FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
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Geto & de Milly, Inc.
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BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL 2018
STELLAR AUTHOR LINEUP ANNOUNCED
Author N.K. Jemisin to receive 2018 “Best of Brooklyn (BoBi) award
Literary stars pack BKBF’s fall festival roster, including: Rumaan Alam, Martin Amis, Alexander Chee, Jennifer Egan, Akwaeke Emezi, Eve L. Ewing, Liana Finck, Linda Greenhouse, Pete Hamill, Terrance Hayes, A.M. Homes, Michael Imperioli, Tayari Jones, Nicole Krauss, R.O. Kwon, Hari Kunzru, Michael Kupperman, Laura Lippmann, Terry McMillan, Carmen Maria Machado, Ibtihaj Muhammad, Neel Mukherjee, Audrey Niffenegger, Sigrid Nunez, Joyce Carol Oates, Joseph O’Neill, Gregory Pardlo, Ed Piskor, April Ryan, Amber Tamblyn, Lynne Tillman, Sarah Weinman, Simon Winchester, Jenny Xie, Dave Zirin, and hundreds more.
BROOKLYN, NY—Wednesday, June 13, 2018—The Brooklyn Book Festival Literary Council celebrated its annual launch of the Brooklyn Book Festival (BKBF) Wednesday night with the announcement of the initial 150-plus authors from around the world who will gather for a literary extravaganza, Festival Day, on September 16, and on Children’s Day on September 15. A full week of “Bookend” events, literary special events held throughout the city, lead up to the festival weekend.
BKBF also announced that Hugo award-winning author N.K. Jemisin will be the recipient of the annual Best of Brooklyn (BoBi) Award. Jemisin is the first author of speculative fiction to win the BoBi. Illustrator and cartoonist Julia Wertz will design this year’s Festival art poster.
CLICK HERE FOR MEDIA RELATED TO THE 2018 BKBF AUTHOR ANNOUNCEMENT
Gathered at Issue Project Room, Brooklyn Literary Council Chair Johnny Temple, joined by Festival co-producers Carolyn Greer and Liz Koch, announced an international slate of authors including Hector Abad (Colombia), Hernán Diaz (Argentina), Marcia Douglas (Jamaica), Akwaeke Emezi (Nigeria) Nuruddin Farah (Somalia), Lorna Goodison (Jamaica), Helon Habila (Nigeria), Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi (Uganda), Léonora Miano (Cameroon), Dunya Mikhail (Iraq), Ondjaki (Angola), Preti Taneja (India), and Dubravka Ugresic (Croatia).
Authors at all stages of their careers and in varying genres including nonfiction, fiction, poetry, comics, international and young adult will tackle panel topics of current political and cultural significance including income inequalities, powers of the presidency, healthy eating, and race relations. The Festival is known for fostering unique dialogues among authors, presenting new literary voices, as well as established authors, and crafting unique conversations and discussions for a total of nearly 100 programs on 13 stages on Festival Day (September 16). The BKBF Children’s Day (September 15) celebrates childhood reading and this year will include Soman Chainani (the School for Good and Evil series), Chris Grabenstein (the Wonderland and Lemoncello books), Minh Lê (Let Me Finish!), Meg Medina (Merci Suárez Changes Gears), LeUyen Pham (Big Sister, Little Sister and The Bear Who Wasn’t There), and Kate Schatz and Miriam Stahl (Rad Girls Can).
The evening also included the announcement that Brooklyn author N.K. Jemisin has been named the recipient of the Brooklyn Book Festival’s annual Best of Brooklyn (or BoBi) Award. The annual award is presented at the September Gala Mingle to an author whose work exemplifies or speaks to the spirit of Brooklyn. Past honorees have included Colson Whitehead, Jacqueline Woodson, Jonathan Lethem, James McBride, Lois Lowry and Pete Hamill.
