The Greenlight Bookstore Podcast

S3, Ep. 17: Squawkin' Sports with Timothy Bella (April 20, 2023)

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 14:00:00 -0400

Created and hosted by writers Patrick Sauer and David J. Roth, Squawkin’ Sports is an ongoing series featuring book chats with grown-up authors writing about grown-ups playing kiddie games. For this installment, Sauer and Roth chat with staff writer and editor at The Washington Post, Timothy Bella, about his new book Barkley: A Biography. Informed by over 370 original interviews and painstaking research, Bella’s Barkley is the most comprehensive biography to date of one of the most talked-about icons in the world of sports. Library Journal calls it "The definitive account of Barkley’s life so far. Essential reading for all basketball fans." Bella, Sauer, and Roth joined virtually for our final event of 2022 in our beloved series on sports and the stories that make them so gloriously human. (Recorded December 8, 2022.)

S3, Ep. 16: Sarah Fawn Montgomery & James Tate Hill (April 13, 2023)

Thu, 13 Apr 2023 11:00:00 -0400

When she left a chaotic home at eighteen, author Sarah Fawn Montgomery chased restlessness, claiming places on the West Coast, Midwest, and East Coast, while determined never to settle. Now her family is ravaged by addiction, illness, and poverty; the country is increasingly divided; and the natural worlds in which she seeks solace are under siege by wildfire, tornadoes, and unrelenting storms. In her new book Halfway from Home, Montgomery turns to nostalgia as a way to grieve a rapidly-changing world, excavating the stories and scars we bury and unearthing literal and metaphorical childhood time capsules and treasures. Montgomery joined us virtually with James Tate Hill for a conversation exploring writing disability and ways to discover hope and healing amidst emotional and environmental collapse. (Recorded November 3, 2022.)

S3, Ep. 15: Ryan Lee Wong & Megha Majumdar (April 6, 2023)

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 11:00:00 -0400

How can we live with integrity and pleasure in this world of police brutality and racism? In author, activist, and our own Brooklyn neighbor Ryan Lee Wong's extraordinary debut novel, an Asian American activist is challenged by his mother to face this question amidst generational change, a mother’s secret, and an activist’s coming-of-age. As humorous as it is profound, Which Side Are You On is a celebration of seeking a life that is both virtuous and fun, an ode to mothering and being mothered. Greenlight welcomed Wong for an in-store reading and conversation with award-winning author of A Burning, Megha Majumdar. Despite some technical difficulties, this packed and proud event was still so preciously intimate. (Recorded October 12, 2022.)

S3, Ep. 14: Saeed Jones & Adam Falkner (March 30, 2023)

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 11:00:00 -0400

Greenlight was thrilled to welcome award-winning author and long-time friend of the store Saeed Jones back to our store to celebrate the release of his new poetry collection, Alive at the End of the World. In haunted poems glinting with laughter, pierced by grief and charged with history, Jones explores the public and private betrayals of life as we know it. Jones ushers his readers toward the realization that the end of the world is already here—and the apocalypse is a state of being. Joined by Adam Falkner, Saeed offers an oasis of communion, with the self and with one another, in this standing-room only event. (Recorded September 22, 2022.)

S3, Ep. 13: Chris Belcher & Chloé Cooper Jones (March 23, 2023)

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 11:00:00 -0400

In her utterly profound and thought-provoking debut memoir and companion to her viral 2018 Salon article “What a Dominatrix Knows about #MeToo,” writer, professor, and former sex worker Belcher retraces her journey from broke gender studies PhD student in Los Angeles who remakes herself as L.A.’s Renowned Lesbian Dominatrix, specializing in male clients who want a domme to make them feel worthless, shameful, and weak—all the abuse regularly heaped upon women for free. Belcher joined us for a celebration of this stunning feat of a memoir in-store with award-winning author of Easy Beauty Chloé Cooper Jones for a scintillating reading and a conversation upending our ideas about desire, class, and power. (Recorded July 20, 2022.)

S3, Ep. 12: Laura Silverman & Marisa Kanter (March 16, 2023)

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 11:00:00 -0400

Hannah used to be all about focus, back before she shattered her ankle and her Olympic dreams in one bad soccer play. These days, she’s all about distraction. Enter Bonanza, the local entertainment multiplex and site of Hanna’s summer employment. Under the neon lights of Bonanza--with flirty co-workers, ex-best friends, and her brother's hot best friend--Hannah must decide whether she can find a way to discover a new self in the midst of her old life. In this virtual event, Greenlight was delighted to once again host our Brooklyn neighbor and acclaimed YA author, Laura Silverman, in celebration of her new book, Those Summer Nights. Silverman was joined by friend and fellow author, Marisa Kanter (As If On Cue), for a rousing reading and conversation. (Recorded August 23, 2022.)

S3, Ep. 11: Larissa Pham & Sally Wen Mao (March 9, 2023)

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 10:00:00 -0500

Like a song that feels written just for you, Pham's debut work of nonfiction captures the imagination and refuses to let go. Pop Song is a book about love and about falling in love—with a place, or a painting, or a person—and the joy and terror inherent in the experience of that love. Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Electric Literature, and NPR, Pham's collection is "a warm and expansive portrait of a woman’s mind that feels at once singular and universal"(Buzzfeed). Pham joined us in person for the paperback release of Pop Song, in conversation with award-winning poet Sally Wen Mao (Oculus), where they extolled the virtues of documenting life. A probing conversation "balanced between, head, heart, and body" (-Jean, Greenlight event host). (Recorded June 30, 2022.)

S3, Ep. 10: Zakiya Dalila Harris & Andrea Bartz (January 26, 2022)

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 23:00:00 -0500

Greenlight welcomed Zakiya Dalila Harris in-person to our Fort Greene events stage to celebrate the paperback release of her New York Times-bestselling novel The Other Black Girl, a "dazzling, darkly humorous story" that explores the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing (Publishers Weekly, Starred Review). Acclaimed journalist and author Andrea Bartz joined Harris for a warm and witty conversation on the writing process, the strangeness and delight of going from being an editor among authors to an author among editors, and the complicated value of “frenemyship”. (Recorded June 13, 2022.)

S3, Ep. 9: Jessi Jezewska Stevens & Christian Lorentzen (January 19, 2022)

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 10:00:00 -0500

Jessi Jezewska Stevens graced our events stage to launch her brilliant new novel out from And Other Stories, one of the most forward-thinking independent publishers based in the UK. The Visitors is a mordantly funny tour through a world where not only civic infrastructure but our darkest desires (not to mention our novels) are vulnerable to malware; where mythical creatures talk like Don DeLillo; where love is little more than a blip in our metadata. Critic Christian Lorentzen joined Stevensen for an evening exploring How We Got Here and What We Do Next as we chart the last days of a broken status quo. (Recorded June 8, 2022.)

