Outfield and Made in America. Counting by 7s, her first middle-grade novel, was a New York Times Bestseller. The mother of two sons, Holly lives with her husband in Santa Monica, California.

Meg Wolitzer was born in Brooklyn, New York, studied Creative Writing at Smith College, and graduated from Brown University (where she wrote her first published novel, Sleepwalking, while still an undergraduate). She is the New York Times-bestselling author of numerous novels for adults, including The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, The Wife, and The Female Persuasion; the young adult novel Belzhar; and the middle-grade novel The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman.

This event is free and kid-friendly! Let us know you're coming on Facebook.

Christopher Castellani: Leading Men w/ Emma Straub

Wednesday February 20 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

In July of 1953, at a glittering party thrown by Truman Capote in Portofino, Italy, Tennessee Williams and his longtime lover Frank Merlo meet Anja Blomgren, a mysteriously taciturn young Swedish beauty and aspiring actress. Their encounter will go on to alter all of their lives.

Ten years later, Frank revisits the tempestuous events of that fateful summer from his deathbed in Manhattan, where he waits anxiously for Tennessee to visit him one final time. Anja, now legendary film icon Anja Bloom, lives as a recluse in the present-day U.S., until a young man connected to the events of 1953 lures her reluctantly back into the spotlight after he discovers she possesses the only surviving copy of Williams’s final play.

What keeps two people together and what breaks them apart? Can we save someone else if we can’t save ourselves? Like The Master and The Hours, Leading Men seamlessly weaves fact and fiction to navigate the tensions between public figures and their private lives. In an ultimately heartbreaking story about the burdens of fame and the complex negotiations of life in the shadows of greatness, Castellani creates an unforgettable leading lady in Anja Bloom and reveals the hidden machinery of one of the great literary love stories of the twentieth-century.

Christopher Castellani is the author of three previous novels (A Kiss from Maddalena, The Saint of Lost Things, and All This Talk of Love) and The Art of Perspective, a book of essays on the craft of fiction. He is the son of Italian immigrants, a Guggenheim fellow, and the artistic director of GrubStreet, one of the country's leading creative writing centers. He lives in Boston.

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, the New York Times, and Rookie. She lives with her husband in Brooklyn, where she co-owns Books Are Magic.

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Erin Hosier: Don't Let Me Down w/ Tanya Marquardt

Thursday February 21 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

A fierce, vivid memoir about a father-daughter relationship steeped in God, rebellion, and the Beatles.

Erin Hosier’s coming-of-age was full of contradiction. Born into the turbulent 1970s, she was raised in rural Ohio by lapsed hippies who traded 1960s rock ‘n’ roll for 1950s-era Christian hymns. Her mother’s newfound faith was rooted in a desire to manage her husband’s mood swings, which could alternately fill the house with music or with violence.

All the while, Jack was larger than life to his adoring daughter. Full of conflict, their complex relationship set the tone for three decades of Erin’s relationships with men; the Beatles provided the soundtrack. Jack bonded with Erin over their iconic songs, even as they inspired her to question authority—both his and others’.

Don’t Let Me Down is about a brave girl trying to navigate family secrets and tragedies and escape from small-town small-mindedness. It is a searing and often funny exploration of how women first see themselves through the lens of a parent’s love, and of the ties that bind us to our childhood heroes, who ultimately lead us to ask that most profound of questions: Is love really all you need?

Erin Hosier is the coauthor of Patty Schemel's Hit So Hard and is a literary agent with Dunow, Carlson, & Lerner. She lives in Brooklyn.

Tanya Marquardt is a writer and performer from Vancouver, BC and Brooklyn, New York. Her debut STRAY: Memoirs of a Runaway was published by Little A in September, 2018, and her performance work has been presented at PuSh, Mabou Mines, Brooklyn Museum, BAX, and The Collapsable Hole, among others. Her play Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep, about being a sleep talker, was the subject of NPRs Invisibila podcast. Tanya received her BFA in Theatre at Simon Fraser University, a Certificate of Dance at MainDance, and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Hunter College.

This event is free!

Sophia Shalmiyev: Mother Winter w/ Melissa Febos

Monday February 25 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

Mother Winter is the story of Sophia’s emotional journeys as an immigrant, an artist, and a woman raised without her mother. Born to a Russian mother and an Azerbaijani father, Shalmiyev grew up under the stark oppressiveness of 1980s Leningrad. An imbalance of power and widespread anti-Semitism in her homeland led her father to steal Shalmiyev away, emigrating to America and abandoning her estranged and alcoholic mother, Elena. At age eleven, Shalmiyev found herself on a plane headed west, motherless and terrified of the new world unfolding before her.

