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Emily Flake: That Was Akward w/ Josh Gondelman and Shalewa Sharpe
Monday October 14 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Join us for a night of spirited debate on the merits of hugging, featuring New Yorker illustrator and author of That Was Awkward: The Art and Etiquette of the Awkward Hug, Emily Flake, as well as Josh Gondelman and Shalewa Sharpe!
From New Yorker humorist Emily Flake, a hilarious, oddly enlightening book of illustrations, observations, and advice that embraces the inescapable awkwardness of two human beings attempting to make physical contact with each other We’ve all been there. You encounter the mother of your recent ex. That guy your best friend dated sophomore year. That friend-of-a-friend who you’ve met once but keeps popping up in your “People You May Know” feed. Do you shake hands? Do you hug? Do you—horrors—kiss on the cheek? And then the inevitable: The awkward hug. That cultural blight we’ve all experienced. Emily Flake is the author of That Was Awkward: The Art and Etiquette of the Awkward Hug. Her cartoons and humorous essays run regularly in The New Yorker, The Nib, and many other publications. Her weekly strip, Lulu Eightball, ran in alt-weeklies for many years. She’s written and illustrated two other books: These Things Ain't Gonna Smoke Themselves and Mama Tried. Her illustrations and cartoons appear in publications all over the world, including the New York Times, Newsweek, the Globe and Mail, The Onion, The New Statesman, and Forbes. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, daughter, and a frail, elderly orange cat. Josh Gondelman is the author of the essay collection, NICE TRY, a comedian and a writer/producer for Desus & Mero on Showtime. Previously, he earned two Peabody Awards and three Emmys for his work on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Gondelman’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, and the New Yorker, as well as some places without “New York” in the name. He has performed standup on CONAN, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and The Late Late Show with James Corden. Josh lives in New York City with his wife Maris and their pug. Shalewa Sharpe tells jokes. She developed her sly yet goofy style in Atlanta, where she was raised. Currently in Brooklyn, New York, she has joked on the extremely popular “Night Train with Wyatt Cenac” show and the influential weekly Comedy Night at The Knitting Factory. She has joked on “You’re The Expert,” a public radio game show featured on Boston’s WBUR. She has joked at festivals, too – at RiotLA (Los Angeles), the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival (Brooklyn), Comedy Exposition (Chicago) and Red Clay Comedy Festival (Atlanta). She co-produces and hosts a number of shows, including “Thug Passion Presents,” a lively table read and celebration of classic Black movies. In May 2016, her debut album, “Stay Eating Cookies,” was released on Rotknee Presents Records. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @silkyjumbo This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Elizabeth Strout: Olive, Again w/ Emma Straub @St. Francis College
Tuesday October 15 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
Join Books Are Magic for an evening with Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Elizabeth Strout in celebration of Olive, Again!
Prickly, wry, resistant to change yet ruthlessly honest and deeply empathetic, Olive Kitteridge is “a compelling life force” (The San Francisco Chronicle). The New Yorker has said that Elizabeth Strout “animates the ordinary with an astonishing force” and never so clearly than in these pages, where the iconic Olive not only struggles to understand herself and her own life, but those around her in the town of Crosby, Maine. Whether with a teenager coming to terms with the loss of her father; a young woman about to give birth during a hilariously inopportune moment; a nurse who confesses a secret high school crush; or a lawyer who struggles with an inheritance she does not want to accept, the unforgettable Olive will continue to startle us, to move us, and to inspire moments of transcendent grace. Elizabeth Strout is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Olive Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Anything Is Possible, her most recent book and winner of The Story Prize; My Name Is Lucy Barton, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize; The Burgess Boys, named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post and NPR; Abide with Me, a national bestseller; and Amy and Isabelle, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the International Dublin Literary Award, and the Orange Prize. Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker. Elizabeth Strout lives in New York City. Emma Straub is the co-owner of Books Are Magic, and the author of five books. Her new novel, All Adults Here, will be out in May. Please note this event will be held at St. Francis College (180 Remsen St, Brooklyn, NY 11201). 
Martha Stewart: Cookie Perfection w/ Carla Lalli Music @St. Ann Church
Wednesday October 16 | 7:00PM - 8:30PM
America's most trusted lifestyle expert Martha Stewart presents her latest book, MARTHA STEWART'S COOKIE PERFECTION, with Carla Lalli Music!
About this Event Showstopper cookies for a new generation: from Martha Stewart, an authoritative and creative collection to take your cookies to the next level in flavor, technique, and decorative appeal. The editors of Martha Stewart Living present a new, fun source for anyone looking to make their go-to cookies even better and bolder. These recipes make ordinary cookies absolutely extraordinary—all the familiar favorites you love, but taken up a notch in variety, flavor, and creativity. Classic recipes discover new life with unexpected twists such as Lemony Brown-Butter Crinkle Cookies and Carrot Cake Thumbprint Cookies. Go over-the-top in super-sized fashion with Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookies; get inspired by cultures around the globe with Brazilian Wedding Cookies and Stroopwaffels; and celebrate with beautifully decorated holiday treats, such as Easter Egg Puzzle Cookies and Snowball Truffles. Whether for a special celebration or a sweet anytime-treat, you’ll be sure to find inspiration to trade in your everyday cookies for versions far more special—and especially delicious. Each ticket includes 1 copy of Martha Stewart's Cookie Perfection. $9 from every ticket will be donated to The Center for Living. Martha Stewart is America’s most trusted lifestyle expert and teacher and the author of more than 90 books on cooking, entertaining, crafts, homekeeping, gardens, weddings, and decorating. 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. This event will be held at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church (157 Montague St., Brooklyn NY 11201). 
Benjamin Percy: Suicide Woods w/ Alex Segura
Wednesday October 16 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
A potent brew of horror, crime, and weird happenings in the woods, Suicide Woods is Benjamin Percy’s first story collection since his acclaimed Refresh, Refresh. Percy, whose recent work includes the werewolf novel Red Moon, the post-apocalyptic Lewis-and-Clark saga The Dead Lands, the paranormal/internet thriller The Dark Net, and the Green Arrow, Teen Titans, and James Bond comic book series, now brings his page-turning skills to these new stories, which have appeared everywhere from Esquire, VQR, and Ploughshares to McSweeney’s, Orion, the Missouri Review, and more.