S3, Ep. 8: The Greenlight Poetry Salon: Renia White & Aracelis Girmay (January 12, 2022)

Thu, 12 Jan 2023 10:00:00 -0500

Created and hosted by poet and former Greenlight bookseller Angel Nafis, Greenlight’s Poetry Salon welcomes locally and nationally celebrated poets for a powerful and moving evening of poetry and performance. For our triumphant return to in-person Salons, we welcomed Renia White and her collection Casual Conversation, alongside esteemed poet Aracelis Girmay (The Black Maria), who selected it for BOA Editions's Blessing the Boats Selections. White’s debut poetry collection strikes up a conversation, considering what’s being said, what isn’t, and where it all comes from, probing the norms and mores of everyday interactions. Listen back to a reverent and joyful evening in verse, led in ceremony by our masterful host Nafis. (Recorded May 26, 2022.)

S3, Ep. 7: Geoff Dyer & Sam Lipsyte (October 27, 2022)

Thu, 27 Oct 2022 10:00:00 -0400

When artists and athletes age, what happens to their work? Does it ripen or rot? Achieve a new serenity or succumb to an escalating torment? Acclaimed author of Out of Sheer Rage and “one of our greatest living critics” (New York) Geoff Dyer considers these questions in his newest book, The Last Days of Roger Federer, an extended meditation on late style and last works. Joining us virtually in conversation with Sam Lipsyte, Dyer gave us the span of his study and delved into the heart of its questions—what would John Coltrane’s music have become if he hadn’t passed so suddenly? Beethoven’s, if he had retained his hearing? Is it better to peak and eke out into oblivion, or better to go out on a high note? (Recorded May 18, 2022.)

Kyung-Sook Shin & Anton Hur (October 13, 2022)

Thu, 13 Oct 2022 10:00:00 -0400

Greenlight welcomed celebrated Korean author and Man Asian Literary Prize winner Kyung-sook Shin (Please Look After Mom) and acclaimed translator Anton Hur, who called in live from Seoul, Korea to grace our virtual stage. Celebrating their joint achievement, Violets—written by Shin, translated by Hur, and published by Feminist Press—Hur both interviewed and translated for Ms. Shin, who led a contemplative, lyrical discussion regarding her process and aspirations for the book, traveling to farms in the middle of the night to get the smell of soil and flowers just right, and how “sadness becomes beauty the more you look at it, and beauty likewise becomes sadness the more you look at it.” (Recorded May 10, 2022.)

S3, Ep. 5: Alyssa Songsiridej & Julia Phillips

Thu, 29 Sep 2022 00:00:00 -0400

When the unnamed narrator of Alyssa Songsiridej’s debut novel Little Rabbit first meets a choreographer at an artists' residency in Maine, it's not a match. But when they run into each other a few months later, their encounter sets off a summer of expanding her own body's boundaries—her body learns to obediently follow his, and his desires quickly become inextricable from her pleasure. This must be happiness, right? Songsiridej sticks a singular landing with this exhilarating and deeply unflinching look at desire, creativity, ambition, sex, and power. Songsiridej joined us for the launch in conversation with acclaimed author Julia Phillips (Disappearing Earth), where they discussed questions of craft, the writing of sexuality, and the recentering of female lust and creative ambition. (Recorded May 5, 2022.)

S3, Ep. 4: Alejandro Varela & Rumaan Alam

Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 -0400

Greenlight welcomed author Alejandro Varela to celebrate his debut novel, The Town of Babylon--named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Buzzfeed, Lambda Literary, and more. Varela probes the intertwining of community and self and renders an intimate portrait of queer, racial, and class identity in this moving, politically engaged tale. Andrés, a gay, Latinx professor, returns to his suburban hometown to help his ailing father and ends up attending his 20 year high school reunion, which brings him back into contact with the many characters from his youth: his first love who is now married with children, his former best friend who is being institutionalized for mental illness, a man he thinks killed someone in high school in a homophobic rage who is now a minister, and more. In conversation with Rumaan Alam (Leave the World Behind), Varela discussed “public health fiction”, the distance between experience and fiction, the liberatory politics of queerness, and the basic desire to figure out “how one can stand to live in this world and enjoy it.” (Recorded May 4, 2022.)

S3, Ep. 3: The Octavia Project & N.K. Jemisin

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 11:00:00 -0400

As we continue to grapple with uncertainty in our world, how can writers and creators build community and make an imprint? Whose voices get heard and how can we use craft to shape a new blueprint for the future? MacArthur Fellow and author of The City We Became N. K. Jemisin joined us virtually for a night of discussion and community in support of The Octavia Project, which fosters spaces of imagination and exploration for NYC teens, using speculative fiction to envision new futures. In a lively conversation with next generation of writers from The Octavia Project, Jemisin discussed what it means to be a storyteller, the challenge of working on one’s craft as a marginalized person, and the importance and power of building community. (Recorded April 5, 2022.)

S3, Ep. 2: Roger Reeves & A. Van Jordan

Thu, 18 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0400

Acclaimed, Whiting Award-winning poet Roger Reeves probes the apocalypses and raptures of humanity—climate change, anti-Black racism, familial and erotic love, ecstasy and loss—in his second collection of poems, Best Barbarian. Roaming across the literary and social landscape, visiting with Beowulf’s Grendel and the jazz musician Alice Coltrane, reckoning with immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border and thinking through the fraught beauty of the moon on a summer night after the police have killed a Black man, Reeves’s formally elegant and daring poems ask urgently “Who has not been an entryway shuddering in the wind / Of another’s want, a rose nailed to some dark longing and bled?” Reeves joined us virtually in conversation with fellow poet and old friend A. Van Jordan (Rise) for a positively bibliographic conversation covering craft, grief, jazz, theory, and time as a structure—a visionary meeting of minds. (Recorded March 29, 2022.)

S3, Ep. 1: Elaine Hsieh Chou & Larissa Pham

Thu, 04 Aug 2022 10:00:00 -0400

The Greenlight Bookstore Podcast kicks off its third season—though we remain far from the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re out of quarantine! One of our first successes in this new age of author events was the standing-room-only launch for Elaine Hsieh Chou’s acclaimed debut, Disorientation—an uproarious and bighearted story of a Taiwanese American woman’s coming-of-consciousness that ignites chaos on a college campus. Chou was joined by author and critic Larissa Pham (Pop Song) for a sharp, searching, and sincere discussion of the politics of Asian-American solidarity and the perils of contemporary dating. Despite some technical difficulties, this golden conversation was a triumphant return to our beloved and well-missed in-store events programming—we're so glad to be back! (Recorded March 24, 2022.)