Mother Winter depicts in urgent vignettes Sophia’s years of travel, searching, and forging meaningful connection with the worlds she occupies. The result is a searing meditation on motherhood, displacement, gender politics, and the pursuit of wholeness after shattering loss. And ultimately, it is an aching observation of the human heart across time and culture.

Sophia Shalmiyev emigrated from Leningrad to NYC in 1990. An MFA graduate of Portland State University, she was the nonfiction editor for The Portland Review and is a recipient of the Laurels scholarship and numerous Kellogg’s fellowship awards. She has a second master’s degree in creative arts therapy from The School of Visual Arts, where she worked with survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking. Her work has appeared in Vela Magazine, Bellows American Review, Electric Lit, The Seattle Review of Books, Ravishly and The Literary Review, among others; all with a feminist lens. She lives in Portland.

Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir, Whip Smart, and the essay collection, Abandon Me. She is a three-time MacDowell Colony fellow, and has also received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Ragdale, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. The recipient of an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, she is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Monmouth University, MFA faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), and serves on the Board of Directors for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. She grew up on Cape Cod and lives in Brooklyn.

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Chloe Aridjis: Sea Monsters w/ Kendall Storey

Wednesday February 27 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

One autumn afternoon in Mexico City, seventeen-year-old Luisa does not return home from school. Instead, she boards a bus to the Pacific coast with Tomás, a boy she barely knows. He seems to represent everything her life is lacking—recklessness, impulse, independence. Tomás may also help Luisa fulfill an unusual obsession: she wants to track down a traveling troupe of Ukrainian dwarfs. According to newspaper reports, the dwarfs recently escaped a Soviet circus touring Mexico. The imagined fates of these performers fill Luisa’s surreal dreams as she settles in a beach community in Oaxaca.

Surrounded by hippies, nudists, beachcombers, and eccentric storytellers, Luisa searches for someone, anyone, who will “promise, no matter what, to remain a mystery.” It is a quest more easily envisioned than accomplished. As she wanders the shoreline and visits the local bar, Luisa begins to disappear dangerously into the lives of strangers on Zipolite, the “Beach of the Dead.”

Meanwhile, her father has set out to find his missing daughter. A mesmeric portrait of transgression and disenchantment unfolds.Sea Monsters is a brilliantly playful and supple novel about the moments and mysteries that shape us.

Chloe Aridjis is a Mexican American writer who was born in New York and grew up in the Netherlands and Mexico. After completing her Ph.D. at the University of Oxford in nineteenth-century French poetry and magic shows, she lived for nearly six years in Berlin. Her debut novel, Book of Clouds, has been published in eight languages and won the Prix du Premier Roman Étranger in France. Aridjis sometimes writes about art and insomnia and was a guest curator at Tate Liverpool. In 2014, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in London.

Kendall Storey is Associate Editor & Publishing Manager at Catapult. Previously she worked at Archipelago Books and was Co-Director of Elsewhere Editions, a nonprofit children's press devoted to picture books in translation.

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Andrea Bartz: The Lost Night w/ Jason Diamond

Friday March 01 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

Come party like its 2009 with Andrea Bartz and Jason Diamond!

In 2009, in a loft complex in Bushwick, Edie is the shining star of a group of recent college graduates. Seductive, mercurial, and beguiling, Edie has the social world in her thrall, and she and her best friends treat New York like a playground. When she commits suicide at the end of a long, drunken night, no one can quite believe it. But an overwhelming mix of grief, shock, and long-standing resentment force each friend into their own corner, and, for years, that’s where they stay.

A decade later, Lindsay is content with her life and has come a long way from the drug-addled world of Calhoun Lofts. She has a thriving career in magazines, lives in a cozy apartment, and has true adult friendships. But when a chance reunion leads Lindsay to discover an unsettling video from that terrible, hazy night, she starts to wonder if Edie was actually murdered—and, worse perhaps, if she herself was involved. As she rifles through those months in 2009—combing through case files, old technology, and her fractured memory—Lindsay is forced to confront the demons of her own violent history to bring the truth to light.

Andrea Bartz is a Brooklyn-based journalist and coauthor of the blog-turned-book Stuff Hipsters Hate (Ulysses Press, 2010), which The New Yorker called "depressingly astute." Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Marie Claire, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Women's Health, Martha Stewart Living, Redbook, Elle, and many other outlets, and she's held editorial positions at Glamour, Psychology Today, and Self, among other titles.