In story after story, Percy delivers haunting and chilling narratives that will have readers hanging on every word. A boy in his uncle’s care falls through the ice on a pond and emerges in a frozen, uncanny state. A group of people in therapy for suicidal ideation undergoes a drastic session in the woods with fatal consequences. A body found on a train and a blood-soaked carpet in an empty house are clues to a puzzling crime in a small town. And in a pulse-quickening novella, thrill seekers on a mapping expedition into the “Bermuda Triangle” of remote Alaska are stranded on a sinister island that seems to want them dead. A master class in suspense and horror, Suicide Woods is a dark, inventive collection packed to the gills with eerie, can’t-miss tales. Benjamin Percy is the author of four novels, two books of short stories, and the essay collection Thrill Me. His honors include a fellowship from the NEA, the Whiting Writers’ Award, two Pushcart Prizes, and the Plimpton Prize. He lives in Minnesota. Alex Segura is the author of the Anthony Award-nominated Pete Fernandez mystery series, short stories that have appeared in numerous anthologies, and a number of best-selling and critically acclaimed comic books. He also co-writes the LETHAL LIT podcast. A Miami native, he lives in New York with his wife and son. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Saint Ann's Review Showcase
Thursday October 17 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
Join us for a showcase to celebrate the launch of Saint Ann’s Review’s latest issue featuring readers Alexandra Zelman-Doring, J.W. McCormack, and Joanna Fuhrmanis.
Alexandra Zelman-Doring’s plays have been presented at The Flea Theater, Access Theater, The Edinburgh Fringe, 59E59th, Dixon Place, The New Ohio Theatre and HERE Arts Center. She is a winner of the 2013 Financial Times/Bodley Head essay prize, and first prize winner of the Glascock poetry prize. She is artistic director of Throes Theater and teaches in the Graduate Film School at NYU. J.W. McCormack has written for VICE, BuzzFeed, The Baffler, the NYRB Daily, LitHub, The New York Times, and The Paris Review Daily. Joanna Fuhrman is the author of five books of poetry, including The Year of Yellow Butterflies (Hanging Loose Press, 2015) and Pageant (Alice James Books, 2009). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including The Believer, Conduit, Fence, New American Writing, and Volt as well as in various anthologies, including The Pushcart Prize 2011. She teaches creative writing at Rutgers University. This event is free and open to the public. Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Cyrus Grace Dunham: A Year Without a Name w/ T Kira Madden @St. Ann Church
Friday October 18 | 7:00PM - 9:00PM
Books Are Magic presents a conversation between Cyrus Grace Dunham, author of the new book A Year Without a Name, and T Kira Madden!
From “an extraordinary new voice,” a “passionate and clear-eyed and unputdownable” meditation on queerness, family, and desire. (Mary Karr) For as long as they can remember, Cyrus Grace Dunham felt like a visitor in their own body. Their life was a series of imitations--lovable little girl, daughter, sister, young gay woman--until their profound sense of alienation became intolerable. Moving between Grace and Cyrus, Dunham brings us inside the chrysalis of gender transition, asking us to bear witness to an uncertain and exhilarating process that troubles our most basic assumptions about who we are and how we are constituted. Written with disarming emotional intensity in a voice uniquely theirs, A Year Without a Name is a potent, thrillingly unresolved queer coming of age story. Cyrus Grace Dunham has written about trans politics and prison abolition for publications including The New Yorker, The Village Voice, New York Magazine, and the London Sunday Times. This is their first book. T Kira Madden is an APIA writer, photographer, and amateur magician. She is the author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, 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 NYC and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. Please note this event is being held at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church (157 Montague St., Brooklyn, NY 11201). 
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 Research Editor at Essence magazine. Royall, the former Books Editor at Essence, 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. 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. This summer she launched Black Baby Bliss and subsequently the Black Baby Bliss Book Club after giving birth to her son Langston in January. 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! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
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! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Storytime with Jessie Sima: Spencer's New Pet
Sunday October 20 | 11:00AM - 12:00PM
When Spencer gets a new pet, he’s excited to do all the things that pets do—taking walks in the park, going to the vet, and attending parties together.
There’s just one hitch: Spencer’s new pet is a balloon. And that means No. Sharp. Objects. No drooling dogs at the park. No prickly porcupines at the vet. And absolutely no pinning tails on any donkeys! Spencer’s New Pet is a story of pure fun about a boy, his dog, and a friendship that endures life’s sharpest...and most unexpected twists. Jessie Sima is an author/illustrator living and working in New York City. She grew up in a small town in Southern New Jersey, unaware that she was a storyteller. Once she figured it out, she told her family and friends. They took it quite well. She is the author of Not Quite Narwhal; Harriet Gets Carried Away; Love, Z; and Spencer’s New Pet. You can visit her at JessieSima.com. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Alice Hoffman: The World That We Knew
Monday October 21 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
In Berlin, at the time when the world changed, Hanni Kohn knows she must send her twelve-year-old daughter away to save her from the Nazi regime. She finds her way to a renowned rabbi, but it’s his daughter, Ettie, who offers hope of salvation when she creates a mystical Jewish creature, a rare and unusual golem, who is sworn to protect Lea. Once Ava is brought to life, she and Lea and Ettie become eternally entwined, their paths fated to cross, their fortunes linked.
Lea and Ava travel from Paris, where Lea meets her soulmate, to a convent in western France known for its silver roses; from a school in a mountaintop village where three thousand Jews were saved. Meanwhile, Ettie is in hiding, waiting to become the fighter she’s destined to be. What does it mean to lose your mother? How much can one person sacrifice for love? In a world where evil can be found at every turn, we meet remarkable characters that take us on a stunning journey of loss and resistance, the fantastical and the mortal, in a place where all roads lead past the Angel of Death and love is never ending. Alice Hoffman is the author of more than thirty works of fiction, including The World That We Knew, The Rules of Magic, The Marriage of Opposites, Practical Magic, The Red Garden, the Oprah’s Book Club selection Here on Earth, The Museum of Extraordinary Things, and The Dovekeepers. She lives near Boston. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Jami Attenberg: All This Could Be Yours w/ Julie Orringer
Tuesday October 22 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
“If I know why they are the way they are, then maybe I can learn why I am the way I am,” says Alex Tuchman of her parents. Now that her father is on his deathbed, Alex—a strong-headed lawyer, devoted mother, and loving sister--feels she can finally unearth the secrets of who Victor is and what he did over the course of his life and career. (A power-hungry real estate developer, he is, by all accounts, a bad man.) She travels to New Orleans to be with her family, but mostly to interrogate her tightlipped mother, Barbra.
