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Get Your Summer Reading (or Flirting) On With These 9 Book Talks

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No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America

(Image credit: Amazon)

Thursday, August 2 at the Brooklyn Historical Society, 6:30-8:00 p.m.

Darnell Moore, writer and leader in the Movement for Black Lives, brings what’s sure to be a riveting discussion of his new memoir No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America to the Brooklyn Historical Society. The description for his book on his website recounts how three neighborhood boys in Camden, New Jersey tried to set him on fire when he was only 14. In the three decades since that encounter, Moore has gone on to seek solace in the gay community of Philadelphia, justice on the front lines in Ferguson, Missouri, and life in his current home in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. In this book, he seeks to understand how that 14-year-old boy not only survived, but became the individual that he is today. Tickets to this event cost $5.

Books Beneath the Bridge: Greenlight Poetry Salon

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Four Readings: Margo Jefferson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Americans in Revolt

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TUESDAY

Photo © Michael Lionstar

Photo © Michael Lionstar

Margo Jefferson and Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah
August 23, 7pm at Strand Bookstore, 828 Broadway at 12th Street.
Margo Jefferson’s acclaimed memoir Negroland, which The New York Times called “powerful and complicated,” explores her upper middle class childhood growing up in the 1940s, 50s, and early 60s while deftly avoiding racial and socioeconomic landmines. She deftly describes the racial identity politics inherent in her community’s attempt to be considered the exception to how other blacks were viewed by the white elite of her Chicago milieu. In order to celebrate the release of the memoir’s paperback edition, Jefferson will be joined by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, a New York Times Magazine contributor and essayist whose writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The Believer, Bookforum, and more.

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Four Readings: Alt-Comedy Collective to Tear Up the Strand + Actor Winos, Winot?

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TUESDAY

(Photo: Courtesy of Hyperallergic)

(Photo: Courtesy of Hyperallergic)

Hyperallergic IRL 2
August 16, 7 pm at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, 

The super stylish Hyperallergic, the online magazine for all your arts-and-culture-related thinkpiece needs, will come to life tonight at Housing Works for the second time as three Hyperallergic writers (Seph Rodney, Claire Voon, and Carey Dunne), as well as three editors (Elisa Wouk Almino, Jillian Steinhauer, and Hrag Vartanian) read from some of their pieces and bring your favorite self-proclaimed “Art Blogazine” to the masses.

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Four Readings: Divine Microbial Power and Bad Women Mouthing Off

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TUESDAY

(Photo: Courtesy of Barnes and Noble)

(Photo: Courtesy of Barnes and Noble)

James Andrew Miller in Conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin and David O’Connor
August 9, 7 pm at Barnes and Noble-Union Square
With his new book Journalist James Andrew Miller, who also moonlights as a media consultant, delves into the world of the Creative Artists Agency, a secretive conglomerate which controls the vast majority of the entertainment industry, whether it be music, television, or films. In Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency, Miller explores the origins of the CAA and its rapid rise to power.

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4 Readings: Coming of Age in Turbulent Egypt, Sustainable Fashion, and Dogs

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(Photo: Courtesy of Greenlight Bookstore)

(Photo: Courtesy of Greenlight Bookstore)

TUESDAY

Nadja Spiegelman presents I’m Supposed to Protect You from All This in conversation with Molly Fischer
August 2, 7:30pm at Greenlight Bookstore, 686 Fulton Street at South Portland Ave, Brooklyn.
Nadja Spiegelman will be presenting her memoir I’m Supposed to Protect You from All This, which charts three generations of women in Spiegelman’s family and their struggles and perseverances, with the traumas experienced in a Nazi-occupied France constantly in the background. Speigelman is the daughter of Art Spiegelman, the cartoonist most known for his graphic novel series Maus. Spiegelman junior has also published graphic novels, although their audiences have been younger. Her first memoir explores the relationship between herself and her mother, The New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly, and in turn delves into Mouly’s own upbringing, and her complex relationship with her parents. Spiegelman will be joined in conversation with New York magazine’s Molly Fischer (from The Cut), and there will be a wine reception afterward to celebrate the launch.

