Tonight: Rules to Rock By!

Thursday, September 2, 7:30 PM
Josh Farrar reads from Rules to Rock By
With live music by The Bungles and friends

New York author Josh Farrar’s young adult novel Rules to Rock By is an indie-rock coming of age story, with an accompanying soundtrack of music by the heroine’s fictional band, The Bungles – played by real Brooklyn teen musicians. Tonight’s reading will be accompanied by live music from these talented rockers, including Sofie Kapur (singer) and Hunter Lombard (guitarist), with special guests including Kevin March (Guided by Voices/Shudder to Think), and others TBA. The evening will conclude with a Rock Band interactive version of the band’s track “Hey Satomi” – join us to rock out with Brooklyn’s literary and musical talent!

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Tonight: Ghita Schwarz reads from Displaced Persons!

Monday, August 30, 7:30 PM
Ghita Schwarz reads from Displaced Persons

Our talented neighbor Ghita Schwarz is a civil rights litigator specializing in immigrants’ rights, and the child of postwar Jewish immigrants. In her debut novel Displaced Persons, Ghita distills the disparate experiences of the hundreds of thousands of ordinary men, women and children who lived as refugees following World War II, living in camps in Allied-occupied Europe before buildi...ng new lives, families and homelands around the world. In haunting, unsentimental prose that mimics the characters’ native cadences of Yiddish and Polish, the novel explores the self-conscious strivings of a community that sees survival as a lifelong project, and the ordinary, imperfect people who are neither mythically noble nor irrevocably broken. Join us for the launch of a novel that brings joy, sadness, love, loss, humor, anger and hope into the present and future.

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Tonight: Inside Out Tours presents the Greenlight Open Mic!

Thursday, August 26, 8:00 PM
Inside Out Tours presents the Greenlight Open Mic Night
Hosted by Mo Beasley
Featured Poet: Chance

Award-winning Brooklyn-based company Inside Out Tours leads visitors and local residents to great cultural experiences "off the beaten path", including Greenlight’s new open mic series on the last Thursday of every month this summer! The hour-long open mic, for poets and performers of all ages, will be followed by a brief performance from a featured spoken word poet.

All performing poets will be entered into a drawing to win a tour from Inside Out and books from Greenlight Bookstore. Sign up starts at 7:30. Join us to hear some great performers, or sign up to take the stage!

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Tonight: Rick Moody!

Tuesday, August 24, 7:30 PM
Rick Moody reads from The Four Fingers of Death

Writer and musician Rick Moody, author of The Ice Storm, The Black Veil, and numerous other works of fiction and nonfiction, outdoes himself in his highly anticipated new novel The Four Fingers of Death. The novel is the story of Montese Crandall, an unknown writer living in the Arizona desert in 2025, who is commissioned to write a novelization of the remake of the 1963 film The Crawling Hand. Crandall's novel of the adventures of nine astronauts, and the surrounding narrative of his own personal story and his declining American society, make Moody's new book a stunning achievement. Join us for a reading with a Brooklyn neighbor and a literary star.

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Tonight: Marcy Dermansky and Lizzie Skurnick!

Monday, August 23, 7:30 PM Blogger/Author Pairings Series Author Marcy Dermansky reads and discusses Bad Marie with blogger Lizzie Skurnick of Old Hag Introduction by series curator Ron Hogan of Beatrice.com

Our monthly Blogger/Author Pairings series features a noted local blogger interviewing an author whose themes resonate for them. Blogger, author, critic and poet Lizzie Skurnick is the creator of Old Hag, a noted literary blog and a Forbes Best of the Web pick. Author Marcy Dermansky has published short stories and film criticism as well as an acclaimed previous novel, Twins; her new novel Bad Marie is the story of an irresistible husband-stealing, baby-snatching, underachieving ex-con, and has been praised by Mary Robison, Frederick Barthelme and Ben Greenman among many others. Marcy and Lizzie talk about transgressive fiction and wearing various writerly hats tonight at Greenlight.

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Tonight: Steamboat featuring Larry Doyle, Mike Rubens, Robin Epstein

Thursday, August 19, 7:30 PM
Steamboat: A Literary Humor Series
Hosted by Bob Powers and Jason Reich
Featuring Larry Doyle, author of Go, Mutants!
Mike Rubens, author of The Sheriff of Yrnameer
Robin Epstein, author of God Is In The Pancakes
On the third Thursday of every month, join Bob Powers (author of Happy Cruelty Day) and Jason Reich (former writer for The Daily Show), as they welcome the city's best humor writers for a night of wine-addled text-based hilarity.

Larry Doyle (author of I Love You, Beth Cooper) is the author of Go, Mutants!, the story of a melting-pot society populated by the aliens and humans of 1950s space-invader movies, in which a brooding blue rebel with a giant brain grapples with prejudice and hormones in that most horrific of earthly battlegrounds—high school.

Michael Rubens (a former Daily Show producer) brings us The Sheriff of Yrnameer, a sprawling space opera starring a hapless bounty hunter who finds himself on the last planet without corporate sponsorship, reluctantly fighting outlaws and trying to avoid having alien eggs laid in his brain.