Ep. QS107: Yanyi & Sandra Lim

Thu, 21 Jul 2022 13:00:00 -0400

We bid farewell to our “Quarantine Season” of podcasts as we navigate our way back to in-person author events at Greenlight Bookstore! For our virtual season’s swan song, we reprise award-winning poet Yanyi’s virtual launch event for DREAM OF THE DIVIDED FIELD, a collection on heartbreak and transitions, written with a piercing lyric ferocity. How can we carry our homes with us? Informed by Yanyi’s experiences of immigration, violent heartbreak, and a bodily transition, these poems explore the contradictions that accompany shifts from one state of being to another. Acclaimed poet Sandra Lim (THE CURIOUS THING) joined Yanyi in a generous conversation that telescoped through questions of astrology, craft, the importance of journaling, and the chorus of influences that sing through one poet’s voice. (Recorded March 17, 2022.)

Ep. QS106: NoViolet Bulawayo & Novuyo Tshuma

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 14:00:00 -0400

In a virtual event co-presented with our friends at Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, MA, award-winning author NoViolet Bulawayo joined us to launch GLORY, her “manifoldly clever, brilliant... satire with sharper teeth” (The NYT Book Review). Inspired by the unexpected fall by coup in November 2017 of Robert G. Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president of nearly four decades, GLORY shows a country's imploding, narrated by a chorus of animal voices that unveil the ruthlessness required to uphold the illusion of absolute power and the imagination and bulletproof optimism to overthrow it completely. Bulawayo was joined by fellow acclaimed Zimbabwean author Novuyo Tshuma (House of Stone) for a reading and heartening discussion of the power of allegory, the importance of “reading dangerously”, and their vital belief that “a better Zimbabwe is possible”. (Recorded March 9, 2022.)

Ep. QS105: Rebecca Mead & Jia Tolentino (June 30, 2022)

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 12:00:00 -0400

Celebrated New Yorker staff writer and author Rebecca Mead joined us virtually from across the pond to discuss her topical new memoir, Home/Land--a moving reflection on the complicated nature of home and homeland, and the heartache and adventure of leaving an adopted country in order to return to your native land. In conversation with fellow New Yorker staff writer and author of Trick Mirror Jia Tolentino, Mead lead us through a reading focused on the architectural idea of “historical movement”--the sinking and cracking of buildings as a city ages—and a conversation that wound through the privilege and pitfalls of moving one's home and the relationship between geography and the character of places. (Recorded March 3, 2022)

Ep. QS104: Hawa Allan & Anjuli Raza Kolb (June 23, 2022)

Thu, 23 Jun 2022 16:00:00 -0400

Greenlight welcomed lawyer and critic Hawa Allan to discuss her prescient and timely debut book of nonfiction, Insurrection, a deeply researched and felt history and critique of the paradoxical state of black citizenship in the United States. Tracing the origins of the Insurrection Act of 1807 to our current moment, Allan reveals how the Act empowered the Federal Government to either defend or violate Black enfranchisement at various times throughout history. Throughout, she draws from her own experiences as one of the only Black girls in her leafy Long Island suburb, as a Black lawyer at a predominantly white firm during a visit from presidential candidate Barack Obama, and as a thinker about the use and misuse of appeals to law and order. Author Anjuli Raza Kolb joined Allan for a penetrating conversation on law, the control of history and cultural narratives, and the concept of citizenship as entitlement. (Recorded February 24, 2022)

Ep. QS103: Valerie Hsiung & Ginger Ko (June 16, 2022)

Thu, 16 Jun 2022 10:00:00 -0400

Acclaimed and prolific local poet Valerie Hsiung, whose work pushes past the limits of genre and grammar, joined us virtually to present her fourth full-length collection, winner of the Colorado State University Poetry Center’s 2019 Open Book Prize. An assemblage of verse, prose poems, scenes, and performance scores, outside voices, please lives in the hidden enmeshments between and underneath the individual stories, events, and facts of gendered and racialized violence, intergenerational trauma, diaspora, and the labor and exploitation involved in making art. Hsiung was joined by poet Ginger Ko for a moving conversation about solitude, belonging, and relating to language and art as “children of the diaspora.” (Recorded February 22, 2022)

Ep. QS102: Paul Tran & Yanyi (June 9, 2022)

Thu, 09 Jun 2022 16:00:00 -0400

Paul Tran joined us virtually from lush, violet-lit quarters in Oakland for the virtual launch of their scintillating debut collection of poems, All the Flowers Kneeling. In a conversation with award-winning poet and critic Yanyi that both dug deeply into craft and cast its sights on the farthest horizons of becoming, they delved into the work of transforming trauma into monuments that honor one’s past selves and forebears and how “the actualized poem requires the actualization of the poet.” (Recorded February 17, 2022)

Ep. QS101: Sarah Manguso & Elizabeth McCracken

Mon, 06 Jun 2022 15:00:00 -0400

Sarah Manguso--award-winning author and one of the most acclaimed and genre-defying prose stylists working today—joined us virtually for the launch of her debut novel. At once an ungilded portrait of girlhood at the crossroads of history and social class as well as a vital confrontation with an all-American whiteness where the ice of emotional restraint meets the embers of smoldering rage, Very Cold People is a haunted jewel of a novel. Manguso and author Elizabeth McCracken discussed the crafting (and misnaming) of fragments, turning to fiction from poetry, and the particular frigid weirdness of New England in the late 20th century. (Recorded February 16, 2022)

Ep. QS100: Marlon James + Isaac Fitzgerald (May 26, 2022)

Thu, 26 May 2022 10:00:00 -0400

For our one-hundredth(!) podcast episode, we’re releasing a very special conversation recorded at our first offsite book launch of 2022 celebrating the second volume of Moon Witch, Spider King, award-winning author Marlon James’s Dark Star trilogy, his “African Game of Thrones”. In the NYT-bestselling first volume, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Sogolon the Moon Witch proved a worthy adversary to Tracker as they clashed across a mythical African landscape in search of a mysterious boy who disappeared. Now, in Moon Witch, Spider King, James takes us deep into Sogolon’s world as she fights to tell her own story, the chronicle of an indomitable woman who bows to no man. In a brilliant, hilarious, and expansive conversation with beloved Brooklyn author and commentator Isaac Fitzgerald at St. Joseph’s College, James took us on an ecstatic odyssey through questions of power, personality, and whether truth is possible when the power of storytelling is available only to a select few. (Recorded February 15, 2022)