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Four Readings: This Month’s Prose Bowl, Sarah Anderson’s Webcomics Come to Print, and a Road Trip Gone Wrong

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TUESDAY

(Photo: Courtesy of The Prose Bowl)

(Photo: Courtesy of The Prose Bowl)

The Prose Bowl XII
July 19, 6:30pm at Pete’s Candy Store, 709 Lorimer Street at Richardson Street, Williamsburg.
The Prose Bowl (billed as “one part literature, one part bloodsport, one part American Idol”) is a sort-of nerdy battle royale for writers to win fame, glory, recognition… or just a free drink. On the third Tuesday of each month, four writers compete to see who has the best short story. Since it’s an open-mic affair, the writers’s names are randomly picked from a hat beforehand and are then subjected to the scrutiny of a panel and the audience. Each story is about five minutes long, and can include poetry or prose. Then there’s the lightning round, where the panel picks two of the competing writers, who then have to come up with quick stories, after which a winner is selected. It’s rowdy, it’s fun, it’s often hilarious, and it’s during happy hour, if you need any other incentives.

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David Bowie Loved Stopping into Strand Bookstore, ‘Incognito and Alone’

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(Photo: Konstantin Sergeyev for NY Mag)

(Photo: Konstantin Sergeyev for NY Mag)

You may have seen David Bowie’s list of 100 favorite books floating around today. But where did he go to buy them? In 2003, he told New York magazine that our own Strand Bookstore was one of his three favorite places in New York, along with Washington Square Park and Julian Schnabel’s house. (He was also known to sneak into movies at Angelika.)

Today, Whitney Hu, marketing director at Strand, polled some of the store’s longtime employees and told us that Bowie, who usually shopped incognito and alone, “managed to evade most of them” except for owner Fred Bass, who at 87 still works the buying desk. Bass told her that Bowie “always came in for the trendier, contemporary information and also made his way, a lot of the times, to the art section,” she said. But Bowie hadn’t been seen at Strand since the early 2000s. “If he’s been in recently — in the last four or five years — he kind of slipped by everyone,” Hu said.

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Talks and Readings: Manspreading Maven, Fierce Fat Girls and More

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friday-night-lights-a-town-a-team-and-a-dream-b000p2xnl6-l-2TUESDAY
For those who only discovered (and promptly binge-watched) the show just a few years ago on Netflix, it’s a little weird to think the book that spawned Emmy-winning Friday Night Lights was actually first published in back in 1990. The classic account of the Permian Panthers follows the high school team’s 1988 season in Odessa, Texas. Says the blurb on Amazon: “Odessa is not known to be a town big on dreams, but the Panthers help keep the hopes and dreams of this small, dusty town going.” It’s good to know that the book is just as earnest as the show. Themes like racial and social divides in America’s small towns still hold up today, so snag a copy of the 25th anniversary edition (with updates on where the team members are now) and hear author Buzz Bissinger in conversation with the book’s editor, Jane Isay.
Tuesday, Sept. 8, at 7 p.m. Strand Book Store, 828 Broadway (Noho).
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Talks and Readings: Boy Cyclops, ‘Coolest Female Poet,’ and Rise of the Robots

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51NOCq7mErL._SX325_BO1,204,203,200_Tuesday

Rachel B. Glaser’s debut novel Paulina & Fran is celebrating its launch with readings from the author and special guests Leopoldine Core (Veronica Bench) and Mark Leidner (The Angel in The Dream of Our Hangover: Aphorisms). The novel is described as “a story of friendship, art, sex and curly hair.” It’s Glaser’s first full length work of fiction, but she’s already an accomplished writer with a published short story collection and book of poetry; her work has appeared in the anthologies 30 Under 30 and New American Stories, and Nylon has cited her as one of the “Coolest Female Poets to Know Right Now.” The conversation will be led by author Elisa Albert (After Birth).
Tuesday, Sept. 1, at 7 p.m. Housing Works Bookstore Café, 126 Crosby Street (Nolita).

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