Tonight: Kurt Andersen introduces Frederic Tuten!

Wednesday, September 30, 7:30 PM
Frederic Tuten reads from Self Portraits: Fictions
Introduction by Kurt Andersen

Acclaimed New York author Frederic Tuten, recipient of both a Guggenheim fellowship and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Distinguished Writing, bends genres and breaks boundaries in his new book Self Portraits: Fictions, which is at once a memoir, short stories, and a novel. These mysterious, interrelated stories create a portrait of the author’s life, both real and imagined, as he appears in each tale variously as hero, bystander, artist, and ghost, yielding an enchanting autobiography of the imagination. Tuten will be introduced by friend and fellow author Kurt Andersen, host of WNYC’s Studio 360.

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Last Chance: Get your tickets to see Mo Willems at the Brooklyn Public Library!

Mo Willems kicks off the Knuffle Bunny Free World Tour in Brooklyn, where it all started!

Long-time Brooklynite Mo Willems will be back in town to celebrate the release of Knuffle Bunny Free, the final book in his critically-acclaimed Knuffle Bunny series. WORD and Greenlight Bookstore are proud to be co-hosting him for a spectacular evening of reading, discussion, and activities.

Mo and a special surprise traveling companion (just the right size for young ones to hug!) will visit, and Mo will read a selection of his books, including Knuffle Bunny Free.

This event will take place on Wednesday, September 29th at 6pm at the Brooklyn Public Library, Central Branch. Each store will have a limited supply of tickets available to our customers. Tickets are free with the purchase of Knuffle Bunny Free and each ticket admits one adult and one child. Activities and giveaways hosted by HarperCollins are included, and other Mo Willems titles will be available for purchase the night of the event. Mo will be signing books after his reading.

Tickets can be purchased from Greenlight Bookstore over the phone or in person, while supplies last. There will be no paper tickets issued; all attendees will be on a list and will need to show photo ID at the event. We do still have a handful of tickets, so call or visit us today to reserve your seat!

All ticketholders please visit gomo.net prior to the event to download your very own passport and travel checklist. Don't forget to bring them to the event. See you at the library with Mo and Knuffle Bunny!

Tonight: Poets Megan Synder-Camp and Darcie Dennigan!

Monday, September 27, 7:30 PM
Megan Snyder-Camp, author of The Forest of Sure Things
Darcie Dennigan, author of Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse

Two talented poets and friends present award-winning new collections!

Megan Snyder-Camp’s The Forest of Sure Things is a layered sequence of narrative poems chronicling the story of newlywed drifters in a remote village on the Northwest Coast; hypnotic, incantatory and chronologically innovative, the collection won the annual Tupelo Press First Book Award, and was a finalist for the Yale Younger Poets Prize.


Darcie Dennigan is one of four recipients of the Discovery/The Nation Poetry Prize and was selected for the Fordham Poets Out Loud program; her book Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse has been widely and extravagantly praised for its innovative rhythms and observant lyricism.

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Tonight: Steamboat Special Edition!

Thursday, September 23, 7:30 PM Steamboat Special Edition!
With hosts Bob Powers, Jason Reich, and Scott Jacobson Presenting Sex: Our Bodies, Our Junk, authored by The Association for the Betterment of Sex (Mike Sacks, Scott Jacobson, Todd Levin, Ted Travelstead, Jason Roeder)
Michael Kupperman, author of Tales Designed To Thrizzle series
Allison Silverman, former executive producer of "The Colbert Report"
Jessi Klein, stand-up and star of Comedy Central's "Michael And Michael Have Issues"

Steamboat: A Literary Comedy Series typically occurs on the third Thursday of every month, with hosts Bob Powers and Jason Reich and the city's best humor writers in a night of wine-addled text-based hilarity.