Jason Diamond founded the site Vol. 1 Brooklyn. Vol 1., launched Julius Singer Press and curates regular free literary events, including the popular 3-Minute Stories series. He has written for The New York Times, Outside, The Paris Review, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, Eater, The Wall Street Journal, New Republic, Vice, Bookforum, Tablet, The Awl, Pitchfork, McSweeny's, NPR, and many other fine outlets. His memoir, Searching For John Hughes, was released in November 2016. His next book, The Sprawl, will be released by Coffee House Press in 2020. He lives in Brooklyn.

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Storytime w/ Maëlle Doliveux and Andrea Tsurumi: Good Night Wind and Crab Cake

Saturday March 02 | 11:00AM - 12:00PM

When the exhausted winter wind throws a snowy tantrum, it finds comfort in the friendship of two young children in this lyrical retelling of a Yiddish folktale illustrated with stunning collage.

In this retelling of a Yiddish folktale, “Winter Wind worked hard all season long / blowing away leaves, / preparing trees for coats of snow and ice.” Now, Wind is tired and needs a place to rest. But no one wants to shelter so cold and blustery a Wind—not the townspeople, not the country innkeeper, not even the gnarled tree who is worried about frozen roots. Finally, Wind does what any of us do when we are overtired: Wind has a tantrum. And it is only with the help of two small children brave enough to weather the storm that Wind finally finds the perfect place to sleep. Gentle language coupled with intricate photo-illustrations of collage dioramas tell this sweet tale about empathy and friendship. The visuals in this book are striking for their vibrancy, palette, and movement.

Maëlle Doliveux is a French and Swiss illustrator and comics artist who has lived all over the world, from New Jersey to New Zealand and now in New York. Her clients include The New York Times, Newsweek and SpongeBob Squarepants comics. Good Night, Wind, written by Linda Marshall, is her children's book illustration debut. In her spare time she enjoys riding moose, walking geese, and making up fake hobbies for herself in her biographies. www.maelledoliveux.com

Under the sea, a crab follows its heart and its calling, bringing everyone together in the wake of a disaster. Feed your craving for a hilarious, heart-warming story with Crab Cake, perfect for budding environmentalists, kids learning to cope with mishaps, and every young reader in between.

Under the sea, fish do what fish do: Seahorse hides, Pufferfish puffs up, Parrotfish crunches coral, and Crab . . . bakes cakes? Scallop swims, Dolphin blows bubbles, and . . . Crab bakes cakes. And so life goes on, until one night when everything changes with a splash! In the face of total disaster, can Crab's small, brave act help the community come together and carry on?

Andrea Tsurumi is an author, illustrator and cartoonist originally from NY who now lives and draws in Philadelphia. The creator of ACCIDENT!, CRAB CAKE, and numerous comics, she’s also illustrated NOT YOUR NEST and GIRLS WHO CODE. When she's not inventing croissant-based animals, she likes reading about ordinary and ridiculous history. andreatsurumi.com

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Aatish Taseer: The Twice-Born w/ Karan Mahajan

Monday March 04 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

When Aatish Taseer first came to Benares, the spiritual capital of Hinduism, he was eighteen, the Westernized child of an Indian journalist and a Pakistani politician, raised among the intellectual and cultural elite of New Delhi. Nearly two decades later, Taseer leaves his life in Manhattan to go in search of the Brahmins, wanting to understand his own estrangement from India through their ties to tradition.

Known as the twice-born—first into the flesh, and again when initiated into their vocation—the Brahmins are a caste devoted to sacred learning. But what Taseer finds in Benares is a window on an India as internally fractured as his own continent-bridging identity. At every turn, the seductive, homogenizing force of modernity collides with the insistent presence of the past. In a globalized world, to be modern is to renounce India—and yet the tide of nationalism is rising, heralded by cries of “Victory to Mother India!” and an outbreak of anti-Muslim violence.

From the narrow streets of the temple town to a Modi rally in Delhi, among the blossoming cotton trees and the bathers and burning corpses of the Ganges, Taseer struggles to reconcile magic with reason, faith in tradition with hope for the future and the brutalities of the caste system, all the while challenging his own myths about himself, his past, and his countries old and new.

Aatish Taseer was born in 1980. He is the author of the memoir Stranger to History: A Son’s Journey Through Islamic Lands and the acclaimed novels: The Way Things Were, a finalist for the 2016 Jan Michalski Prize; The Temple-Goers, which was short-listed for the Costa First Novel Award; and Noon. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. He is a contributing writer for The International New York Times and lives in New Delhi and New York.

