Fort Greene Open Book

It's a new project (something we tend to sympathize with): Open Book TV.

Here's the official description:

"Open Book is a new half-hour weekly television program about books and writers focusing on the contemporary and historical literary production in a different spot on the planet each week."

But the really important thing about Open Book?

The first show focuses on that most literary of all spots: Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

Not only does the show spotlight the neighborhood's literary history with readings of Walt Whitman, Richard Wright, and Henry Miller, but it features the current resident literary and creative lights: Jennifer Egan, Jeffrey Wright, Carl Hancock Rux, Moustafa Bayoumi, Ishmael Beah, Bill Lee, Darryl Blaine, and Suheir Hammad.

Also featured: Madiba (best South African restaurant I know), M & H deli(Halal), the Walt Whitman Houses, the Navy Yards, Spike Lee's dad's house, and what I'm pretty sure is the inside of the Methodist church on Hanson Place.

Authors I was looking forward to: Egan and Rux (and they didn't disappoint).

Authors whose descriptions and evocations of Brooklyn and Fort Greene unexpectedly choked me up: Bayoumi on a rich and open-eyed multiculturalism, Hammad on a particularly local youth and pride, Wright on an almost mystical but humorous continuity across the centuries.

All of them made me love this neighborhood even more.

Oh come on, just watch it, and relish the literary joy available in our local "spot on the planet"!