As Barbra fends off Alex’s unrelenting questions, she reflects on her tumultuous life with Victor. Meanwhile Gary, Alex’s brother, is incommunicado, trying to get his movie career off the ground in Los Angeles. And Gary’s wife, Twyla, is having a nervous breakdown, buying up all the lipstick in drug stores around New Orleans and bursting into crying fits. Dysfunction is at its peak. As each family member grapples with Victor’s history, they must figure out a way to move forward—with one another, for themselves, and for the sake of their children. Jami Attenberg is the New York Times best-selling author of seven books of fiction, including The Middlesteins and All Grown Up. She has contributed essays to the New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times, and Longreads, among other publications. She lives in New Orleans. Julie Orringer is the author of two award-winning books: The Invisible Bridge, a New York Times bestselling novel, and How to Breathe Underwater, a collection of stories; her new novel, The Flight Portfolio, tells the story of Varian Fry, the New York journalist who went to Marseille in 1940 to save writers and artists blacklisted by the Gestapo. All her work has been published by Alfred A. Knopf, and her books have been translated into twenty languages. Her stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Granta Book of the American Short Story and The Scribner Anthology of American Short Fiction. She is the winner of the Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and children, and is at work on a novel set in New Orleans. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Alison Roman: Nothing Fancy w/ Greta Lee
Wednesday October 23 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Just as Martha Stewart introduced a generation to entertaining nearly forty years ago, so now Alison Roman reinvents the dinner party as a relaxed gathering for our current culture where dining out is increasingly expensive and everyone is craving down time connecting with friends. In Nothing Fancy, Alison brings her signature laid-back, approachable style and visually stunning recipes that are high on wow factors and low on effort to dishes designed to be enjoyed with others, whether for an impromptu Tuesday dinner with a neighbor or a Saturday-night hang with the gang. From a special plate of lamb chops “for the table” to a who-doesn’t-love-a-baked-potato bar to Overnight Foccacia Tonight, each of these 150 recipes is brand new and signature Alison. Here, too, are plenty of Alison-isms, such as forget wine pairings and drink what you like, don’t stress about parsley stems, and yes, you can ask the guests to help with the dishes.
Alison Roman is a cook, writer and author of the best-selling cookbook Dining In: Highly Cookable Recipes. A columnist for the New York Times and contributor at Bon Appetit Magazine. Her second cookbook, Nothing Fancy: Unfussy Food for Having People Over, is due out October 2019. Originally from Los Angeles, she lives in Brooklyn until she moves upstate like everyone else. Greta Lee is the writer, executive producer and star of the upcoming television comedy, KTOWN for HBO. She most recently starred opposite Hugh Laurie in the Hulu drama series, CHANCE executive produced by Lenny Abrahamson, and can currently be seen in the Netflix comedy, RUSSIAN DOLL written and executive produced by Natasha Lyonne and Amy Poehler. Greta also stars in the upcoming feature, 21 BRIDGES, opposite Chadwick Boseman and directed by Brian Kirk. Her feature credits include Aaron Katz’ GEMINI, Ted Melfi's ST. VINCENT and Noah Baumbach's WHILE WE’RE YOUNG. She also starred as the memorable nail technician, “Hae-Won” opposite Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in the Universal feature, SISTERS. Greta continues to recur as “Homeless Heidi” in the HBO comedy, HIGH MAINTENANCE, and has made memorable appearances on HBO’s GIRLS and Comedy Central’s INSIDE AMY SCHUMER and BROAD CITY. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Rebecca Fishbein: Good Things Happen to People You Hate w/ Lauren Evans
Thursday October 24 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Life isnt fair. If it were, the people you hate wouldn’t get the good things—that job, that promotion, that great boyfriend. Few know just how unjust the universe can be more than Rebecca Fishbein. A former senior editor for Gothamist, her adult life has mirrored New York media itself—constantly evolving in unexpected ways and seemingly always on the edge of disaster. If bad karma were fine jewelry, she’d be Cartier. Multiple bedbug infestations. Getting fired. Suffering public humiliation—being yelled at while working at a now-defunct bright clothing chain. Losing everything in a freak fire. Enduring cyberbullying by angry Taylor Swift fans.
Yet somehow Rebecca is still standing and has the moxie to tell you about it. In this wry collection, she reflects on the tribulations of her life and her struggles with alcohol, anxiety, depression, compulsive lying, female beauty standards, and a slew of failed coworker/roommate/friend semi-relationships. Written with unflinching honesty, a dollop of soul, and withering humor, the essays in Good Things Happen to People You Hate are dark, insightful, and hilarious. Rebecca Fishbein is a former Senior Editor at Gothamist and current writer/prolific Tweeter/television addict living in Brooklyn. She was born and raised in Manhattan where, at the tender age of two, she ate her first H&H bagel. It’s all been downhill from there. She graduated with honors from the Johns Hopkins University’s Writing Seminars program, and has been published in Baltimore City Paper, Time Out New York, Jezebel, Bustle, The Cut, Lifehacker, and Curbed NY, to name a few. She will talk to you endlessly about the TV show Girls, even though she hates it. Lauren Evans is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Jezebel, Atlas Obscura, VICE, the late Village Voice and many others, on subjects ranging from gender equality to climate change to travel. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
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! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Kristin Kimball: Good Husbandry w/ Tamar Adler
Friday October 25 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
The Dirty Life chronicled Kimball’s move from New York City to 500 acres near Lake Champlain where she started a new farm with her partner, Mark. In Good Husbandry, she reveals what happened over the next five years at Essex Farm.
Farming has many ups and downs, and the middle years were hard for the Kimballs. Mark got injured, the weather turned against them, and the farm faced financial pressures. Meanwhile, they had two small children to care for. How does one traverse the terrain of a maturing marriage and the transition from being a couple to being a family? How will the farm survive? What does a family need in order to be happy? Kristin had chosen Mark and farm life after having a good look around the world, with a fair understanding of what her choices meant. She knew she had traded the possibility of a steady paycheck, of wide open weekends and spontaneous vacations, for a life and work that was challenging but beautiful and fulfilling. So with grit and grace and a good sense of humor, she chose to dig in deeper. Kristin Kimball is a farmer and a writer living in northern New York. Prior to farming, Kimball worked as a freelance writer, writing teacher, and as an assistant to a literary agent in New York City. A graduate of Harvard University and the author of The Dirty Life and Good Husbandry, she and her husband Mark have run Essex Farm since 2003, where they live with their two daughters. Tamar Adler is a contributing editor to Vogue. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, the NewYorker.com, and other publications. Adler has won a James Beard Award and an IACP Award, and is the author of An Everlasting Meal and Something Old, Something New. Her new podcast, Food Actually, will launch on Luminary on November 1. She lives in Hudson, New York. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Storytime with Abdul-Razak Zachariah: The Night Is Yours
Saturday October 26 | 11:00AM - 12:00PM
Little one, so calm and so happy, the darkness of the night is yours like the darkness of your skin.