Karan Mahajan grew up in New Delhi, India and moved to the US for college. His first novel, Family Planning (2008), was a finalist for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. It was published in nine countries. His second novel, The Association of Small Bombs (2016), was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Awards and was named one of the "10 Best Books of 2016" by The New York Times. Karan's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker online, The New Republic and other venues. From 2018-2019 he will be a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

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Work Wife: Erica Cerulo, Claire Mazur w/ Aminatou Sow @ St. Francis College

Tuesday March 05 | 7:00PM - 9:00PM

Books Are Magic is proud to host Erica Cerulo and Claire Mazur as they present their new book, Work Wife: The Power of Female Friendship to Drive Successful Businesses with Aminatou Sow at St. Francis College's Founders Hall.

Get inspired by the women who discovered that working with your best friend could be the secret to professional success—and maybe even the future of business, from the co-founders of the website Of a Kind.

When Erica Cerulo and Claire Mazur met in college, they bonded instantly. Fast forward to 2010, when after almost a decade of friendship they founded the popular fashion and design website Of a Kind. Now, in their first book, Claire and Erica bring to light the unique power of female friendship to fuel successful businesses. Drawing on their own experiences as well as the stories of other thriving “work wives,” they highlight the ways in which vulnerability, openness, and compassion—qualities central to so many women’s relationships—lend themselves to professional accomplishment and innovation.

Claire Mazur and Erica Cerulo founded Of a Kind in 2010 and have developed a reputation as important and influential curators at the forefront of the maker movement, with a knack for identifying "the next big thing" when it's still a small thing. In addition to unearthing America's most talented up-and-coming designers for feature on their website, Mazur and Cerulo have also become known for their highly popular "10 Things" newsletter and its podcast companion "A Few Things," where they expand their enthusiasm for new discoveries across product and lifestyle categories. Accolades include Forbes's "30 under 30," InStyle's "Best of Web," and Fashionista's "50 Most Influential People in New York Fashion."

Aminatou Sow co-hosts Call Your Girlfriend, a podcast that tackles the intricacies of feminism, pop culture and the latest in politics every single week. She is also a member of the Sundance Institute Director's Advisory Group and previously led Social Impact Marketing at Google. She was named one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in Tech. She is working on a memoir about friendship with her friend, the journalist, Ann Friedman. Aminatou lives in Brooklyn.

This event will be held at St. Francis College at 180 Remsen St.

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Salvatore Scibona: The Volunteer w/ Colm Tóibín

Wednesday March 06 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

A small boy speaking an unknown language is abandoned by his father at an international airport, with only the clothes on his back and a handful of money jammed in the pocket of his coat. So begins The Volunteer. But in order to understand this heartbreaking and indefensible decision, the story must return to the moment, decades earlier, when a young man named Vollie Frade, almost on a whim, enlists in the United States Marine Corps to fight in Vietnam. Breaking definitively from his rural Iowan parents, Vollie puts in motion an unimaginable chain of events, which sees him go to work for insidious people with intentions he cannot yet grasp. From the Cambodian jungle, to a flophouse in Queens, to a commune in New Mexico, Vollie’s path traces a secret history of life on the margins of America, culminating with an inevitable and terrible reckoning.

With intense feeling, uncommon erudition, and bracing style, Scibona offers at once a pensive exploration of how we are capable of both inventing and discovering our true families and a lacerating interrogation of institutional power at its most commanding and terrifying. An odyssey of loss and salvation ranging across four generations of fathers and sons, The Volunteer is a triumph in the grandest traditions of American storytelling.

Salvatore Scibona's first novel, The End, was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Young Lions Fiction Award. His work has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award, and a Whiting Award; and the New Yorker named him one of its "20 Under 40" fiction writers to watch. He is the Sue Ann and John Weinberg Director of the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Colm Tóibín is the author of nine novels, including The Blackwater Lightship; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; The Testament of Mary; and Nora Webster, as well as two story collections, and Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know, a look at three nineteenth-century Irish authors. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University. Three times shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin and New York.

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Jordy Rosenberg: Confessions of the Fox w/ Katy Waldman

Thursday March 07 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

Jack Sheppard and Bess Edgeworth were the most notorious thieves, jailbreakers, and lovers of eighteenth-century London. Yet no one knows the true story; their confessions have never been found.