Ep. QS99: Andrew Lipstein + Cara Blue Adams (May 19, 2022)

Thu, 19 May 2022 09:00:00 -0400

For our first foray into livestreamed events and our first event held in-store since March 2020, Greenlight welcomed our Brooklyn neighbor Andrew Lipstein for the launch of his much-anticipated debut novel, Last Resort—which features a scene set in our own Fort Greene store! In a thrilling, metafictional story of fame, fortune, and impossible choices, Lipstein blurs the lines of fact and fiction and raises “thorny dilemmas about art, ethics, and what being a writer really means.” (Kirkus Reviews) Cara Blue Adams (You Never Get it Back) joined for a warm conversation and exploration of the writing process, the problem of authorial ego, and the art of grafting reality into fiction. (Recorded February 10, 2022)

Ep. QS98: Grace Lavery + Elif Batuman (May 12, 2022)

Thu, 12 May 2022 10:00:00 -0400

Greenlight welcomed author, scholar, and activist Grace Lavery to our (virtual) stage for the launch of Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis—a “memoir” like nothing you’ve ever read before. Part literary theory, part musical theater parody, part feminist sci-fi reboot, Please Miss was hailed by author Torrey Peters (Detransition, Baby) as a “can’t-look-away performance of wit, language, irreverence, and delight”, and by Carmen Maria Machado (In the Dream House) as “the queer memoir you’ve been waiting for; a dizzying mix of theory and pastiche, metafiction and memory… hilarious and sexy and terrifying in its brilliance.” In a scintillating conversation with Elif Batuman (The Idiot) that covered everything from finding one’s voice through the process of transitioning to gendered roots of the word memoir, Lavery graced us with her singular brilliance. (Recorded February 9, 2022)

Ep. QS97: Rachel Krantz + Jen Winston (May 5, 2022)

Thu, 05 May 2022 11:00:00 -0400

When Rachel Krantz met and fell for Adam, he told her that he was looking for a committed partnership—just one that did not include exclusivity. In her nonfiction debut, Open: An Uncensored Memoir of Love, Liberation, and Non-Monogamy, Krantz explores these questions with an unflinching eye and page-turning storytelling, tracing her search to understand what non-monogamy would do to her heart, her mind, and her life through interviews with scientists, psychologists, and people living and loving outside the mainstream. For the book’s virtual launch, Krantz joined us along with Jen Winston, author of Greedy, for a frank and heartfelt conversation on non-monogamy, bisexuality, “stigmatization, feeling too much yet not enough of an identity, and struggling through the accidental poetry of everyday life” (--K., Greenlight event host)--and a resounding reminder to write the book you need to write. (Recorded January 25, 2022)

Ep. QS96: Bernardine Evaristo + Rumaan Alam (April 27, 2022)

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 10:00:00 -0400

Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo (Girl, Woman, Other) graced our virtual stage from London for the U.S. launch of her new memoir Manifesto: On Never Giving Up. Manifesto offers readers an intimate and inspirational account of Evaristo’s life and career as she rebelled against the mainstream and fought bring her creative work into the world over 40+ years of centering the stories and histories of Black Britons. In conversation with bestselling author Rumaan Alam (Leave the World Behind), Evaristo discussed her theory of unstoppability, which helped her chart a path as a young actor and playwright in London, through her political awakenings and activism, and ultimately led to her fierce determination to tell stories that were absent in the literary world around her. (Recorded January 18, 2021)

Ep. QS95: Colette Brooks + Jennifer Egan (April 21, 2022)

Thu, 21 Apr 2022 10:00:00 -0400

Acclaimed authors, Greenlight neighbors, and longtime friends Colette Brooks and Jennifer Egan (Manhattan Beach) joined us for a virtual conversation and launch for Colette’s newest book of nonfiction, Trapped in the Present Tense. In a lyrical and inventive blend of history, memoir, and visual essays, Brooks explores the mechanics and malleability of the collective American memory. Revisiting some of the more forgotten aspects of recent events in the American story to explain our challenging and often puzzling present—including televised assassinations, the Doomsday Clock, and obsessive diarists—Brooks refreshes the American narrative and “ruminates upon the past while reframing…our present perceptions of what matters most” (Booklist). Brooks and Egan held court and eschewed reminiscence for a clear-eyed talk on craft and “irresponsible research” that kept a steady gaze on “American darkness writ large” (Recorded January 17, 2021)

Ep. QS94: Leanne Brown + Hawa Hassan (April 13, 2022)

Thu, 14 Apr 2022 10:00:00 -0400

Leanne Brown’s wildly popular and NYT bestselling cookbook Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4/Day showed us that kitchen skill and resourcefulness—not budget—are the keys to great food. Brown returned (virtually) to Greenlight for the launch of her new cookbook, Good Enough: A Cookbook: Embracing the Joys of Imperfection and Practicing Self-Care in the Kitchen. Good Enough champions a different yet complementary approach to food and cooking through the lens of self-care, mental health, and the embrace of imperfection—because who hasn’t eaten a handful of nuts over the sink and cold pizza for breakfast? In conversation with cookbook author, kitchen ingenue, and her real-life friend Hawa Hassan (In Bibi’s Kitchen), Brown held forth on community, the sea change in home cooking over the pandemic, and focusing less on the outcome than the experience of cooking. (Recorded January 13, 2022)

Ep. QS93: Cynthia Dewi Oka + Jenny Zhang (April 6, 2022)

Thu, 07 Apr 2022 11:00:00 -0400

For Greenlight’s first poetry event of 2022, we welcomed Indonesian American poet Cynthia Dewi Oka and acclaimed poet and fiction writer Jenny Zhang (Sour Heart) to share, discuss, and celebrate Oka’s third collection, Fire Is Not a Country. Oka’s poems track how the energies of migration, exploitation, patriarchal violation, and political repression shape and spar with familial love and obligation. Jenny read as well—sweet and cutting poems from her collection My Baby First Birthday—and together she and Oka waxed affectionately and probingly on the meanings of fire, “the little knives that we are made of,” and the connections between a country, the body, and “how okay we are supposed to be.” (Recorded January 11, 2022)

Ep. QS92: Leah Konen + Andrea Bartz (March 31, 2022)