This lyrical text, narrated to a young girl named Amani by her father, follows her as she plays an evening game of hide-and-seek with friends at her apartment complex. The moon’s glow helps Amani find the last hidden child, and seems almost like a partner to her in her game, as well as a spotlight pointing out her beauty and strength. This is a gorgeous bedtime read-aloud about joy and family love and community, and most of all about feeling great in your own skin. Abdul-Razak Zachariah grew up in West Haven, Connecticut, and based the story's apartment complex and community on his own. A graduate of Yale College, he was deeply involved in diversity and inclusion advocacy while there, and he received the Mellon Mays Research Fellowship and the Nakanishi Prize. He is currently working in college student recruitment and community partnerships at LEAP, a New Haven literacy organization. The Night Is Yours is his first book. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Natalie Eve Garrett: Eat Joy w/ Lev Grossman, Porochista Khakpour and Rakesh Satyal
Monday October 28 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Join us for a panel to celebrate the launch of Natalie Eve Garrett’s EAT JOY, with Lev Grossman and Porochista Khakpour!
This collection of intimate, illustrated essays by some of America’s most well-regarded literary writers explores how comfort food can help us cope with dark times—be it the loss of a parent, the loneliness of a move, or the pain of heartache. Lev Grossman explains how he survived on “sweet, sour, spicy, salty, unabashedly gluey” General Tso’s tofu after his divorce. Carmen Maria Machado describes her growing pains as she learned to feed and care for herself during her twenties. Claire Messud tries to understand how her mother gave up dreams of being a lawyer to make “a dressed salad of tiny shrimp and avocado, followed by prune-stuffed pork tenderloin.” What makes each tale so moving is not only the deeply personal revelations from celebrated writers, but also the compassion and healing behind the story: the taste of hope. Natalie Eve Garrett is an artist and writer, and the editor of The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook: A Collection of Stories with Recipes and the forthcoming Lonely Stories: 20 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Perils of Being Alone. She lives in a town outside Washington, D.C., and along the Potomac River with her husband and two children. Lev Grossman is the author of five novels, including the international bestseller Codex and the #1 New York Times bestselling Magicians trilogy. The Magicians books have been published in twenty-five countries, and a Syfy series based on the trilogy premiered in early 2016. A widely published journalist, Grossman spent 15 years as the book critic and lead technology writer for Time magazine. Born and raised in Lexington, MA, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife, two daughters, and one son. Porochista Khakpour is the the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Sick, the novel The Last Illusion, a 2014 "Best Book of the Year" according to NPR, Kirkus, Buzzfeed, and many more; and her debut novel Sons and Other Flammable Objects, a New York Times Editor's Choice and the 2007 California Book Award winner in the "First Fiction" category. Born in Tehran and raised in the Los Angeles area, she lives in New York City. Rakesh Satyal is the author of the novels Blue Boy and No One Can Pronounce My Name. Blue Boy won a Lambda Literary Award and the Prose/Poetry Award from the Association of Asian American Studies and was a finalist for a Publishing Triangle Award. Satyal was a 2010 Fellow in Fiction courtesy of the New York Foundation for the Arts. His writing has appeared in New York magazine, Vulture, Out magazine, The Awl, and them. He has taught in the publishing program at New York University, has sat on the advisory committee for the annual PEN World Voices Festival, and serves on the board of Lambda Literary. He is currently a senior editor at Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. He and his husband live in Brooklyn. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
André Aciman: Find Me @ First Unitarian Congregational Society
Tuesday October 29 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
Books Are Magic presents an evening with André Aciman in celebration of Find Me, the highly anticipated return to the characters from Call Me by Your Name.
No novel in recent memory has spoken more movingly to contemporary readers about the nature of love than André Aciman’s haunting Call Me by Your Name. First published in 2007, it was hailed as “a love letter, an invocation . . . an exceptionally beautiful book” (Stacey D’Erasmo, The New York Times Book Review). Nearly three quarters of a million copies have been sold, and the book became a much-loved, Academy Award–winning film starring Timothée Chalamet as the young Elio and Armie Hammer as Oliver, the graduate student with whom he falls in love. In Find Me, Aciman shows us Elio’s father, Samuel, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, who has become a gifted classical pianist. A chance encounter on the train with a beautiful young woman upends Sami’s plans and changes his life forever. Elio soon moves to Paris, where he, too, has a consequential affair, while Oliver, now a New England college professor with a family, suddenly finds himself contemplating a return trip across the Atlantic. André Aciman is the New York Times bestselling author of Call Me By Your Name, Out of Egypt, Eight White Nights, False Papers, Alibis, and Harvard Square, and most recently Enigma Variations. He's the editor of The Proust Project and teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He lives with his wife in Manhattan. Please note this event will be held at First Unitarian Congregational Society (119 Pierrepont St, Brooklyn, NY 11201). 
John Hodgman: Medallion Status
Wednesday October 30 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
JOHN HODGMAN will be presenting and discussing his new book MEDALLION STATUS: True Stories From Secret Rooms. He will take many questions from the audience. Pending local availability, he will also interview one or more famous corgis of Instagram. After the presentation, he will then sign and personalize copies of MEDALLION STATUS until there are none left to sign or personalize. You must have a physical copy of MEDALLION STATUS to enter the signing line. If you are one person who buys or brings TWO copies of MEDALLION STATUS, John Hodgman will personally hand you an exclusive reward. (pre-ordered hardcovers as well as audiobook/e-book editions of MEDALLION STATUS may count as a second copy). The first person to purchase SEVEN physical copies of MEDALLION STATUS on the evening of the event from the on-site bookseller will be automatically upgraded to the most comfortable seat available next to John Hodgman at the signing table, and that person (and one companion) may sit and chat with him throughout the signing. Other upgrades and loyalty bonuses will be announced on the night of the event. You will get your money’s worth. That is all.
John Hodgman is a writer, comedian, and actor. He is the author of The Areas of My Expertise, More Information Than You Require, That Is All, and Vacationland. He is the host of the popular Judge John Hodgman podcast and also contributes a weekly column under the same name for The New York Times Magazine. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Alex Dimitrov & Dorothea Lasky present Astro Poets
Friday November 01 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Full of insight, advice and humor for every sign in the zodiac, the Astro Poets' unique brand of astrological flavor has made them Twitter sensations. Their long-awaited first book is in the grand tradition of Linda Goodman's Sun Signs, but made for the world we live in today.