Until now. Reeling from heartbreak, a scholar named Dr. Voth discovers a long-lost manuscript—a gender-defying expose of Jack and Bess’s adventures. Dated 1724, the book depicts an London underworld where scamps and rogues clash with London’s newly established police force, queer subcultures thrive, and ominous threats of the plague abound. Jack—a transgender carpenter’s apprentice—has fled his master’s house to become a legendary prison break artist, and Bess has escaped the draining of the fenlands to become a revolutionary mastermind.

Is Confessions of the Fox an authentic autobiography, or a hoax? Dr. Voth obsessively annotates the manuscript, desperate to find the answer. As he is drawn deeper into Jack and Bess’s tale of underworld resistance and gender transformation, it becomes clear that their fates are intertwined—and only a miracle will save them all.

Jordy Rosenberg is the author of Confessions of the Fox, a New York Times Editor's Choice selection, shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and recognized by The New Yorker, the Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Kirkus Reviews, LitHub, Electric Literature and the Feminist Press as one of the Best Books of 2018. Jordy is a professor of 18th-Century Literature, Gender and Sexuality Studies + Critical Theory at The University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Katy Waldman is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Previously, she was a staff writer at Slate, where she wrote about language, culture, and politics, and hosted the Slate Audio Book Club podcast. She is the winner of a 2018 American Society of Magazine Editors award for journalists younger than thirty.

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T Kira Madden: Long Live The Tribe of Fatherless Girls w/ Rick Moody

Friday March 08 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

Acclaimed literary essayist T Kira Madden’s raw and redemptive debut memoir is about coming of age and reckoning with desire as a queer, biracial teenager amidst the fierce contradictions of Boca Raton, Florida, a place where cult-like privilege, shocking racial disparities, rampant white-collar crime, and powerfully destructive standards of beauty hide in plain sight.

As a child, Madden lived a life of extravagance, from her exclusive private school to her equestrian trophies and designer shoe-brand name. But under the surface was a wild instability. The only child of parents continually battling drug and alcohol addictions, Madden confronted her environment alone. Facing a culture of assault and objectification, she found lifelines in the desperately loving friendships of fatherless girls.

With unflinching honesty and lyrical prose, spanning from 1960s Hawai’i to the present-day struggle of a young woman mourning the loss of a father while unearthing truths that reframe her reality, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is equal parts eulogy and love letter. It’s a story about trauma and forgiveness, about families of blood and affinity, both lost and found, unmade and rebuilt, crooked and beautiful.

T Kira Madden is an APIA writer, photographer, and amateur magician. She is the founding editor-in-chief of No Tokens, and facilitates writing workshops for homeless and formerly incarcerated individuals. A 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in nonfiction literature, she has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook, Tin House, DISQUIET, Summer Literary Seminars, and Yaddo, where she was selected for the 2017 Linda Collins Endowed Residency Award. She lives in New York City and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

Rick Moody is the author of six novels, three collections of stories, and three non-fiction works, the most recent of which is the forthcoming memoir (from Henry Holt, in August 2019), The Long Accomplishment. He teaches at Brown University.

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Kiese Laymon: Heavy @ St. Ann's Church

Monday March 11 | 7:00PM - 9:00PM

Books Are Magic is proud to present Kiese Laymon to speak about his book, Heavy: An American Memoir at St. Ann's Church!

In this powerful, provocative, and universally lauded memoir—winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and finalist for the Kirkus Prize—genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon “provocatively meditates on his trauma growing up as a black man, and in turn crafts an essential polemic against American moral rot” (Entertainment Weekly).

In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to time in New York as a college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. Heavy is a “gorgeous, gutting…generous” (The New York Times) memoir that combines personal stories with piercing intellect to reflect both on the strife of American society and on Laymon’s experiences with abuse. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, he asks us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.

Kiese Laymon is a black southern writer, born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. He is currently a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi. Laymon attended Millsaps College and Jackson State University before graduating from Oberlin College. He earned an MFA in Fiction from Indiana University. He is the author of the award-winning novel, Long Division and a collection of essays, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Laymon has written for numerous publications including the New York Times, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, Esquire, The Guardian, McSweeneys, Colorlines, The Best American Series, Ebony, and many others. He is a contributing editor of Oxford American.

This event will take place at St. Ann's Church at 157 Montague St. in the Parish Hall.

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Boris Fishman: Savage Feast

Monday March 11 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

A revealing personal story and family memoir told through meals and recipes, Savage Feast begins with Boris’s childhood in Soviet Belarus, where good food was often worth more than money. He describes the unlikely dish that brought his parents together and how years of Holocaust hunger left his grandmother so obsessed with bread that she always kept five loaves on hand. She was the stove magician and Boris’ grandfather the master black marketer who supplied her, evading at least one firing squad on the way. These spoils kept Boris’ family—Jews who lived under threat of discrimination and violence—provided-for and protected.