“I am excited to welcome back another year of the Brooklyn Book Festival, which is always a wonderful event that brings together book lovers from all across the borough,” said Brooklyn Borough President Eric L. Adams. “I congratulate N.K. Jemisin for receiving the Best of Brooklyn Award, whose works in fantasy and science fiction are breaking new ground in the literary world by tackling complex cultural themes. It is critical that we continue to empower Brooklynites of all ages with the incredibly inspirational power of reading, especially our next generation of leaders.”
N. K. Jemisin won the Hugo Award for Best Novel for both The Obelisk Gate and The Fifth Season, which was also a New York Times Notable Book of 2015. She previously won the Locus Award for her first novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and her short fiction and novels have been nominated multiple times for Hugo, World Fantasy, Nebula, and RT Reviewers’ Choice awards, and shortlisted for the Crawford and the James Tiptree, Jr. awards. She is a science fiction and fantasy reviewer for The New York Times.
“I’ve loved the Brooklyn Book Festival for years, and it’s a real delight to be honored with the BoBi Best of Brooklyn Award this year!” Jemisin said. “That’s exactly what I love about Brooklyn—we’re eclectic. We read all genres, all styles, all kinds of authors. This year’s going to be a blast.”
Additionally, the Festival is recognizing Jemisin and four more of Brooklyn’s own—Tad Hills, Jennifer Egan, Tayari Jones, Gregory Pardlo—on collectible bookmarks that will be available in all Brooklyn and New York library branches and select bookstores. The Festival’s free collectible bookmarks will be located in library branches throughout all five boroughs starting in August, as well as select bookstores including Books Are Magic in Boerum Hill, Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene, Community Bookstore in Park Slope, Powerhouse in DUMBO, Stories Bookstore and Storytelling Lab in Park Slope, and WORD in Greenpoint.
This year’s art poster will be drawn by Brooklyn illustrator and cartoonist Julia Wertz. She made the comic books The Fart Party vol 1 and vol 2 (collected in Museum of Mistakes) and the graphic novels Drinking at the Movies, and The Infinite Wait and Other Stories, both of which were nominated for Eisner Awards. Wertz won the 2018 Brendan Gill Prize for her most recent book, Tenements, Towers & Trash: An Unconventional, Illustrated History of New York City. Last year’s poster was designed by Adrian Tomine and Rodrigo Corral. The inaugural poster was created in 2016 by Chip Kidd.
The Brooklyn Book Festival includes a full week of Bookend events, literary special events curated with presenting partners including international cultural embassies, publishers, bookstores and institutions such as PEN America, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and Poets House, among others. Venues across all five boroughs include bookstores, parks, bars, bakeshops, ferries, libraries, each hosting national and international authors in programming ranging from trivia nights, poetry slams, and workshops to prose and flash fiction readings, books-to-movie events, and debates. Early Bookend highlights include Literaoke at the Asian American Writers Workshop, Literary Death Match at the Bell House, and A Night of Slam Poetry presented by Latinx.
About the Brooklyn Book Festival
The Brooklyn Book Festival was launched in 2006 to address the need for a major literary event that embraced the diverse constituencies of New York City. The Festival’s mission is to celebrate published literature and support the literary community through programming that connects New York City readers with local, national and international authors, publishers and booksellers. To this end the festival develops original programs that are hip, smart and diverse and collaborates to present free and low-cost programming includes the Festival Day, the Bookend Events and the BKBF Children’s Day.
BKBF is presented by the non-profit Brooklyn Book Festival, Inc. and the Brooklyn Book Festival Literary Council. The Festival is made possible with the generous support of the Amazon Literary Partnership, Author’s Guild, Brooklyn Borough President’s Office/NYC & Company Foundation, City Council Members Brad Lander, Stephen Levin and Carlos Menchaca, Con Edison, Cultural Services of the French Embassy, Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, Kirby Family Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, NYC Department of Parks & Recreation, New York State Council on the Arts, The Québec Government Office in New York, St. Francis College, and NYU Tandon School of Engineering. The festival’s media sponsors are abc7NY, C-SPAN, Book TV and WNYC.