In these pages the Astro Poets help you see what's written in the stars and use it to navigate your friendships, your career, and your very complicated love life. If you've ever wondered why your Gemini friend won't let you get a word in edge-wise at drinks, you've come to the right place. When will that Scorpio texting "u up?" at 2AM finally take the next step in your relationship? (Hint: they won't). Both the perfect introduction to the twelve signs for the astrological novice, and a resource to return to for those who already know why their Cancer boyfriend cries during commercials but need help with their new whacky Libra boss, this is the astrology book must-have for the twenty-first century and beyond. Alex Dimitrov is the author of Love and Other Poems, which will be published in 2020, Together and by Ourselves, and Begging for It. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, The Paris Review, and Poetry. He lives in New York. Dorothea Lasky is the author of six books of poetry and prose, most recently Milk and the forthcoming Animal. She lives in New York. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Storytime with Julie Fogliano: Just In Case You Want to Fly
Saturday November 02 | 11:00AM - 12:00PM
The creators of the award-winning When’s My Birthday? team up again to create an inspirational book for anyone—parent or child—looking for support when facing a new challenge.
just in case you want to fly here’s some wind and here’s the sky here’s a feather here’s up high and here’s a wing from a butterfly This tender, contemplative picture book is about growing up. It’s about parents giving their children the gifts, no matter how quiet or small, to succeed and to navigate the world on their own. And it’s about the connection that binds a parent and child…because no matter how far they fly or who they become, they will always have home. Julie Fogliano is an author of bestselling children's books, including A House That Once Was, illustrated by Lane Smith, When Green Becomes Tomatoes, illustrated by Julie Morstad, and And Then It's Spring and If You Want to See a Whale, both illustrated by Erin E. Stead. She lives in the Hudson Valley in New York. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Jeffrey Thomson: Half/Life with Iain Haley Pollock
Monday November 04 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Insightful poems full of rich, historical detail, and muses on the world’s random elegance.
Poems radiate a love for life, the world, and the temporal nature of existence. Roots of memory and nostalgia become the architecture of the mind as Thomson explores the past to better grasp the future. Featured books in the collection focus on desire, language, and landscape; while others explore loss in the context of myth, sexuality, violence, politics, and community. Jeffrey Thomson is a poet, memoirist, translator, and editor, and the author of nine books including: Half/Life: New and Selected Poems from Alice James Books (October 2019), the memoir fragile, The Belfast Notebooks, The Complete Poems of Catullus, and the edited collection From the Fishouse. He has been an NEA Fellow, the Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Poetry Centre at Queen’s University Belfast, and the Hodson Trust-John Carter Brown Fellow at Brown University. He is currently professor of creative writing at the University of Maine Farmington. Iain Haley Pollock has published two collections of poetry: Ghost, like a Place (Alice James Books, 2018), which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award and for the Julie Suk Award, and Spit Back a Boy (University of Georgia Press, 2011), winner of the 2010 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Pollock serves as Chair of the English Department at Rye Country Day School in Rye, NY, and is a member of the poetry faculty at the Solstice MFA Program of Pine Manor College. In addition, he serves as the poetry editor at Solstice Literary Magazine. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
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! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Susannah Cahalan: The Great Pretender w/ Karen Abbott and Ada Calhoun
Wednesday November 06 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
From "one of America's most courageous young journalists" (NPR) comes a propulsive narrative history investigating the 50-year-old mystery behind a dramatic experiment that changed the course of modern medicine.
For centuries, doctors have struggled to define mental illness--how do you diagnose it, how do you treat it, how do you even know what it is? In search of an answer, in the 1970s a Stanford psychologist named David Rosenhan and seven other people--sane, normal, well-adjusted members of society--went undercover into asylums around America to test the legitimacy of psychiatry's labels. Forced to remain inside until they'd "proven" themselves sane, all eight emerged with alarming diagnoses and even more troubling stories of their treatment. Rosenhan's watershed study broke open the field of psychiatry, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever. But, as Cahalan's explosive new research shows, very little in this saga is exactly as it seems. What really happened behind those closed asylum doors, and what does it mean for our understanding of mental illness today? Since her bestselling memoir Brain on Fire, where she chronicles her own struggles with modern medicine after being misdiagnosed with a serious mental illness, author and journalist Susannah Cahalan has become a leading voice on the treatment of mental illness in America. Brain on Fire has sold over a million copies, spent 52 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was made into a feature film. 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. 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. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Steph Cha: Your House Will Pay w/ Sarah Weinman
Thursday November 07 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Grace Park lives a sheltered existence: living at home with her Korean-immigrant parents, working at the family pharmacy, and trying her best to understand why her sister Miriam hasn’t spoken to their mother in years. The chasm in her family is growing wider by the day and Grace is desperate for reconciliation, and frustrated by the feeling that her sister and parents are shielding her from the true cause of the falling out.
Shawn Matthews is dealing with a fractured family of his own. His sister, Ava, was murdered as a teenager back in 1991, and this new shooting is bringing up painful memories. Plus, his cousin Ray is just released from prison and needs to reconnect with their family after so many years away. While Shawn is trying his best to keep his demons at bay, he’s not sure Ray can do the same. When another shocking crime hits LA, the Parks and the Matthewses collide in ways they never could have expected. After decades of loss, violence, and injustice, tensions come to a head and force a reckoning that could clear the air or lead to more violence. Steph Cha is the author of Your House Will Pay and the Juniper Song crime trilogy. Also an editor and critic, her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. A native of the San Fernando Valley, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two basset hounds. Sarah Weinman is the author of The Real Lolita: A Lost Girl, An Unthinkable Crime, and a Scandalous Masterpiece, which was named a Best Book of 2018 by NPR, BuzzFeed, The National Post, Literary Hub, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Vulture, and won the Arthur Ellis Award for Excellence in Crime Writing. She also edited the anthologies Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s (Library of America) and Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives (Penguin). Weinman, currently a contributing editor and columnist at CrimeReads, has written for the New York Times, Vanity Fair, the Washington Post, New York, the New Republic, the Guardian, Topic, and Buzzfeed, among other outlets, while her fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and numerous anthologies. Weinman also writes the “Crime Lady” newsletter, covering crime fiction, true crime, and all points in between. She lives in New York City. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Charlotte Druckman: Women on Food w/ Andy Baraghani
Friday November 08 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Edited by Charlotte Druckman and featuring esteemed food journalists and thinkers, including Soleil Ho, Nigella Lawson, Diana Henry, Carla Hall, Samin Nosrat, Rachael Ray, and many others, this compilation illuminates the notable and varied women who make up the food world. Exploring issues from the #MeToo movement, gender bias in division of labor and the workplace, and the underrepresentation of women of color in leadership, to cultural trends including food and travel shows, the intersection of fashion and food, and the evolution of food writing in the last few decades, Women on Food brings together food’s most vital female voices.
Born and raised on the tiny island of Manhattan (i.e. The City) Charlotte Druckman is an author, journalist, food writer whose work has appeared in various publications, including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, EATER, Martha Stewart Living, Cherry Bombe, and ELLE. She is the author of Skirt Steak: Women Chefs on Standing the Heat & Staying in the Kitchen. Her first cookbook Stir, Sizzle, Bake was released in 2016. Before that, she co-authored chef Anita Lo's cookbook, Cooking Without Borders. Her unconventional anthology about Women & Food is released this October 2019 with ABRAMS. At 17, Andy Baraghani began working at world-renowned restaurant, Chez Panisse. From there, he continued his culinary training in some of the top restaurants around the country, including Gary Danko, Corton, and Estela. By the time he was 21 he was running a monthly pop-up featuring seasonal Iranian food outside of his Brooklyn apartment. In 2015, he joined Bon Appétit as senior food editor where he develops recipes and hosts a regular video series for the brand. His work has also been featured in Saveur, Gather Journal, BBC, and Jarry. Find him on Instagram. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Storytime with Michelle Millar Fisher: The Rainbow Flag
Saturday November 09 | 11:00AM - 12:00PM
Flags are brilliant and clever works of art and design, and they bring people together under a common banner. This colorful story follows a group of friends who helped dye and sew strips of cloth to create the first Rainbow Flags for the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade in 1978.