Despite its abundance, food becomes even more important in America, which Boris’ family reaches after an emigration through Vienna and Rome filled with marvel, despair, and bratwurst. How to remain connected to one’s roots while shedding their trauma? The ambrosial cooking of Oksana, Boris’s grandfather’s Ukrainian home aide, begins to show him the way. His quest takes him to a farm in the Hudson River Valley, the kitchen of a Russian restaurant on the Lower East Side, a Native American reservation in South Dakota, and back to Oksana’s kitchen in Brooklyn. His relationships with women—troubled, he realizes, for reasons that go back many generations—unfold concurrently, finally bringing him, after many misadventures, to an American soulmate.

Savage Feast is Boris’ tribute to food, that secret passage to an intimate conversation about identity, belonging, family, displacement, and love.

Boris Fishman was born in Minsk, Belarus, and immigrated to the United States in 1988 at the age of nine. His journalism, essays, and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Book Review, The New Republic, The London Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Travel & Leisure, and New York Magazine. His first novel, A Replacement Life, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (2014), winner of the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the American Library Association’s Sophie Brody Medal; a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick; and a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. His second novel, Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo, was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (2016), and received rave reviews. Boris teaches in Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program, and lives in New York City.

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Mallory O'Meara: The Lady from the Black Lagoon w/ Maria Dahvana Headley

Thursday March 14 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

The Lady from the Black Lagoon uncovers the life and work of Milicent Patrick – one of Disney’s first female animators and the only woman to create one of Hollywood’s classic movie monsters.

As a young woman working in the horror film industry, Mallory O’Meara was thrilled to discover that one of her favorite movies, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, featured a monster designed by a woman, Milicent Patrick. But for someone who should have been hailed as a pioneer in the genre there was little information available. For, as O’Meara soon discovered, Patrick’s contribution had been claimed by a jealous male colleague, her career had been cut short and she soon after had disappeared from film history. No one even knew if she was still alive.

O’Meara set out to right the wrong, and in the process discovered the full, fascinating story of an ambitious, artistic woman ahead of her time. Patrick’s contribution to special effects proved to be just the latest chapter in a remarkable, unconventional life, from her youth growing up in the shadow of Hearst Castle, to her career as one of Disney’s first female animators. And at last, O’Meara discovered what really had happened to Patrick after The Creature’s success, and where she went.

Mallory O’Meara is an author, screenwriter and genre film producer. Every week, she co-hosts the literary podcast Reading Glasses. Whether it's for the screen or the page, Mallory seeks creative projects imbued with the weird; horror and monsters are her passion. She lives in Los Angeles with her partner and their collection of books and cats. The Lady from the Black Lagoon is her first book. For more about Mallory, please visit, www.malloryomeara.com, follow her on Twitter and connect on Instagram, @malloryomeara.

Maria Dahvana Headley is a #1 New York Times-bestselling author and editor. Her novels include The Mere Wife, Magonia, Aerie, and Queen of Kings, and she has also written a memoir, The Year of Yes. With Kat Howard, she is the author of The End of the Sentence, and with Neil Gaiman, she is co-editor of Unnatural Creatures. Her short stories have been shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, and her work has been supported by the MacDowell Colony and by Arte Studio Ginestrelle, where the first draft of The Mere Wife was written. She was raised with a wolf and a pack of sled dogs in the high desert of rural Idaho, and now lives in Brooklyn.

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David Means: Instructions for a Funeral w/ Tara Westover

Tuesday March 19 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

The O. Henry Prize–winning author David Means presents a collection of harrowing and personal tales in Instructions for a Funeral. Previously appearing in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Vice, and other publications, the fourteen stories collected here run the gamut from the playful to the private. “The Terminal Artist” skirts reportage in grappling with the revelation that the death of a hospitalized loved one was in fact a murder. “The Tree Line, Kansas, 1934” is a wry anatomy of the moments before an FBI raid goes spectacularly wrong. “The Chair” gives us a clear-eyed look at fatherhood, with all its paradoxes, recriminations, and rewards gloriously intact.

Means’s work has earned him comparisons to Flannery O’Connor, Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Denis Johnson, Edgar Allan Poe, Anton Chekhov, and Raymond Carver—but his place in the American literary landscape is fully and originally his own.