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 11:00:00 -0400

Acclaimed YA author Leah Konen’s second novel for adults, The Perfect Escape, is a pacey, suspenseful, unforgettable thriller about a girls’ weekend in the Catskills turned deadly. For Greenlight’s first virtual author event of 2022, Konen joined us for a scintillating book launch and conversation with bestselling author and NYT journalist Andrea Bartz (We Were Never Here) that explored the craft of mystery, pregnancy and the writing process, and the question of writing mystery as a “plotter” or a (fly by the seat of your) “pantser”. (Recorded January 5, 2022)

Ep. QS91: Cara Blue Adams + Alexandra Kleeman (March 24, 2022)

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 11:00:00 -0400

In Greenlight’s longstanding tradition of celebrating the debuts of new literary voices, Cara Blue Adams graces our (virtual) stage to present her first story collection, You Never Get It Back—winner of the 2021 John Simmons Short Fiction Award. In these poised and perceptive linked stories set in rural New England and across the country—including Maine, Virginia, and New Mexico—the power of place shines through the journey of a young woman in search of vocation and belonging, grappling with social class and privilege, gender, ambition, violence, and the distance between longing and having. Acclaimed novelist Alexandra Kleeman (You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine) joined Adams for a warm and searching conversation that delved into questions of craft, writing from experience, and what it means to “come of age” for young women today. (Recorded December 13, 2021)

Ep. QS90: Amy Leach + Eula Biss (March 17, 2022)

Thu, 17 Mar 2022 11:00:00 -0400

Whiting Award-winning author Amy Leach graces Greenlight’s virtual stage to present The Everybody Ensemble, her newest collection of short, gloriously inventive essays that invite us to see and celebrate anew the “clattering, sometimes discordant but always welcoming chorus of glorious pandemonium” that is our world. In a discussion covering dragonflies, petunias, and encounters with beavers alongside questions of honesty and precision in writing and the comparative merits of research vs. experience, Leach and acclaimed author Eula Biss (Having and Being Had) concoct a potent and effervescent tonic for our times. (Recorded December 9, 2021)

Ep. QS89: Myisha Cherry + Jacqueline Woodson (March 10, 2022)

Thu, 10 Mar 2022 10:00:00 -0500

In The Case for Rage, philosopher Myisha Cherry turns popular prejudices about anger on their head and argues for anger’s utility—and importance—in the fight against injustice. Anger has a bad reputation; s a “negative emotion”, it’s seen by many as counterproductive, distracting, and destructive. But Cherry argues that in fact the transformative and liberatory power of anger—what she terms “Lordean rage”—is crucial to the anti-racist struggle and challenging the status quo. Cherry joined us virtually for a searching, mutually inspiring conversation with celebrated novelist Jacqueline Woodson (Red at the Bone) that paid homage to Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, and Ida B. Wells, and made a strong case not just for rage, but for the power of philosophy and asking critical questions. (Recorded December 6, 2021)

Ep. QS88: Grafton Tanner + Roisin Kiberd (March 3, 2022)

Thu, 03 Mar 2022 13:00:00 -0500

Nostalgia is the defining emotion of our age. Political leaders promise a return to yesteryear. Old movies are remade and cancelled series are rebooted. Veterans reenact past wars, while the displaced across the world long for home. But who is behind this collective ache for a home in the past? Grafton Tanner joins us (virtually) alongside Roisin Kiberd (The Disconnect) to present his newest book about nostalgia, that most ubiquitous and enigmatic of affects, in a conversation that traversed emotions, generations, and modern technology and featured a brief nod to the bygone “lumbersexual”. (Recorded November 10, 2021)

Ep. QS87: Donald Cohen with Joseph McCartin (February 24, 2022)

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 11:00:00 -0500

In the lengthening shadow of an exceptional year, Greenlight welcomed to its virtu Donald Cohen, founder and executive director of In the Public Interest, an Oakland-based national research and policy center that studies public goods and services, to discuss his new book co-authored with Allen Mikaelian, The Privatization of Everything. Hailed by Naomi Klein as “an essential read for those who want to fight the assault on public goods and the commons,” Cohen and Mikaelian discuss what happens when we subscribe to the theory that public power over essential public goods—such as clean water and air, education, public transportation, and the social safety net—is dangerous, and they lay out a road map for how to put power over public goods back in the hands of the people. Recorded December 1, 2021.

Ep. QS86: Diane Exavier with Carlos Sirah and Shayla Lawz, hosted by Angel Nafis (February 17, 2022)

Thu, 17 Feb 2022 11:00:00 -0500

For phenomenal local writer, theatermaker, and educator Diane Exavier’s début collection, The Math of Saint Felix, Greenlight’s own Poetry Salon host Angel Nafis held court with Exavier and fellow poets Carlos Sirah and Shayla Lawz for a powerful, multivocal evening of reading, reverie, and irreverence. Exavier's book-length lyric is an attempt to do the math of a woman, a family, a country, and a diaspora, plotting how the sum of one life reveals permutations of many— daughters, sisters, lovers—and the uncountable cost of a single death. Nafis, Lawz, Sirah, and Exavier held space for one another as well as the invisible multitudes living between their lines, delving into questions of “the math of survival”, of audience and witness, and the duty of the writer to witness and tend to their grief. Recorded November 29, 2021.

Ep. QS85: The Best American Poetry 2021 with Tracy K. Smith and David Lehman (February 10, 2022)

Thu, 10 Feb 2022 10:00:00 -0500

To commemorate the 2021 edition of the Best American Poetry anthology, Greenlight invited editor and former poet laureate Tracy K. Smith, series editor David Lehman, and contributing poets Chen Chen, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Nancy Miller Gomez, and Dora Malech for a reverent evening. Selected by Smith, this year’s exceptional collection explores and reckons with the difficult emotions exposed by a year of collective upheaval and incalculable loss in a panoply of themes, voices, and styles. We laughed, we mourned, we paged through eternities, we rode Tilt-A-Whirls, and we remembered the sense of connection and healing for which we return, year after changing year, to poetry. Recorded November 9, 2021.

Ep. QS84: Nelson Simon and Amy Eddings (February 3, 2022)

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 11:00:00 -0500

Celebrated local writer and performer Nelson Simon graced Greenlight's (virtual) stage to share his new book, Soul of the Hurricane, the unlikely and harrowing true account of his experience sailing into Hurricane Grace, the southern end of the “Perfect Storm.” It was October 1991, and Simon didn’t exactly want to sign up as a last-minute crew member transporting a Norwegian schooner from Brooklyn to Bermuda. But one thing led to another, and there he was. What began with an unexpected invitation and ended far from home in a dark, angry sea makes for an epic true story of grit and courage. Writer, journalist, and longtime All Things Considered contributor Amy Eddings joined Simon for a scintillating conversation on surviving near-death experiences and the power of storytelling. Recorded October 28, 2021.