Led by a young artist named Gilbert Baker, the friends set out to create a flag that people could march behind during the Pride Parade. They knew the flag needed to be bright, in order to be seen by everyone as they marched. It needed to be bold, to lead the crowd. And it needed to be beautiful, like the love celebrated by the parade! The result is an iconic flag that has become an international symbol of the gay pride movement. Scottish author Michelle Millar Fisher lives with her husband and her very smart Siamese cat Harry in Boston where she is The Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts. Previously she was at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, where she helped acquire the Rainbow Flag into the museum collection. Her next project is a collaborative, cross-institution book and exhibition, Designing Motherhood: A Century of Making (and Unmaking) Babies. Find it on Instagram at @designingmotherhood. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Storytime with Cynthia Alonso: The Reader
Sunday November 10 | 11:00AM - 12:00PM
An enchanting picture book about the magic of books and reading.
While their parents are sleeping in, a young bookworm sneaks out of bed with one goal in mind: to spend the day reading. The Reader is a whimsically illustrated love letter to books. This breathtaking picture book, from two acclaimed Argentinean creators, is a celebration of reading and a child's imagination. Inspire beginning readers to become armchair adventurers by exploring what lies between the pages of a book. Cynthia Alonso (1987) studied graphic design at the University of Buenos Aires, where she also taught typography. She started illustrating children's books in 2016. Her first book Acuario was published in 2017 by the Portuguese publisher Orfeo Negro and was later published in the USA (Chronicle Books), Korea, China, Spain and Latin America. She is the Illustrator of Under the Canopy: Trees around the World (Flying Eye Books). Her work has been recognized by the Society of Illustrators of New York and the Bologna Children's Book Fair. She currently lives in Berlin. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Mira Ptacin: The In-Betweens w/ Rachel Syme
Monday November 11 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
They believed they would live forever. So begins Mira Ptacin’s haunting account of the women of Camp Etna—an otherworldly community in the woods of Maine that has, since 1876, played host to generations of Spiritualists and mediums dedicated to preserving the links between the mortal realm and the afterlife. Beginning her narrative in 1848 with two sisters who claimed they could speak to the dead, Ptacin reveals how Spiritualism first blossomed into a national practice during the Civil War, yet continues—even thrives—to this very day. Immersing herself in this community and its practices—from ghost hunting to releasing trapped spirits to water witching— Ptacin sheds new light on our ongoing struggle with faith, uncertainty, and mortality. Blending memoir, ethnography, and investigative reportage, The In-Betweens offers a vital portrait of Camp Etna and its enduring hold on a modern culture that remains as starved for a deeper sense of connection and otherworldliness as ever.
The author of the acclaimed memoir Poor Your Soul, Mira Ptacin has written for NPR, Guernica, New York, Tin House, and Vice, among other publications. She teaches memoir-writing to women at the Maine Correctional Center and lives on Peaks Island, Maine. Rachel Syme is a journalist and cultural critic living in New York City. She contributes regularly to the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, GQ, and Bookforum. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Denis Markell: The Ghost in Apartment 2R
Tuesday November 12 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
It stinks that Danny’s older brother moved out and went to college. But you know what’s worse? He left behind an angry ghost in his room!
With the help of his friends Nat and Gus, Danny interviews everyone his Brooklyn neighborhood to find out about spirits. Is it an Arabian ghoul? A Korean gwishin? A Polish haunting? Maybe the answer lies with Danny’s own bubbe and her tales of a dybbuk, a Jewish mythological ghost. Regardless of its origins, what does the spirit truly want? And can Danny manage to bring the phantom to rest? Denis Markell has written all sorts of things, from sitcoms to off-Broadway musicals, but nothing has given him as much enjoyment or satisfaction as writing novels for kids--the puzzle-packed mystery Click Here to Start and the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired adventure The Game Masters of Garden Place. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, illustrator Melissa Iwai, and his son, Jamie. Although their apartment is not haunted, they suspect their Shiba Inu puppy, Nikki, might be demonically possessed. You can find Denis on Twitter at @DenisMarkell, and yes, he'd be happy to do a Skype author visit for your kid's class. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Adam Platt: The Book of Eating w/ Nikita Richardson
Wednesday November 13 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
As the son of a diplomat growing up in places like Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, Adam Platt didn’t have the chance to become a picky eater. Living, traveling, and eating in some of the most far-flung locations around the world, he developed an eclectic palate and a nuanced understanding of cultures and cuisines that led to some revelations which would prove important in his future career as a food critic. In Tokyo, for instance—“a kind of paradise for nose-to-tail cooking”—he learned that “if you’re interested in telling a story, a hair-raisingly bad meal is much better than a good one.”