David Means was born and raised in Michigan. His Assorted Fire Events earned the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction and The Secret Goldfish was short-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize. The Spot was selected as a 2010 Notable Book by The New York Times and won the O. Henry Prize. His first novel, Hystopia, was published in 2016 to wide acclaim and was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Means’s fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and numerous other publications. He lives in Nyack, New York, and teaches at Vassar College.

Tara Westover is an American author. Born in Idaho to a father opposed to public education, she never attended school. She spent her days working in her father's junkyard or stewing herbs for her mother, a self-taught herbalist and midwife. She was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. After that first encounter with education, she pursued learning for a decade, graduating magna cum laude from Brigham Young University in 2008 and subsequently winning a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She earned an MPhil from Trinity College, Cambridge in 2009, and in 2010 was a visiting fellow at Harvard University. She returned to Cambridge, where she was awarded a PhD in history in 2014. Educated is her first book.

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Bon Appétit presents Carla Lalli Music: Where Cooking Begins w/ Claire Saffitz

Wednesday March 20 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

A gateway cookbook for novices and anyone who wants to be a better home cook, Where Cooking Begins gives readers a modern approach to shopping, simple cooking methods, and more than 70 innately flexible recipes.

The indispensable recipes and simple cooking methods in Where Cooking Begins are an open invitation to dive into Carla Lalli Music’s intuitive, laid-back cooking style. Her recipes are designed to give readers the ability to make perfect dishes with dead-simple seasonings and endless ingredient swaps, and her food shopping strategy will teach readers how to find inspiration at the market. Designed for busy lives and to make anyone a better cook, Where Cooking Begins empowers readers with intuitive solutions for pulling together easy, but sophisticated meals.

Carla Lalli Music is the food director at Bon Appétit, where she oversees the brand’s food and recipe content across all digital platforms. She writes frequently for the magazine and its websites—bonappetit.com, Basically, and Healthyish—and is a frequent host on the Bon Appétit foodcast. Music also hosts recipe and technique videos on BA’s YouTube channel, where millions of subscribers tune in to see what’s cooking in the test kitchen. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two sons. Find her on Instagram @lallimusic.

At Bon Appétit, Claire Saffitz developed recipes for the print magazine and online, and dabbled in food styling. Claire is frequently featured on Bon Appétit’s YouTube channel, including fan-favorite series, “Gourmet Makes,” an innovative culinary twist where Claire recreates childhood junk food. Claire earned a Bachelor of Arts in American History and Literature from Harvard University. She also completed the International Program in Classic French Cuisine at École Grégoire Ferrandi, a culinary and trade school in France, and a 4-month externship at Spring Restaurant in Paris. After Paris, Claire moved to Montreal to pursue a Masters degree in History at McGill University, where she studied the intellectual history of food in Early Modern France. Find her on Instagram.

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Deepi Ahluwalia and Stef Ferrari: A Woman's Place

Friday March 22 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

If "a woman's place is in the kitchen," why is the history of food such an old boys' club?

A Woman's Place sets the record straight, sharing stories of more than 80 hidden figures of food who made a lasting mark on history.

In an era when women were told to stay at home and leave glory to the men, these rebel women used the transformative power of food to break barriers and fight for a better world. Discover the stories of:

Georgia Gilmore, who fueled the Montgomery Bus Boycott with chicken sandwiches and slices of pie

Hattie Burr, who financed the fight for female suffrage by publishing cookbooks

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, who, with just a few grains of salt, inspired a march for the independence of India

The inventors of the dishwasher, coffee filter, the first buffalo wings, Veuve Clicquot champagne, the PB&J sandwich, and more.

With gorgeous full-color illustrations and 10 recipes that bring the story off of the page and onto your plate, this book reclaims women's rightful place--in the kitchen, and beyond.

Deepi Ahluwalia is a food and travel photographer, and columnist for Life & Thyme magazine. She has worked with such brands, companies, and publications as American Airlines, Nestle, JCPenney, the Dallas Morning News, Jacques Torres Chocolate, and Wal-Mart. She holds a degree in pastry arts from the French Culinary Institute.

Stef Ferrari is Senior Editor of Life & Thyme Magazine. She is an Emmy-winning, James Beard Award-nominated producer on the documentary series The Migrant Kitchen, which explores the influence of immigrant culture on America's foodways. Her recipes have been featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, Better Homes and Gardens, and Southern Living, and she has appeared on the Food Network's Cutthroat Kitchen and Unique Sweets.

