Michael Imperioli presents The Perfume Burned His Eyes at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Location TBA. FRACTURED LIVES: The after-life is usually a term reserved for the deceased, but what about the life after you lose someone? Novels by Laura van den Berg (The Third Hotel), Michael Imperioli (The Perfume Burned His Eyes), and Sigrid Nunez (The Friend) […]
Ricardo Cortés presents Sea Creatures from the Sky at the Brooklyn Book Festival, Children’s Day. Full details TBA.
Race, Rock, and Appropriation: At the Grammys this year, Adele broke her trophy in half so that she could share it with Beyonce. A month later, Chuck Berry died and much of the media coverage looked at how admirers like the Rolling Stones made a fortune off his riffs. How has the discourse on music, […]
The Far Reaches of Empire: Religion, Rebels, and Railroads. From the Kenyan highlands to rural Madagascar and the far northeast of India, the European imperial project was extended in great part through missionary zeal, train lines, and terror. Peter Kimani (Dance of the Jakaranda), Naivo (Beyond the Rice Fields), and Avinuo Kire (The Power to […]
Where is Home: “Home” is an idea that invites many definitions and interpretations, but it is especially complex for immigrants and their children. Is home where one’s family is, or one’s family history? Or where their beliefs are accepted and embraced? Dina Nayeri (Refuge), Amani Al-Khatahtbeh (Muslim Girl), and Derek Palacio (The Mortifications) discuss how […]
Family Secrets: The common adage “blood is thicker than water” doesn’t guarantee that family members will always be faithful and truthful to one another. Compelling new work from Joyce Carol Oates (A Book of American Martyrs), Lauren Sanders (The Book of Love and Hate), and Karl Ove Knausgaard (Autumn) illustrates the pain and drama of […]
Killer Crime-Fiction: Crime-Fiction may inspire thoughts of a scandalous murder and a magnifying glass, but these novels are more nuanced, and related to the real world, than a simple detective hunting for clues. Joyce Carol Oates (A Book of American Martyrs), Nelson George (To Funk and Die in L.A.), and Ben H. Winters (Underground Airlines) […]
Personal Moral Culpability in Global Crises: Questions of what we can do and whether it is enough are constant in our country’s current state. Yet, we are not alone in searching for direction in the midst of a crisis, as Lidia Yuknavitch (The Book of Joan), Jonathan Safran Foer (Here I Am), and Achy Obejas […]