From dim sum in Hong Kong to giant platters of Peking duck in Beijing, fresh-baked croissants in Paris and pierogi on the snowy streets of Moscow, Platt takes us around the world, re-tracing the steps of a unique, and lifelong, culinary education. Providing a glimpse into a life that has intertwined food and travel in exciting and unexpected ways, The Book of Eating is a delightful and sumptuous trip that is also the culinary coming-of-age of a voracious eater and his eventual ascension to become, as he puts it, “a professional glutton.” Adam Platt has been a contributing editor and restaurant critic for New York magazine since 2000. He won the James Beard Foundation Journalism Award for Restaurant Reviews in 2010. During the course of nearly twenty-five years in the magazine business, Platt has written for a variety of publications, including The New Yorker, the New York Observer, Esquire, and Condé Nast Traveler. He lives in Greenwich Village with his wife and two pizza-loving daughters. Nikita Richardson is a staff writer at Grub Street, where she writes about black chefs, status olive oil, and the New York City restaurant scene. Her writing has been featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, The Fader, The Strategist, Bon Appetit, Fast Company, and more. She's a 2013 graduate of NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism school, where she earned her Master's degree in magazine writing. Outside of work, she's a violinist in the Brooklyn Conservatory Community Orchestra and makes pottery under the moniker See Line Ceramics. Find her on Instagram @nomnomnikita. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Books Are Magic x Red Ink Series: HAUNTED
Thursday November 14 | 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, “Haunted,” will feature Mira Ptacin, Jaquira Díaz, Crystal Hana Kim, Iris Martin Cohen, and one more writer 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. Mira Ptacin is the author of the acclaimed memoir "Poor Your Soul", which was a Kirkus best book of the year in 2016. Her most recent book is "The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna", which Susan Orlean deemed "deft and surreal," and Elizabeth Gilbert praised as "brilliant." Mira is an advocate for incarcerated women and teaches memoir writing at the Maine Correctional Center in Maine. She lives on Peaks Island, Maine, with her family. Jaquira Díaz was born in Puerto Rico. Her work has been published in Rolling Stone, the Guardian, Longreads, the Fader, and T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and included in The Best American Essays 2016. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Kenyon Review, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She lives in Miami Beach with her partner, the writer Lars Horn. Crystal Hana Kim’s debut novel If You Leave Me was named a best book of 2018 by multiple outlets, including The Washington Post, Booklist, Literary Hub, and Nylon. It was also longlisted for the Center for Fiction Novel Prize. Kim was a 2017 PEN America Dau Short Story Prize winner and has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Hedgebrook, and Jentel, among others. Her work has been published in Elle Magazine, The Paris Review, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. She is a contributing editor at Apogee Journal. Iris Martin Cohen has an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, where she received a Mariposa fellowship, and has studied Creative Nonfiction at the Writers Institute at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, Bookforum, The New York Sun, The Austin Chronicle, and Habitus. She has taught creative writing at Columbia University, volunteered at 826 Brooklyn, and also ran a successful literary salon and event space in the National Arts Club for four years. Born and raised in the French Quarter of New Orleans, she lives in Brooklyn with her family. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Carmen Maria Machado: In the Dream House w/ Desiree Akhavan @St. Francis College
Friday November 15 | 7:00PM - 9:00PM
Join Books Are Magic and Carmen Maria Machado for an evening in celebration of the acclaimed author's new memoir, IN THE DREAM HOUSE, in conversation with director Desiree Akhavan!
In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. And it’s that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope—the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman—through which Machado holds the events up to the light, examining them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships. Machado’s dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be. Carmen Maria Machado is the author of Her Body and Other Parties, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. She lives in Philadelphia with her wife. Desiree Akhavan is the director and co-writer of THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST, which won the 2018 Sundance Grand Jury Prize. Her work also includes the Hulu original series, THE BISEXUAL and the film APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR, which premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for Best First Screenplay at the Indie Spirit Awards. She lives in Brooklyn where she's currently writing her first book, a collection of autobiographical essays. This event will be held at St. Francis College (180 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201). 
Malcolm Tariq: Heed the Hollow w/ Naomi Extra and Aldrin Valdez
Saturday November 16 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
Heed the Hollow introduces the work of Malcolm Tariq, whose poems explore the concept of “the bottom” across blackness, sexuality, and the American South. These lyrics of queer desire meet the voices of enslaved ancestors to reckon with a lineage of trauma that manifests as silence, pain, and haunting memories, but also as want and love. In bops, lyrics, and erasures, Heed the Hollow tells of a heritage anchored to the landscape of the coastal South, to seawalls shaped by forced labor, and to the people “marked into the bottom / of history where then now / we find no shadow of life.” From that shadow, the voices in these poems make their own brightness, reclaiming their histories from a language that evolved to exclude them. With an introduction by Chris Abani, Heed the Hollow exults in the spiritual and the physical, in its blackness and eroticism, and in the beauty of touch and music.
Malcolm Tariq is from Savannah, Georgia, and is the author of Extended Play, winner of the 2017 Gertrude Press Poetry Chapbook Contest. A graduate of Emory University, he has a PhD in English from the University of Michigan. He lives in New York. Naomi Extra is a freelance writer, poet, and doctoral candidate in American Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. In both her creative and scholarly work she explores the themes of agency and pleasure in the lives of black women and girls. She has been awarded fellowships from Cave Canem, Jack Jones Literary Arts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Crescendo Literary, and the African American Intellectual History Society. Her essays and poems can be found in Glamour, Ms. Magazine Blog, Broadly, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Aldrin Valdez is a bakla writer & visual artist. They are the author of ESL or You Weren't Here (Nightboat Books), a 2019 finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Poetry. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
NYRB Book Club: The Corner That Held Them
Monday November 18 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
Books Are Magic is proud to host the (NYRB) Books Are Magic Book Club, a book club that discusses a different book by a female author in the New York Review Books catalog every other month.
This month we are discussing The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner. Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner That Held Them is a historical novel like no other, one that immerses the reader in the dailiness of history, rather than history as the given sequence of events that, in time, it comes to seem. Time ebbs and flows and characters come and go in this novel, set in the era of the Black Death, about a Benedictine convent of no great note. The nuns do their chores, and seek to maintain and improve the fabric of their house and chapel, and struggle with each other and with themselves. The book that emerges is a picture of a world run by women but also a story—stirring, disturbing, witty, utterly entrancing—of a community. What is the life of a community and how does it support, or constrain, a real humanity? How do we live through it and it through us? These are among the deep questions that lie behind this rare triumph of the novelist’s art. Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893–1978) was a poet, short-story writer, and novelist, as well as an authority on early English music and a member of the Communist Party. Her first novel, Lolly Willowes (available from NYRB Classics), appeared in 1926 and was the first ever Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Over the course of her long career, Warner published six more novels, seven books of poetry, a translation of Proust, fourteen volumes of short stories, and a biography of T.H. White. NYRB also publishes her novels Mr. Fortune, Summer Will Show and The Corner That Held Them. This event is free! Let us know you're coming on Facebook. 
Su Hwang: Bodega w/ Omotara James and Asiya Wadud
Tuesday November 19 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
Join us for a reading in celebration of Su Hwang’s BODEGA, with Omotara James and Asiya Wadud!