Cultural and programming partners include BAM, Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn Law School, Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Fiction, The Nation, National Book Foundation, New York Review of Books, NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Poetry Society of America, St. Francis College, The Times Literary Supplement, Whiting Foundation, and Windham Campbell Prizes.
Be sure to visit www.brooklynbookfestival.org or check out the official Facebook page, follow the Festival on Instagram (@bkbookfest), on Twitter (@BKBF), and past Festival photos on Flickr.
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Confirmed BKBF Authors as of June 13, 2018:
Héctor Abad
Arvin Ahmadi
Flora Alhn
Rumaan Alam
Melissa Albert
Kamal Al-Solaylee
Martin Amis
Rina Ayuyang
Bessora
Corey Brettschneider
Jamel Brinkley
Box Brown
Mahogany L. Browne
Melissa Broder
Kheryn Callender
Eddie Campbell
Pablo Cartaya
Soman Chainani
Dhonielle Clayton
Alexander Chee
Ricardo Cortés
Sayantani DasGupta
Debra Dean
Patrick DeWitt
Hernán Diaz
Marcia Douglas
Ame Dyckman
Jennifer Egan
Akwaeke Emezi
Eve L. Ewing
Tarfia Faizullah
Nuruddin Farah
Sara Farizan
Tim Fielder
Liana Finck
Sarah B. Franklin
Kelly Forsythe
Anand Giridharadas
Lorna Goodison
Chris Graberstein
Linda Greenhouse
Lisa Greenwald
Adele Griffin
Helon Habila
Pete Hamill
Vashti Harrison
Cig Harvey
Terrance Hayes
Tad Hills
Veera Hiranandani
Hermione Hoby
A.M. Homes
Sheena Howard
Blair Imani
Michael Imperioli
Justina Ireland
Uzodinma Iweala
N.K. Jemisin
Shelley Johannes
Chelsea Johnson
Maureen Johnson
Tayari Jones
Dan Kaufman
John Keene
Donika Kelly
Crystal Kim
Eric Klinenberg
Nicole Krauss
Amitava Kumar
Hari Kunzru
Michael Kupperman
R.O. Kwon
Khary Lazarre-White
Minh Lê
Laura Lippman
Malinda Lo
Jason Lutes
Carmen Maria Machado
Scott Magoon
Rebecca Makkai
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Shahriar Mandanipour
Lee Martin
Shane McCrae
Bernice McFadden
Terry McMillan
Meg Medina
Lynn Melnick
Maaza Mengiste
Léonora Miano
Dunya Mikhail
Wayétu Moore
Need Muhkerjee
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Audrey Niffenegger
Sara Nović
Sigrid Nunez
Joyce Carol Oates
Ondjaki
Joseph O’Neill
Tochi Onyebuchi
Kwanza Osajyefo
Gregory Pardlo
Lygia Day Peñaflor
Alexandra Penfold
LeUyen Pham
Helen Phillips
Ed Piskor
Alissa Quart
Calvin Reid
Raquel Salas Rivera
Rahna Reiko Rizzuto
Geoff Rodkey
Isabel Roxas
April Ryan
Anjali Sachdeva
Dan Santat
Jonathan Santlofer
Eli Saslow
Kate Schatz
Eliot Schrefer
Ira Shapiro
Nisha Sharma
Dan Sheehan
David Small
Katie Skelly
Laurel Snyder
Miriam Klein Stahl
David Ezra Stein
Story Pirates
Amber Tamblyn
Preti Taneja
Etan Thomas
Neal Thompson
Lynne Tillman
Peter Tomasi
Andrea Tsurumi
Dubravka Ugresic
Luis Alberto Urrea
Laura Van der Berg
Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
Jen Wang
Rowboat Watkins
Renée Watson
Sarah Weinman
Julia Wertz
Jamia Wilson
Simon Winchester
Ashley Woodfolk
Danny Wylde
Jenny Xie
Brigit Young
Dave Zirin
Leni Zumas
