FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
FRiday, September 21, 2018
Press Contacts:
Laura Dolan
Geto & de Milly, Inc.
ldolan@getodemilly.com
PHOTOS: 13th Annual Brooklyn Book Festival Offered Eight Days of Literary Delights Throughout the City
Tens of thousands of booklovers attended events in all five boroughs
BROOKYLN, NY—Friday, September 21, 2018—The Brooklyn Book Festival’s week-long celebration of authors, books and ideas drew tens of thousands of book lovers to events across the city from September 10th – 17th. On Saturday, September 15 and Sunday, September 16, readers young and old gathered at Children’s Day and Festival Day respectively to pursue their passion for books, shop at the festival’s Literary Marketplace with hundreds of publishers and booksellers, and listen to readings and talks by more than 300 authors from all over the world.
Click here for photos of 2018’s Brooklyn Book Festival
Bookend events took place in all five boroughs in theaters, bookstores, parks, libraries, restaurants and other venues. Literary highlights included the Poetry World Series New York emceed by the incomparable Mahogany L. Browne with poets Chen Chen, Tomás Q. Morín, Nicole Sealey, and Melissa Stein, who took turns batting at topics pitched to them by the audience; and the Literary Death Match Brooklyn with Jordan Klepper, Christine Nangle, Tayari Jones, Natalie Walker and Jenn Baker, joined by LDM creator Adrian Todd Zuniga. The week concluded with Carousel: Comics Performances featuring Ngozi Ukazu and hosted by R. Sikoryak and Jennifer Egan, whose Manhattan Beach was the city’s 2018 One Book, One New York winner. Poets Carmen Bardeguez-Brown (Puerto Rico), Asha Frank (Antigua & Barbuda) and novelist Tiphanie Yanique (Virgin Islands) gathered at the Bartow Community Center in the Bronx to reflect on the tremendous devastation of the 2017 hurricane season in the Caribbean and the road to recovery.
BKBF Children’s Day on September 15 celebrated childhood reading and featured events all day on the Picture Book Stage and Young Readers Stage in MetroTech Commons with kid favorites Soman Chainani (the School for Good and Evil series), Chris Grabenstein (the Wonderland series), Minh Lê and Dan Santat (Drawn Together), LeUyen Pham (Elephant & Piggie Like Reading!: The Itchy Book!), Jessica Love (Julian is a Mermaid) and awarding-winning author Gordon C. James (Crown: Ode to the Fresh Cut). Throughout the day families browsed booksellers in the Children’s Marketplace and enjoyed one-of-a-kind performances including the Story Pirates Greatest Hits Show with best-selling author Geoff Rodkey, and the Mexican music-vocal ensemble Grupo Cántaro performing Latin American songs from their musical picture book The Hummingbird Sings and Dances. Artist Ruth Chan (Georgie’s Best Bad Day) presided over the year’s most dynamic live-action drawing competition featuring illustrators Dan Santat (Drawn Together), LeUyen Pham (Elephant and Piggie Like Reading!: The Itchy Book), Scott Magoon (Misunderstood Shark), Drew Sheneman, Galia Bernstein (I Am a Cat), Katie Yamasaki (When the Cousins Came), and Mike Lowery (Mac Undercover).
Creative kids spent time at the ART SPOT where illustrators Ricardo Cortés (Sea Creatures from the Sky), Drew Sheneman (Don’t Eat That!) and Katie Yamasaki and made books with Esther K. Smith and Jane Sanders. Workshops engaging kids and parents alike included Drag Queen Storytime with Lola Lemon led by Mor Erich (The Dragtivity Book) of Sez Me, and Francie Latour and Ken Daley (Auntie Luce’s Talking Paintings) presented a workshop on Haiti and art.
Festival Day was filled with more than 90 discussions and workshops taking place on 13 stages throughout the day. Sold-out events included: The Writer in Our World with Joyce Carol Oates, Martin Amis and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o; Let’s Talk About Being Famous with Justine Bateman and Omar Epps; Modern Myths with Madeline Miller (Circe), Anjali Sachdeva (All the Names They Used For God) and Carmen Maria Machado (Her Body and Other Parties) moderated by Cristina Arreola of Bustle.
Many discussions centered on topical issues, including: The Art of the Accused co-presented by Times Literary Supplement, PEN America, and Artists At Risk (ARC) with Deborah Solomon, Maggie Mustard, A.O. Scott, and Tanya Selvaratnam, which asked the question “How do we reckon with the work of creatives throughout history with violent or contentious personal lives?” Linda Greenhouse (Just a Journalist: On the Press, Life, and the Spaces Between) joined Eli Saslow (Rising Out of Hatred) and award-winning journalist April Ryan (Under Fire) for War on Truth and Journalism, and “Activist Athletes” brought together Etan Thomas (We Matter), Dave Zirin (Things That Make White People Uncomfortable), and Olympian Ibtihaj Muhammad (Proud: My Fight For An Unlikely American Dream).
Click here for photos of 2018’s Brooklyn Book Festival
The International Stage welcomed Héctor Abad (The Farm), Preti Taneja (We That Are Young) and Perumal Murugan (One Part Woman) for Fragility of Families, a program moderated by Jeanne McCulloch (All Happy Families), and Rhythm and Spirits with Guadalupe Nettel (After the Winter), Marcia Douglas (The Marvellous Equations of the Dread) and Ondjaki (Transparent City) in a program moderated by Anderson Tepper.
Beloved authors Tayari Jones and Jennifer Egan discussed their books and inspirations with Lisa Lucas of the National Book Foundation. 2018 BoBi Honoree N.K. Jemisin drew capacity crowds for her conversation with science fiction writer P. Djèlí Clark, author of The Black God’s Drums, and to the Festival’s tribute to Ursula LeGuin with Jemisin, Maria Dahvana Headley and Helen Phillips. Writing After Loss, presented by the Center for Fiction, featured Joyce Carol Oates, Meghan O’Rourke and Jonathan Santlofer.
A new focus on food writing resulted in programs featuring Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and vegetarian and plant-based authors Lukas Volger and Tracye McQuirter, while NYT food writer Melissa Clark (Dinner in an Instant) and writer Samin Nosrat (Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking) discussed home cooking with Mayukh Sen. The day concluded with standing room only for Writing About Music and Self, moderated by Laura Sinagra Dolan, with Hanif Abdurraqib (They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us), Rob Sheffield (Dreaming the Beatles) and Jessica Hopper (Night Moves). The Joy of Poetry featured Fatimah Asghar, Mahogany L. Browne and Chen Chen. Comics programming included The Graphic City with Julia Wertz (Tenements, Towers & Trash), Peter J. Tomasi (The Bridge) and Jason Lutes (Berlin), moderated by Publishers Weekly senior news editor Calvin Reid. New Superstories provided a new outlook on superheroes with Ed Piskor (X-Men: Grand Design), Kwanza Osajyefo (Black) and Sheena Howard (Superb), moderated by artist-creator Dean Haspiel.
About the Brooklyn Book Festival
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, Disney, 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, Poetry Society of America, St. Francis College, The Times Literary Supplement, Whiting Foundation, and Windham-Campbell Prizes.