Episode QS83: Uli Beutter Cohen, Glory Edim + Lupita Aquino (January 27, 2022)

Thu, 27 Jan 2022 10:00:00 -0500

For the better part of a decade, Uli Beutter Cohen rode the subway through New York City’s underground to observe society through the lens of our most creative thinkers: readers of books. Greenlight welcomed the acclaimed creator of Subway Book Review to our (virtual) stage to launch her new book Between the Lines, a timely collection of beloved and never-before-published stories that reflect who we are and where we are going in the form of over 170 interviews. In an ebullient, lively conversation with Glory Edim (Well-Read Black Girl) and Lupita Aquino (aka Lupita Reads), Beutter Cohen discussed the history of the Subway Book Review project, the power of community and its status in the book industry and in the age of social media, and the importance of the interview as an act of co-creation between interviewer and subject—a principle the three put into practice with aplomb! (Recorded October 20, 2021)

Episode QS82: Kelefa Sanneh + Zoe Chace (January 20, 2022)

Thu, 20 Jan 2022 10:00:00 -0500

New Yorker staff writer and acclaimed music journalist Kelefa Sanneh joined Greenlight virtually to launch Major Labels, his debut book of nonfiction and a deeply researched, expansive study of popular music over the past fifty years, refracted through the big genres that have defined and dominated it: rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance music, and pop. Interviewed by Zoe Chace of This American Life, Sanneh discussed the status, politics, and stakes of musical genres in an age replete with streaming and multimedia crossovers, “hipsterdom”, the influence of social media on music criticism, his “nostalgia for a time when people were less nostalgic,” and so much more. (Recorded October 19, 2021)

Episode QS81: Peter Staley + Ann Northrop (January 13, 2022)

Thu, 13 Jan 2022 10:00:00 -0500

In his memoir Never Silent, Peter Staley shares the untold story of his journey from closeted Wall Street bond trader to one of the leading AIDS and LGBTQ rights activists of his generation. Infusing personal chronicle with what Tony Kushner (Angels in America) praises as an “incisive, precise, and revelatory insider’s history of ACT UP” and “an electrifying primer for anyone who’s thinking/worrying/wondering about how to change/save the world,” Staley’s firsthand experience at the frontlines of AIDS activism generated a fascinating conversation full of insight and reminiscence with Ann Northrop, veteran journalist and fellow longtime ACT UP member. Staley and Northrop joined Greenlight virtually to discuss the trajectory of their activism, sex positivity and white privilege within the movement, and the present political climate concerning public health, and much more. (Recorded October 18, 2021)

Episode QS80: Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi + Eileen Myles (January 6, 2022)

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 10:00:00 -0500

PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of literati darlings Call Me Zebra and Fra Keeler took to Greenlight’s virtual stage to launch her third novel, Savage Tongues—a personal and political exploration of desire, power, domination, and human connection that’s equal parts Marguerite Duras and Shirley Jackson, Rachel Cusk and Clarice Lispector, tracing a young woman’s search for healing in the fall-out of an affair with a much older man. Joined by the inimitable poet Eileen Myles, Oloomi discussed the kaleidoscopic thinking propelling her book, the power of women’s retelling, the practice of transcribing life, and how life eludes transcription. (Recorded October 12, 2021)

Episode QS79: Caoilinn Hughes + Diane Cook (December 23, 2021)

Thu, 23 Dec 2021 08:00:00 -0500

Episode QS79: Caoilinn Hughes + Diane Cook (December 23, 2021)

(Recorded September 30, 2021)

Award-winning authors Caoilinn Hughes and Diane Cook took to the Greenlight virtual stage to discuss their recent novels, The Wild Laughter (winner of the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award 2021) and The New Wilderness (shortlisted for the 2020 Man Booker Prize). Along with exploring shared themes of legacy, climate change, “generational robbery”, and the ever-changing challenges of parenting, Hughes and Cook bantered spiritedly about the mystery & process of writing and pondered together the impulse to build new worlds in fiction—to look elsewhere—in order to tell the stories we need to tell.

Episode QS78: Mina Stone + Urs Fischer (December 16, 2021)

Thu, 16 Dec 2021 10:00:00 -0500

Mina Stone, author of the cult-favorite Cooking for Artists, joined Greenlight (virtually!) to launch her stunning new cookbook, Lemon, Love & Olive Oil—featuring 80 Mediterranean-style recipes rooted in the traditions passed to her by preceding generations. Stone learned to cook from her Yiayia, who taught her that food doesn’t have to be complicated to be delicious—and that almost any dish can be improved with judicious amounts of lemon, olive oil, and salt. Stone’s friend, collaborator, and world-renowned artist Urs Fischer joined her for a charming conversation on the ways in which food and cooking touches off from our lives, families, and creative urges—and the secret importance of knowing how to make an ice cream cake! (Recorded September 14, 2021)

Episode QS77: Qian Julie Wang + Charles Yu (December 9, 2021)

Thu, 09 Dec 2021 10:00:00 -0500

In a heartrending and deeply moving evening, two Asian-American literary luminaries, Qian Julie Wang and Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown) welcomed Wang’s incandescent debut, Beautiful Country--an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light. Wang and Yu discussed the emotional journey that led her to write this searing memoir and the hard-won process by which she realized it; the transformative powers of education, therapy, and the affection of animals; and the complex, fierce resilience of immigrant parents. A conversation—and book—not to be missed! (Recorded September 13, 2021)

Episode QS76: Jai Chakrabarti + Brigid Hughes (December 2, 2021)

Thu, 02 Dec 2021 10:00:00 -0500

Jai Chakrabarti graced our virtual stage to launch his debut novel, A Play for the End of the World--an unforgettable love story set in early 1970's New York and rural India, a provocative exploration of the role of art in times of political upheaval, and a deeply moving reminder of the power of the past to shape the present. Chakrabarti, joined in conversation by Brigid Hughes of A Public Space (where he was previously a writing fellow!), discussed the entwining of place and personhood, how one moves and exists in the city versus in the country, and the differences between who we are in moments of turmoil and in moments of abundance. (Recorded September 8, 2021)

Episode QS75: Yiyun Li + Alexandra Schwartz (November 25, 2021)