This richly lyrical debut collection tells the coming-of-age story of a first-generation Korean American as she views the world from her parents’ bodega in Queensbridge, New York, looking at our nation of immigrants eye-to-eye with humanitarianism and heart. Born in Seoul, Korea, Su Hwang was raised in New York then called the Bay Area home before transplanting to the Midwest, where she received her MFA in poetry from the University of Minnesota. A recipient of the inaugural Jerome Hill Fellowship in Literature, the Academy of American Poets James Wright Prize, writer-in-residence fellowships to Dickinson House and Hedgebrook, among others, her poems have appeared in Ninth Letter, Water~Stone Review, Waxwing, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and is the co-founder, with Sun Yung Shin, of Poetry Asylum. Su Hwang currently lives in Minneapolis. Omotara James is the author of the chapbook, “Daughter Tongue,” selected by African Poetry Book Fund, in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2018 New Generation African Poets Box Set. Born in Britain, she is the daughter of Nigerian and Trinidadian immigrants. A former social worker in the field of Harm Reduction, she has been awarded fellowships from Lambda Literary and Cave Canem Foundation. She is a recipient of the 2019 92Y / Discovery Poetry Prize and a recipient of the 2019 Bread Loaf Katharine Bakeless Nason Award in Poetry. In addition, her work has been recognized with the Nancy P. Schnader Academy of American Poets Prize, the “Bridging the Gap” Slice Literary Award for emerging writers, a Luminaire Poetry Award, two Pushcart Prize nominations and one Best of the Net nomination. Recently, she was selected as a 2019 finalist for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in POETRY, The Paris Review, The Academy of American Poets, Literary Hub, Poetry Society of America, The Recluse, Nat.Brut, Winter Tangerine, No Tokens, Cosmonauts Avenue and elsewhere, including various anthologies. She holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and edits poetry for American Chordata. Asiya Wadud is the author of Crosslight for Youngbird (Nightboat Books, 2018), day pulls down the sky… a filament in gold leaf written collaboratively with Okwui Okpokwasili (Belladonna, 2019) and Syncope (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2019). Her collection No Knowledge Is Complete Until It Passes Through My Body (Nightboat Books) is forthcoming in 2020. Her recent work appears in BOMB Magazine, Best American Experimental Writing, Washington Square Review, and Makhzin, among others. Asiya teaches poetry to children at Saint Ann’s School and leads an English conversation group for new immigrants at the Brooklyn Public Library. This event is free! 
Candice Carty-Williams: Queenie
Wednesday November 20 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Queenie Jenkins is a twenty-five-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.
As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?”—all of the questions today’s woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her. With “fresh and honest” (Jojo Moyes) prose, Queenie is a remarkably relatable exploration of what it means to be a modern woman searching for meaning in today’s world. Candice Carty-Williams is an author, book marketer, and sometime journalist based in south London. She contributes regularly to i-D, Refinery29, BEAT Magazine, and more, and her pieces, especially those about blackness, sex, and identity, have been shared globally. Queenie is her first novel. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @CandiceC_W. This event is free! 
Books Are Magic x inQluded: Qmunnity in Publishing
Thursday November 21 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Books Are Magic partners with inQluded to present: Qmmunity in Publishing, a QTIPoC author panel featuring Ashley Woodfolk, George M. Johnson, Heidi Heilig, Charlotte Nicole Davis, and James Akinaka moderating.
inQluded is a new platform for and by LGBTQIA+ youth of color. Their online magazine features interviews, essays, poetry and more. In addition to their online magazine they plan to create programming that engages their community and allies. This QTIPOC author panel is just the beginning. Visit them at inqluded.org Ashley Woodfolk has loved reading and writing for as long as she can remember. She graduated from Rutgers University with a Bachelor of Arts in English and works in children’s book publishing. She writes from a sunny Brooklyn apartment, where she lives with her cute husband and her cuter dog. George M. Johnson is a writer and activist based in New York. He has written on race, gender, sex, and culture for Essence, The Advocate, Buzz Feed News, Teen Vogue, and more than forty other national publications. He is a columnist for AFROPUNK, and has appeared on BuzzFeed's AM2DM as well as MSNBC. All Boys Aren't Blue is his debut. Speak with him on Twitter, @IamGMJohnson. iamgmjohnson.com Heidi Heilig is the author of The Girl from Everywhere, which was an Indie Next Pick and also named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Bustle, and Paste. Its sequel, The Ship Beyond Time, received a starred review from School Library Journal and was named a Best Book of the Year by Paste. Heidi Heilig holds an MFA from New York University in musical theatre writing, and she’s written book and lyrics for several shows, including The Time Travelers Convention, Under Construction, and The Hole. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. www.heidiheilig.com Charlotte Nicole Davis (forthcoming THE GOOD LUCK GIRLS) A graduate of The New School’s Writing for Children MFA program, CHARLOTTE NICOLE DAVIS loves comic book movies and books with maps in the front. She currently lives in Brooklyn with a cat with a crooked tail. The Good Luck Girls is her debut novel. She can be found at https://www.charlottenicoledavis.com/ James Akinaka is a digital marketing assistant at Penguin Young Readers. He was formerly a communications associate at Kensington Publishing. He's also the official hype guy for YA Book Events NYC. This event is free and open to the public. 
Heather Christle: The Crying Book w/ Kaveh Akbar
Friday November 22 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Heather Christle has just lost a dear friend to suicide and now must reckon with her own depression and the birth of her first child. As she faces her grief and impending parenthood, she decides to research the act of crying: what it is and why people do it, even if they rarely talk about it. Along the way, she discovers an artist who designed a frozen-tear-shooting gun and a moth that feeds on the tears of other animals. She researches tear-collecting devices (lachrymatories) and explores the role white women’s tears play in racist violence.
Honest, intelligent, rapturous, and surprising, Christle’s investigations look through a mosaic of science, history, and her own lived experience to find new ways of understanding life, loss, and mental illness. The Crying Book is a deeply personal tribute to the fascinating strangeness of tears and the unexpected resilience of joy. Heather Christle is author of the poetry collections The Difficult Farm (2009); The Trees The Trees(2011), which won the Believer Poetry Award; What Is Amazing (2012); and Heliopause (2015). A former creative writing fellow in poetry at Emory University, Christle’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, Poetry, and many other journals. She was born in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, and earned a BA from Tufts University and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has taught at Wittenberg University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Guelph, and other institutions. She lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Kaveh Akbar's poems appear in The New Yorker, Poetry, Paris Review, Best American Poetry, The New York Times, and elsewhere. He is the author of two full-length collections: Pilgrim Bell (Graywolf, 2021) and Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James, 2017). The recipient of a Levis Reading Prize, multiple Pushcart Prizes, and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, Kaveh is the founding editor of Divedapper, a home for interviews with major voices in contemporary poetry. Born in Tehran, Iran, he teaches at Purdue University and in the low-residency MFA programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson. This event is free! 
Storytime with Elliot Kreloff: The Luckiest Snowball
Sunday November 24 | 11:00AM - 12:00PM
A boy makes a snowball and is about to throw it when he hears “Stop!…Let’s do something else.” So the boy and the snowball make a snow angel, build a snow fort, and make a snowman instead. The boy decides to take the snowball home. When the snowball starts to melt, the boy rescues it by putting it in the freezer, where the snowball meets some very nice frozen foods and a tray of ice cubes too. The snowball meets flowers and butterflies in spring, sea and sand in summer, and apples and colorful leaves in fall.
This is a great read-aloud. Children will enjoy shouting the refrain “Help! I’m melting!” Elliot Kreloff is a best-selling illustrator of picture books, easy readers and board books, some of which he also wrote. A desire to illustrate the same scene in different seasons sparked the idea for The Luckiest Snowball, his first book for Holiday House. The father of a grown daughter, Elliot lives in New York City. This event is free! |