There are so many excellent events and talks during Festival Day at Brooklyn Book Festival! It’s hard to choose what to do, since the schedule is so extensive – hopefully this handy guide to some of the people and what they’ll be talking about on Festival Day will help! In the interest of space, I had to leave off many promising talks, so browse the full event list for more options. You may have seen the post about Bookend Events last week – don’t forget that some of those are yet to come.
It will be a full day, but be sure to make time and stop by the WNBA-NYC chapter’s booth! We’ll be located at #345 – here’s a map to help.
10 AM
For yogis:
Poetry and yoga fused together
Speaker:
Dennis Nurkse –Love in the Last Days: After Tristan and Iseult
For resisters:
How to create change
Speakers:
Andrew Boyd – Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution
L.A. Kauffman – Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism
Linda Sarsour – contributor in What We Do Now: Standing Up for Your Values in Trump’s America
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor – From #Blacklivesmatter to Black Liberation
11 AM
For Brooklynites:
Brooklyn Book Fest honorees
Speakers:
Colson Whitehead – The Underground Railroad
Pete Hamill – A Drinking Life
Jacqueline Woodson – Another Brooklyn
Jonathan Lethem – A Gambler’s Anatomy
Greg Cowles – Editor at the New York Times Book Review (moderator)
For award followers:
Authors recognized by the National Book Awards
Speakers:
Laura Halse Anderson – Ashes
Ibram X. Kendi – Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Karan Mahajan – The Association of Small Bombs
Monica Youn – Blackacre
Lisa Lucas – Executive Director of the National Book Foundation (moderator)
12 PM
For young feminists:
Bold and brave girls in YA
Speakers:
Tracey Baptiste – Rise of the Jumbies
Meg Medina – Burn Baby Burn
Renée Watson – Piecing Me Together
Dhonielle Clayton – Tiny Pretty Things (moderator)
For historians:
Cultural and historical influences on narrative
Speakers:
Amelia Gray – Isadora
Kei Miller – Augustown
Madison Smartt Bell – Behind the Moon
Tiphanie Yanique – Wife (moderator)
1 PM
For sci-fic/fantasy fans:
Power in science fiction and fantasy
Speakers:
N.K. Jemisin –The Stone Sky
Eugene Lim –Dear Cyborgs
Malka Older –Null States
Deji Bryce Olukotun –After the Flare
Rosie Clarke – Literary critic (moderator)
For moralists:
Finding responsibility – or moral culpability – in crisis
Speakers:
Lidia Yuknavitch – The Book of Joan
Jonathan Safran Foer – Here I Am
Achy Obejas – The Tower of the Antilles
Michele Filgate – Contributing editor at Literary Hub (moderator)
2 PM
For lovers:
App intimacy
Speakers:
Courtney Maum – Touch
Weike Wang – Chemistry
Alissa Nutting – Made for Love
Tony Tulathimutte – Private Citizens (moderator)
For complicated families:
Families and betrayal
Speakers:
Joyce Carol Oates – A Book of American Martyrs
Lauren Sanders – The Book of Love and Hate
Karl Ove Knausgaard – Autumn
Mira Jacob – The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing (moderator)
2:30 PM
For WNBA members:
A reading from Under the Red Moon: A Chinese Family in Diaspora, by Amy S. Kwei (from the WNBA Boston chapter). This event is located at the Museum of Chinese in America, not at Brooklyn Book Festival’s Festival Day!
3 PM
For the trendy:
Five debut books selected by the Brooklyn Book Festival
Speakers:
Lara Elena Donnelly – Amberlough
Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes – The Sleeping World
Vanessa Hua – Deceit and Other Possibilities
Ian Bassingthwaighte – Live from Cairo
David S. Mitchell – We Hold These Truths
Claire Messud – The Burning Girl
3:30 PM
For writers:
Reaching your readers
Speakers:
Rich Kelley
Anne Kostick
Jennifer Maguire
Bridget Marmion
For more Brooklynites:
Pulitzer-prize winning native New Yorkers
Speakers:
Colson Whitehead – The Underground Railroad
Lynn Nottage – Sweat, Ruined (plays)
Johnny Temple = Publisher and editor-in-chief, Akashic Books.
4 PM
For the poetic:
Poems with performance aspects
Speakers:
Elizabeth Acevedo – Beastgirl & Other Origin Myths
Sam Sax – Madness
Aja Monet – My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter
Danez Smith – Don’t Call Us Dead
Tina Chang – Of Gods & Strangers (moderator)
For comic readers:
Challenges of moving to comics for prose writers
Speakers:
Victor LaValle – Destroyer
Gabby Rivera – America
Ben Percy – Green Arrow
Alitha E. Martinez – World of Wakanda, artist (moderator)
5 PM
For the zany:
Fiction reminiscent of David Lynch’s weird works
Speakers:
Alexandra Kleeman – Intimations
Mark Doten – The Infernal
Lincoln Michel – Upright Beasts
Jeremy M. Davies – The Knack of Doing (moderator)
For “adults”:
Memoir and autobiographical graphic novels on after becoming an adult
Speakers:
Iasmin Omar Ata – Mis(h)adra
Nicole J. Georges – Fetch
Kristen Radtke – Imagine Wanting Only This
Mira Jacob – The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing (moderator)
Have a great festival day!