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 16:00:00 -0500

When acclaimed author Yiyun Li and A Public Space magaine invited people to read War and Peace together at the start of the pandemic, thousands around the globe joined for an 85-day journey through Tolstoy’s epic novel. Tolstoy Together, based on this experiment, is a book about the art of reading and an invitation to the collective act of book discussion, with contributions from fellow readers and such writers as Tom Drury, Garth Greenwell, Elliott Holt, Sara Majka, and many others. In a conversation moderated by A Public Space editor Brigid Hughes, Yiyun Li and Alexandra Schwartz spoke before a robust (remote) audience of the comfort of connecting with others during lockdown, resonances between Tolstoy’s novel and the present, and the evergreen argument for the power of communal reading. (Recorded August 31, 2021)

Episode QS74: Eyal Press + E. Tammy Kim (November 18, 2021)

Thu, 18 Nov 2021 10:00:00 -0500

Award-winning journalist Eyal Press joined Greenlight to present his groundbreaking, urgent book Dirty Work, which illuminates the moving, sometimes harrowing stories of the people doing the work that society considers essential but morally compromised. Urging us to think about both secrecy and apathy as enabling injustice, Dirty Work reveals fundamental truths about the moral dimensions of work and the hidden costs of inequality in America. In a heavy-hitting, incisive conversation with E. Tammy Kim, New York Times contributor and co-host of the podcast Time to Say Goodbye, Press explored the complexity of activism against structures of power and complicity that shape the lives of “essential workers” who perform the “dirty work” that upholds the current social order. (Recorded August 17, 2021)

Episode QS73: Nadia Owusu + Tope Folarin (November 11, 2021)

Thu, 11 Nov 2021 10:00:00 -0500

What does it mean to write a narrative of yourself? Whiting award winner Nadia Owusu joined Greenlight to launch the paperback edition of Aftershocks, her debut book and a deeply felt memoir about belonging, the seismic emotional toll of family secrets, and the heart it takes to pull oneself out of the wreckage. Tope Folarin (A Particular Kind of Black Man) engaged Owusu in a thoughtful discussion about the connections between their work and writing from the real versus the imposed sense of self. (Recorded August 9, 2021)

Episode QS72: Deborah Copaken + Tad Friend (November 4, 2021)

Thu, 04 Nov 2021 10:00:00 -0400

Bestselling authors Deborah Copaken and New Yorker staff writer Tad Friend (also Copaken’s actual friend!) graced Greenlight’s virtual stage for the launch of Copaken’s new memoir, Ladyparts. An inventory of both the female body and the body politic of womanhood in America, Ladyparts moves body part by body part and confronts divorce, single motherhood, the steep price of childcare, shady landlords, the death of Copaken’s father, sexism, ageism, and moore. In a frank and personal conversation, Copaken unraveled the challenges of being a woman in America—and specifically, in the American healthcare system. (Recorded August 2, 2021)

Episode QS71: Geoff Manaugh + Nicola Twilley + Mary Roach (October 28, 2021)

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 10:00:00 -0400

On the heels of an unprecedented, unforgettable year of quarantine, Geoff Manaugh (A Burglar’s Guide to the City) and science journalist Nicola Twilley launched their new book, Until Proven Safe. Tracing the history and future of quarantine around the globe, Manaugh and Twilley unfold the connections between emergency isolation and freedom, governance, and mutual responsibility. Mary Roach (Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law) joined for a conversation that roamed through space pathogens, the problem of nuclear waste, and the difference between isolation and quarantine. (Recorded July 20, 2021)

Episode QS70: Katie Kitamura + Raven Leilani

Fri, 22 Oct 2021 13:00:00 -0400

Katie Kitamura, acclaimed author of A Separation and Greenlight neighbor, joined us virtually to launch her electrifying new novel. In Intimacies, an interpreter and woman of many languages and identities relocates to The Hague in search of a sense of home and finds herself drawn into simmering dramas of violence, political controversy, betrayal, and heartbreak. Raven Leilani (Luster)--Kitamura’s former student!--joined for a brilliant conversation about uncertainty, the residues of translation, and the mystical experience of writing as something “received”. (Recorded July 20, 2021)

Episode QS69: Joshua Henkin + Julie Orringer (September 30, 2021)

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 11:00:00 -0400

Award-winning author Joshua Henkin graces the virtual Greenlight stage to share from his sweeping new novel Morningside Heights, “a richly textured family portrait” (Wall Street Journal) about a marriage enduring hardship, cognitive decline, estrangement, and reconnection. Julie Orringer (The Invisible Bridge) engages Henkin in a conversation that delves deeply into questions of form, revision, and “killing your darlings” as a writer—one audience member describes the evening as a “mini-master class in craft.” (Recorded June 15, 2021)

Episode QS68: Kiese Laymon + Robert Jones, Jr. (September 23, 2021)

Thu, 23 Sep 2021 11:00:00 -0400

Critically acclaimed author Kiese Laymon and Robert Jones Jr. (The Prophets) discuss and celebrate the newly revised and reissued Long Division, Laymon’s 2013 debut novel. Described by the New York Times as “a time-traveling metafictional romp set in Mississippi that probes fame, creativity and the toll of racism,” Long Division upends conventions of narrative time, genre, and the expectations and assumptions mantled on Black characters by what Laymon and Jones identify as a a culture “trying to get us to write ourselves out of existence.” Their brilliant conversation reflects upon and contributes to a watershed moment in literature by Black authors. (Recorded June 7, 2021)

Episode QS67: Zakiya Dalila Harris + Brit Bennett (September 16, 2021)

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 10:00:00 -0400

Author Zakiya Dalila Harris alights at Greenlight to launch her debut novel The Other Black Girl, a whip-smart thriller and crackling social commentary on the trials of being a Black woman in an overwhelmingly white industry. Harris talks with Brit Bennett (bestselling author of The Mothers and The Vanishing Half) about navigating the whiteness of the publishing industry, crafting manifold timelines and perspectives, the real-life experiences that inform the story, and Bennett’s and Harris’s shared hopes and concerns regarding the future of recent movements in anti-racism and diversity. (Recorded June 1, 2021)

Episode QS66: Michael Koresky + Mark Harris (September 9, 2021)

Thu, 09 Sep 2021 10:00:00 -0400

In his new book Films of Endearment, filmmaker and critic Michael Koresky revisits the important and popular female-driven films of the 1980s he grew up watching with his mother—9 to 5, Terms of Endearment, The Color Purple, and Aliens, to name a few—to trace out a poignant personal history of family, grief, and resilience. Mark Harris (Pictures at a Revolution) joined Koresky at Greenlight for a conversation that spanned women in film, queerness, the art of criticism, and the enigma of how we form our tastes and identities in relation to the characters we love on- and offscreen. (Recorded May 18, 2021)