Robin Epstein is the co-author of So Sue Me, Jackass: Avoiding Legal Pitfalls That Can Come Back to Bite You at Work, at Home, and at Play; her new young adult novel God Is In The Pancakes is the story of a fifteen-year-old girl whose job at the nursing home takes a complicated term when a friendly elderly patient asks her to help him die.

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Tonight: Foods of Brooklyn with Sherri Eisenberg and Local Restaurants!

Wednesday, August 18, 7:30 PM Foods of Brooklyn Sherri Eisenberg, author of the Food Lovers’ Guide to Brooklyn With tastings from local restaurants Cake Man Raven, Greene Grape, Habana Outpost, James, and No. 7

Our beloved borough of Brooklyn is not only a literary mecca, but a paradise for local food culture as well! With world-class restaurants, talented food artisans, and fresh local markets galore, there's a lot to explore. Author Sherri Eisenberg is an award winning travel writer and has been wandering the globe for over a decade, penning pieces on restaurants and hotels in places like Bora Bora and Bangkok; in the Food Lovers’ Guide to Brooklyn she turns her palate to her own hometown, exploring the tried and true icons as well as the outposts of New Brooklyn Cuisine. To bring you a real taste of Brooklyn, several of our favorite local restaurants will offer free tastings of their wares at the event. Stay tuned for an updated lineup of participating restaurants, and join us for a tasty way to spend an August evening!

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Tonight: An Evening with Hanging Loose Press

Wednesday, August 11, 7:30 PM
An Evening with Hanging Loose Press
With poets Jeni Olin, Sharon Mesmer, and Erica Miriam Fabri, artist Ashleigh Caffey, and musician Robin Andrew
Hosted by Angel Nafis

Hanging Loose Press is one of the oldest independent publishers in Brooklyn, founded in 1966 (as a literary magazine composed of mimeographed pages in an envelope). The press has published the first books by such poetry luminaries as Sherman Alexie, Kimiko Hahn, and... D. Nurkse, as well as many powerful voices of the Brooklyn poetry world, and has been influential in bringing the work of acclaimed performance poets to the page. Tonight at Greenlight several of those local performers take the stage.

Jeni Olin is the author of Blue Collar Holiday and Hold Tight: The Truck Darling Poems.

Sharon Mesmer is the author of The Virgin Formica, In Ordinary Time and The Empty Quarter.

Erica Miriam Fabri is the author of Dialect of a Skirt. Ashleigh Caffey will present paintings inspired by poems in Dialect of a Skirt

Musician Robin Andre will perform solo and with Erica Miriam Fabri.

And there’s no telling what other dynamic performers will take the stage at this celebration of Brooklyn’s independent and poetic spirit, hosted by Greenlight’s own resident spoken word poet Angel Nafis!

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Tonight: Memoir Panel with Adam Langer, Beth Raymer, and Ben Yagoda!

Memoir: A Panel Discussion
Adam Langer, author of The Thieves of Manhattan: A Novel
Beth Raymer, author of Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling
Ben Yagoda, author of Memoir: A History

The memoir is a conflicted and fascinating creation, where memory and truth meet the demands of the marketplace; it is also both an increasingly popular genre in contemporary American letters and the focus of a string of scandals and condemnations. Three authors offer varying perspectives on the memoir during tonight’s panel discussion, shedding light on their own motives and efforts and the state of memoir in general. Adam Langer’s last book was a memoir, My Father’s Bonus War, but he is best known as a novelist; his new novel The Thieves of Manhattan is about a fake memoir (or two) and the lengths to which some writers will go in order to succeed. Beth Raymer’s highly acclaimed memoir Lay the Favorite chronicles her experiences in the high-stakes, high-anxiety underworld of sports betting. Ben Yagoda’s Memoir: A History traces the form from St. Augustine’s Confessions to Robinson Crusoe (the first “fake memoir”) to the present day.

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Tonight: Gary Shteyngart reads from Super Sad True Love Story!

Friday, July 30, 7:30 PM
Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story

New York is proud to claim as one of its own the critically acclaimed author Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and New York Times Top 10 pick Absurdistan. And Greenlight Bookstore is very proud to host Shteyngart for the Brooklyn launch of his third novel, Super Sad True Love Story!

Set in the semi-illiterate, collapsing America of the near future, this hilarious new novel follows the professional, romantic, and unwillingly political adventures of Lenny Abramov: diarist, lover, and employee of Post-Human Services. Join us for an evening with the inimitable Gary Shteyngart that celebrates the release of his new “printed, bound media artifact” (that is, book).

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Tonight: Carey Wallace AND Open Mic!

It's a double header at Greenlight tonight! Come for a local author, stay to check out the local poetic talent and try out your own skills on the mic...

