What is FABfest?

FABfest is a new kind of street fair in Fort Greene, hosted by our new BID, the FAB (Fulton Area Business) Alliance!

Fulton Street from Fowler Square to South Oxford will be closed to traffic each Sunday in June, as we celebrate local Brooklyn businesses, arts groups and cultural organizations with music, food, games, dance parties, environmental demonstrations, crafts and activities for children, and more. Each day kicks off with a salsa dance party at 12 noon and the fun continues until 6:00pm, rain or shine!

Greenlight is delighted to be involved in FABfest, with events on the street and in the store each Sunday in June. Click any of the links below to go to our Facebook event page for more information about Greenlight's FABfest programming, or stop by the store to pick up a flyer about FABfest. (There will be more authors and activities added, so check back on Facebook for updates.) And visit FAB Fulton on Facebook for more about all the great stuff going on at FABfest. See you out in the street!

June 6:
All day:StoryCorps listening station, activities and giveaways, and streetside Mad Libs
3:00 PM: Listening session with StoryCorps staff

June 13:
All day:Six-Word Memoir Writing, activities and giveaways, and streetside Mad Libs
3:00 PM: White whiskey (moonshine) reading and tasting, co-hosted by The Greene Grape

June 20:
All day:Activities and giveaways, streetside Mad Libs, and information from New York Writers Coalition
2:00 - 6:00: Main Stage performances by Steamboat, Urban Word, Toure, Nelson George, and others
4:00 PM Free all-ages writing workshop from NYWC

June 27:
All day:Literary trivia contest, streetside Mad Libs, activities and giveaways, and literary magazine giveaways
5:00 PM: Literary magazine celebration with A Public Space, Armchair/Shotgun, BOMB, and Electric Literature

Tonight: Celebrate The Art of the Novella with Melville House!

Monday, May 24, 7:30 PM
Greenlight celebrates Melville House’s Art of the Novella Series
Introduction by publisher Dennis Johnson
Featuring Lore Segal, author of Lucinella
Alejandro Zambra, author of Bonsai
Margarita Shalina, translator of Chekov's The Duel
Ian Dreiblatt, translator of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych

Brooklyn-based independent publisher Melville House Publishing has been pushing boundaries and winning awards since it was founded by Dennis Johnson and his wife Valerie Merians in 2001. MHP’s beautifully produced Art of the Novella series celebrates a renegade art form (too short to be novel, too long to be a short story) and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time. Authors and translators from both the Contemporary and Classic sides of the series will read at Greenlight this evening, christening the bookstore’s wall display of the entire Art of the Novella line.

Tonight: Steamboat!!

Thursday, May 20, 7:30 PM
Steamboat: A Literary Humor Series
Hosted by Bob Powers and Jason Reich
Featuring Rebecca Barry, author of Later, at The Bar
Allison Castillo, stand-up comedian
Teddy Wayne, author of Kapitoil

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. Rebecca Barry’s debut story collection Later, at the Bar chronicles the lives and loves of the regulars at a small-town bar. Allison Castillo is a stand-up comedy veteran of Comedy Central's Premium Blend & HBO's Aspen Comedy Fest. Teddy Wayne’s novel Kapitoil is told in the voice of a young Middle Eastern financial whiz attempting to live the American Dream in New York City.

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Tonight: Emily St. John Mandel reads from The Singer's Gun!

Monday, May 17, 7:30 PM
Emily St. John Mandel reads from The Singer’s Gun

Brooklyn author Emily St. John Mandel follows up her electrifying novel Last Night in Montreal with her new book The Singer’s Gun, a spellbinding story of international crime, false identities, the depths and limits of family ties, and the often confusing bonds of love. From the sinister warehouses of Williamsburg to the soulless shining office towers of Manhattan to the sun-kissed ennui of the island of Ischia, Emily St. John Mandel traces the fortunes of would-be ex-criminal Anton and his associates through moving and astonishing interludes. A staff favorite and a Number One Indie Next Pick, The Singer’s Gun promises a compelling evening’s reading from a rising literary star.

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Tonight: Manny Howard presents My Empire of Dirt!

Thursday, May 13, 7:30 PM
Manny Howard presents My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned His Big-City Backyard Into a Farm

Brooklynite and lifelong urban dweller Manny Howard took the locavore / urban farmer movement to the extreme: he created a farm in his eight-hundred-square-foot backyard in Flatbush, with the goal of subsisting only on what he could produce on this farm for at least a month (in spite of his wife’s dismay and his own skepticism of the trend).

Following up on his James Beard Foundation Award–winning New York magazine cover story on the locavore movement, Manny wrote My Empire Of Dirt to chronicle his struggle against environmental, familial, and agricultural chaos, and in the process to ask readers to consider what it really takes (and what it really means) to produce our own food.

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Tonight: Joseph Wallace reads from Diamond Ruby!

Monday, May 10, 7:30 PM
Joseph Wallace reads from Diamond Ruby

New York author Joseph Wallace, author of several nonfiction books about baseball, tells a distinctly Brooklyn story in his first historical novel, Diamond Ruby.

Based on the real-life story of sixteen-year-old Jackie Mitchell, organized baseball’s first female pitcher who struck out Yankees greats Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in 1931 (and was subsequently banned from the game which was supposedly “too strenuous” for women), Diamond Ruby chronicles the extraordinary life and times of a girl who rises from utter poverty to the kind of renown only the Roaring Twenties could bestow.

The novel is already a staff favorite and an IndieNext Pick, and Greenlight hosts a celebration of Brooklyn, baseball and storytelling with a reading and discussion with Wallace.

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Tonight: Howard Pitsch talks about Fort Greene!

Friday, May 7, 7:30 PM Howard Pitsch, author of Fort Greene Introduction by Roslyn Huebener of the Fort Greene Association

A former Fort Greene Association president, Howard Pitsch has lived in Fort Greene for nearly 30 years. He brings both his first-hand knowledge of the neighborhood and his extensive research to this pictorial history of the neighborhood, from the pre-Revolutionary War era to the present.

Howard will discuss the neighborhood’s history and character this evening and take questions. He will be introduced by Roslyn Huebener, a member of the board of the Fort Greene Association, which was formed in 1973 to preserve the distinctive architectural heritage of the neighborhood but has since evolved to address many of the broader concerns of our diverse community.

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Tonight: Dave Isay presents Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps

Wednesday, May 5, 8:30 PM
Dave Isay presents Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps

PLEASE NOTE: this event has been moved to 8:30 PM from its original start time of 7:30 PM.

StoryCorps is a nonprofit based right here in Fort Greene, whose mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives.

In Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from Storycorps, StoryCorps founder Dave Isay (editor of Listening Is An Act of Love and frequent NPR contributor) presents a celebration of American mothers from all walks of life and experiences.

Selected from StoryCorps’ extensive archive of interviews, Mom presents the wisdom that has been passed from mothers to their children in StoryCorps’ recording booths across the country.

Dave presents sound and video recordings from the book and starts a conversation about the mothers in our lives.

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