For this special edition of Steamboat, series founder Scott Jacobson returns to Brooklyn from Los Angeles to co-host the show and present his new book, Sex: Our Bodies, Out Junk. Fellow members of the “Association for the Betterment of Sex”, as well as comic writers and performers Michael Kupperman, Allison Silverman and Jessi Klein, will round out the raucous evening.
Note: this edition of Steamboat is not kid-friendly – adults only please!

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Tonight: Josh Neufeld discusses A.D. with Calvin Reid!

Monday, September 20, 7:30 AM
Josh Neufeld, author of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge
Slide show and discussion with Calvin Reid of Publishers Weekly

Now in paperback, Josh Neufeld's bestselling, award-winning nonfiction graphic novel A. D.: New Orleans After the Deluge is a portrait of a city under siege, depicting the lives of seven New Orleanians before, during, and just after Hurricane Katrina. This evening, Josh presents a slideshow presentation including the influences and motivations behind the book, the real people who inspired it, and a moving silent-movie-style portion of the book itself. Afterward, Josh will discuss the project and how the book has been received with Calvin Reid, Publishers Weekly senior news editor & coeditor of PW Comics Week.

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Tonight: Colette Brooks talks science with Alan McGowan

Thursday, September 16, 7:30 PM
Colette Brooks, author of Lost In Wonder: Imagining Science and Other Mysteries In conversation with Alan McGowan, professor of science at Eugene Lang

Author and journalist Colette Brooks (author of In the City: Random Acts of Awareness) invests contemporary science with all the emotional and imaginative power of a work of fiction in her new book Lost in Wonder. Serving as a tour guide through five centuries of scientific exploration, Brooks guides the reader through “thought experiments” to recreate the moment of invention or discovery, bringing her unique perspective to the larger cultural conversation about science and unleashing the most powerful force of all: our own wonder. Brooks talks about science and wonder at Greenlight with Alan McGowan, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Science at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts; McGowan is the executive editor of Environment magazine and has written extensively on science policy and public understanding of science issues.

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Tonight: The Brooklyn Indie Party!

Friday, September 10, 7:30 PM
Brooklyn Book Festival Bookends Event:
The Brooklyn Indie Party!
Featuring A Public Space, Akashic Books, Archipelago, Armchair/Shotgun, BOMB Magazine, Electric Literature, Hanging Loose Press, Ig Publishing, Melville House, One Story, powerHouse Books, and Tin House
With guest DJs Johnny Temple and Dave Tompkins

The Brooklyn Book Festival has become one of the premier literary festivals in the country, featuring authors and publishers from within the borough and around the world. Greenlight is proud to be a vendor at this year’s BKBF, and to participate in the Bookends project: a series of events before and after the Festival to extend the celebration of all things literary throughout the borough. On Friday night, Greenlight will partner with some of Brooklyn’s best independent book and magazine publishers to throw a Brooklyn-sized kickoff party celebrating the spirit of literary independence in Brooklyn! Food and drinks will be provided, along with music courtesy of guest DJs Johnny Temple (publisher of Akashic Books and bassist for Girls Vs. Boys), and Dave Tompkins, author of How to Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop.

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Tonight: Rahna Reiko Rizzuto!

Wednesday, September 8, 7:30
PM Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, author of Hiroshima in the Morning
In conversation with Kathryn Cullen-Dupont of Pratt Institute

In June 2001, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto went to Hiroshima to interview survivors of the atomic bomb detonation, in search of a deeper understanding of her war-torn heritage. Then the attacks on September 11 changed everything. The survivors’ carefully constructed memories were shattered, causing them to relive their agonizing experiences and to open up to Rizzuto in astonishing ways. Rizzuto’s narrative of the survivors’ stories is intertwined with the story of her own crumbling marriage and ambivalence about being a wife and mother, and the parallel narratives explore the role of memory in all our lives. Rizzuto talks about these themes this evening with her friend and former student Kathryn Cullen-Dupont, an associate adjunct professor at Pratt Institute and author of several books on women's studies.

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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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