Moderated by the founders of Ovenly, Erin Patinkin and Agatha Kulaga.

Ovenly is a woman-owned NY based bakery creating delicious and award-winning treats. With backgrounds in social justice (Erin) and social work (Agatha), the two are not only focused on building a national brand, but also in developing sustainable business practices with a focus on job development and environmental sustainability.

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Ian Frisch: Magic Is Dead

Monday March 25 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM

Magic Is Dead is Ian Frisch’s head-first dive into a hidden world full of extraordinary characters and highly guarded secrets. It is a story of imagination, deception, and art that spotlights today’s most brilliant young magicians—a mysterious society known as the52, who are revolutionizing an ancient artform under the mantra Magic Is Dead.

Ian brings us with him as he not only gets to know this fascinating world, but also becomes an integral part of it. We meet the52’s founding members—Chris Ramsay, Laura London, and Daniel Madison—and explore their personal demons, professional aspirations, and what drew them to their art. We join them at private gatherings of the most extraordinary magicians working today, follow them to magic conventions in Las Vegas and London, and discover some of the best tricks of the trade. We also encounter David Blaine, a close friend of Madison’s; hang out with Penn Jillette; and meet Dynamo, the U.K.’s most famous magician. Magic Is Dead is also a chronicle of magic’s rich history and how it has changed in the internet age, as the young guns moves away from the old-school take on the craft.

As he tells the story of the52, and his role as its most unlikely member, Ian reveals his own connection with trickery and deceit, how he first learned the elements that make magic work from his poker-playing mother, and recalls their adventures in card rooms and casinos after his father’s sudden death. “Magic—the romanticism of the inexplicable, the awe and admiration of the unexpected—is an underlying force in how we view the world and its myriad possibilities,” Ian writes. As his journey continues, Ian not only becomes a performer and creator of magic, he also cements a new brotherhood, and begins to understand his relationship with his father, fifteen years after his death. Written with psychological acuity and a keen eye for detail, Magic Is Dead is an engrossing tale full of wonder and surprise.

Ian Frisch has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Wired, the Washington Post Magazine, Playboy, Longreads, and Vice. He was shortlisted for the 2016 Associated Press Sports Editors Explanatory Award, and has made numerous appearances on Bloomberg Television. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Ruth Reichl: Save Me the Plums @ 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 at St. Ann's Church!

Trailblazing food writer and beloved restaurant critic Ruth Reichl took the job (and the risk) of a lifetime when she entered the glamorous, high-stakes world of magazine publishing. Now, for the first time, she chronicles her groundbreaking tenure as editor in chief of Gourmet, during which she spearheaded a revolution in the way we think about food.

When Condé Nast offered Ruth Reichl the top position at America’s oldest epicurean magazine, she declined. She was a writer, not a manager, and had no inclination to be anyone’s boss. And yet…Reichl had been reading Gourmet since she was eight; it had inspired her career. How could she say no?

This is the story of a former Berkeley hippie entering the corporate world and worrying about losing her soul. It is the story of the moment restaurants became an important part of popular culture, a time when the rise of the farm-to-table movement changed, forever, the way we eat. Readers will meet legendary chefs like David Chang and Eric Ripert, idiosyncratic writers like David Foster Wallace, and a colorful group of editors and art directors who, under Reichl’s leadership, transformed stately Gourmet into a cutting-edge publication. This was the golden age of print media—the last spendthrift gasp before the Internet turned the magazine world upside down.

Complete with recipes, Save Me the Plums is a personal journey of a woman coming to terms with being in charge and making a mark, following a passion and holding on to her dreams—even when she ends up in a place she never expected to be.

Ruth Reichl is the bestselling author of the memoirs Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me with Apples, Garlic and Sapphires, and For You, Mom, Finally; the novel Delicious!; and, most recently, the cookbook My Kitchen Year. She was editor in chief of Gourmet magazine for ten years. Previously she was the restaurant critic for The New York Times and served as the food editor and restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times. She has been honored with six James Beard Awards for her journalism, magazine feature writing, and criticism. She lives in upstate New York with her husband and two cats.

This event will take place at St. Ann's Church at 157 Montague St. in Brooklyn.

Get tickets here!

Margaret, Irene, & Andrew Li: Double Awesome Chinese Food

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.

This event is free!

Erin Somers: Stay Up with Hugo Best

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.

This event is free!

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.

Buy tickets here!

Each ticket comes with a copy of Abby's book WOLFPACK.

Tickets are nonrefundable. If you miss the event, in order to recieve your book you will need to contact us within 30 days of the event.