Thursday, July 29, 6:30 PM
Carey Wallace, author of The Blind Contessa's New Machine
The debut novel by Brooklyn author (and Greenlight customer) Carey Wallace, The Blind Contessa’s New Machine tells the story of a nineteenth-century noblewoman who can’t convince her family that she is losing her eyesight. The only one who believes her is an eccentric inventor, who sets out to give her a gift that will allow her to transcend her blindness. Join us for an exciting evening’s reading with a talented local author.

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Thursday, July 29, 8:00 PM
Inside Out Tours hosts the Greenlight Poetry Open Mic Night
Hosted by Mo Beasley
Featured Poet Radhiyah Ayobami
Award-winning Brooklyn-based company Inside Out Tours leads visitors and local residents to great cultural experiences "off the beaten path" in Brooklyn's vibrant and diverse neighborhoods.

Inside Out not only leads you to exciting destinations, they also create destinations, including Greenlight’s new open mic series on the last Thursday of every month this summer! The hour-long open mic, for poets and performers of all ages, will be followed by a brief performance from a featured spoken word poet Radhiyah Ayobami. Radhiyah is a Cave Canem Fellow and has performed at the Brooklyn Public Library, Columbia College Chicago, and the Bowery Poetry Club, among others.

All performing poets will be entered into a drawing to win a tour from Inside Out and books from Greenlight Bookstore. Join us to hear some great performers, or sign up to take the stage!

Open mic signups begin at 7:30 PM. Please note there is also an author reading from 6:30 to 7:30; thank you for bearing with our crowded schedule and respecting all featured guests.

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Tonight: Living Liberally Panel with Colin Beavan, Fran Hawthorne & Justin Krebs!

Monday, July 26, 7:30 PM
Living Liberally: A Panel Discussion of the Costs, Benefits, and Absurdities of Striving for Progressive Ideals in Everyday Life
With Colin Beavan, Fran Hawthorne, and Justin Krebs

American consumers have more information than ever about the way their choices affect the planet – and the moral implications of those choices can be liberating or paralyzing. Three panelists this evening discuss their perspectives on the progressive or liberal lifestyle.

New Yorker Colin Beavan famously chronicled his attempt to live “off the grid” in his blog, book and film No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process; he continues to work on sustainability projects.


Brooklyn journalist Fran Hawthorne takes a look at how Americans are caught between consumerist culture and global ethics in their daily choices in The Overloaded Liberal: Shopping, Investing, Parenting and Other Daily Dilemmas in an Age of Political Activism


Huffington Post columnist Justin Krebs is the co-founder of the nonprofit Living Liberally; his book 538 Ways to Live, Work, and Play Like A Liberal includes ideas and tips for a more environmentally friendly, socially conscious, and liberally minded life.

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Tonight: Tony O'Neill reads from Sick City!

Thursday, July 22, 7:30 PM
Tony O'Neill, author of Sick City
Reading and reception

L.A.-based author Tony O’Neill writes in the tradition of Burroughs, Bukowski, Leonard and Welsh, chronicling the underground lives of skid-row derelicts with a keen eye and irreverent humor. His new book Sick City is a wild adventure of two junkies, Hollywood, and the Sharon Tate sex tape. To celebrate the book’s East Coast launch, Greenlight is hosting a reading and reception, with alcohol provided by publisher Harper Perennial and book-related giveaways from Tony himself.

"Like a Robert Altman film scripted by Charles Bukowski… SICK CITY is appealing in its unsentimentalism, disgusting in its details—and, almost unbelievably funny." — Booklist

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Wednesday, July 21, 7:30 PM
Vendela Vida, author of The Lovers

Vendela Vida is the acclaimed author of the 2007 New York Times Notable Book Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, and collaborated with her husband Dave Eggers on the screenplay Away We Go.

In her new novel The Lovers, she demonstrates the crystalline voice and psychological nuance for which her work has been so celebrated. The story of a widowed woman returning to the site of her honeymoon in Turkey, the novel explores the love between husbands and wives, and mothers and children.

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Tonight: Steamboat featuring Erin Bradley, damali ayo, and Pamela Russell!

Thursday, July 15, 7:30 PM
Steamboat: A Literary Humor Series
Hosted by Bob Powers and Jason Reich
Featuring Erin Bradley, author of Every Rose Has Its Thorn
damali ayo, author of Obamistan: Land Without Racism
Pamela August Russell, author of B Is For Bad Poetry

On the third Thursday of every month, join Bob Powers (author of Happy Cruelty Day) and Jason Reich (former writer for "The Daily Show"), as they welcome the city's best humor writers for a night of wine-addled text-based hilarity.

Erin Bradley is the author of "Miss Information," a weekly sex and dating advice column appearing on Nerve.com; her new book Every Rose Has its Thorn will help you better identify and understand the rockstars (and wannabes) you'll meet on romance's bumpy tour.

damali ayo (author of How to Rent a Negro) turns her wickedly funny satiric eye on the new “post-racial” America, offering recommendations for navigating this exciting utopia.

Pamela Russell’s unexalted (but thoroughly hysterical) poems mock, chide, accuse, tease, joke, undermine, point, and laugh at the world around us—and at anything that takes itself too seriously.

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