Episode QS65: Maggie Shipstead + Brandon Taylor (September 2, 2021)

Thu, 02 Sep 2021 10:00:00 -0400

Author Brandon Taylor interviews fellow novelist and travel writer Maggie Shipstead about her epic novel Great Circle, a world-spanning tale of women “navigating the ice floes of patriarchy.” From evolving ways of defining (or not defining) gender through the past two centuries, to Hollywood gossip and the perennial challenge of writing reprehensible characters, the conversation spans the dark and light of Shipstead’s multifaceted 600-page novel (including fan demands for the extended director’s cut!) (Recorded May 17, 2021)

Episode QS64: Joan Silber + Margot Livesey (August 26, 2021)

Thu, 26 Aug 2021 10:00:00 -0400

This virtual launch event for Joan Silber’s newest novel Secrets of Happiness drew a passionate crowd for her conversation with fellow novelist Margot Livesey about themes of money, love, travel, and spirituality. Livesey and Silber talked about her desire to write “big and small at the same time” with closely observed interiority but wide scope in time and space, and how her works exist on a spectrum between novels and short stories, as well as literary influences and current favorites. (Recorded May 3, 2021)

Episode QS63: Stephanie Danler + Emma Roberts & Karah Preiss (August 19, 2021)

Thu, 19 Aug 2021 11:00:00 -0400

Bestselling memoirist Stephanie Danler celebrates the paperback release of her most recent work Stray with author Kara Preiss and actor Emma Roberts, co-founders of the literary website Belletrist. The trio talk about writing as a way to survive a troubled home life, the challenges, regrets, and requirements of memoir, and the fascinating taboos around money for artists and writers. (Recorded April 29, 2021)

Episode QS62: Adam Mansbach + Saeed Jones (August 12, 2021)

Fri, 13 Aug 2021 16:00:00 -0400

Adam Mansbach, best known as creator of the parodic children’s book Go the F*ck to Sleep as well as several award-winning novels, opens up about his memoir of his brother’s suicide I Had a Brother Once in conversation with poet and memoirist Saeed Jones. Their moving and vulnerable conversation circles around the ways that grief runs up against cliches, taboos, and limted expressions of masculinity, and ways of grappling with it through poetry and paradox. (Recorded April 15, 2021)

Episode QS61: J. Nicole Jones + Allie Rowbottom (August 5, 2021)

Thu, 05 Aug 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Greenlight neighbor J. Nicole Jones discusses Low Country, her new memoir of her South Carolina family, with Allie Rowbottom, Allie Rowbottom (author of the memoir Jell-O Girls). The two talk about the writing process, the book's grounding in Southern storytelling traditions, and the act of reclaiming stories through the retelling, especially for women. (Recorded April 14, 2021)

Episode QS60: Michaela Carter + Kate Christensen (July 29, 2021)

Thu, 29 Jul 2021 10:00:00 -0400

Author (and indie bookstore owner!) Michaela Carter discusses her new book Leonora in the Morning Light, a novel of the real-life Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, with fellow author Kate Christensen (The Great Man). The two novelists discuss the intersections of painting and writing, women artists as muses for each other, madness and dreams, and their shared love of writing about food. (Recorded April 12, 2021)

Episode QS59: Rachel Kushner + Hari Kunzru (July 22, 2021)

Thu, 22 Jul 2021 14:00:00 -0400

National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award and Man Booker finalist Rachel Kushner discusses her new collection of nonfiction, The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020, with fellow author Hari Kunzru (author of Red Pill and White Tears). The two authors discuss self-examination vs. self-mythologizing in writing about one's own life, writing about other people without making them into "nostalgic baubles", and the many life experiences, inspirations, and artistic points of reference that informed this collection. (Recorded April 8, 2021)

Episode QS58: Sanjena Sathian + Andrew Ridker (July 15, 2021)

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 14:00:00 -0400

Andrew Ridker (author of The Altruists) interviews his longtime friend Sanjena Sathian about her epic debut novel Gold Diggers, an Indian American family story with a magical twist. Their conversation encompasses alchemy, the real and metaphorical meanings of gold, the Desi community in Atlanta, various writing workshop experiences, and bucking the trope of the model minority through writing flawed, human characters. (Recorded April 7, 2021)

Episode QS57: Edward Hirsch + Victoria Change & Vijay Seshradi (July 8, 2021)

Thu, 08 Jul 2021 13:00:00 -0400

Poets Victoria Chang and Vijay Seshradi join poet and editor Edward Hirsch to celebrate the publication of the anthology 100 Poems to Break Your Heart. Hirsch, whose exploratory essays accompany each poem in the book, discusses the craft of writing about grief, and each poet reads a poem (Stanley Kunitz's "Halley's Comet, Chang's "Blue Dress", and Seshadri's "Aphasia"), discussing the work of each piece in transforming overwhelming emotion into art. (Recorded April 5, 2021)

Episode QS56: Dawnie Walton + Kiley Reid (July 1, 2021)

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 12:00:00 -0400

Dawnie Walton launches her debut novel, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, a fictional oral history of a 1970s rock ’n’ roll duo, in conversation with fellow author Kiley Reid (author of Such a Fun Age). The two women talk about the challenges of writing about music and juggling multiple voices, their overlapping experiences with the Iowa Writers Workshop, and creating characters they wished existed in reality. (Recorded March 30, 2021)

Episode QS55: Craig Taylor + New York City actors (June 24,2021)

Thu, 24 Jun 2021 14:00:00 -0400

Craig Taylor's new book New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time comes to life with local actors portraying some of the 75 fascinating city residents featured in the book! Taylor introduces readings by Craig Geraghty, Maggie Hoffman, Aaron Landsman, Hubert Point-Du Jour, Scott Shepherd, Erika Chong Shuch, Jahmorei Snipes, and Ben Williams, for a love letter to a city and the NYC theater community. (Recorded March 23, 2021)

Episode QS54: Katie Engelhart + Larissa MacFarquhar (June 17, 2021)

Thu, 17 Jun 2021 14:00:00 -0400

Content warning: This episode discusses suicide and death. Reporter Katie Engelhart discusses her compassionate and thoughtful new book The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die with author Larissa MacFarquhar (author of Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help). Their discussion eschews judgement while conveying all sides of the assisted suicide movement, including the state of healthcare in the US, disability rights, mental disorders, and dementia, as well as the journalistic ethics of writing about death and dying. (Recorded March 15, 2021)

Episode QS53: Hala Alyan + Rumaan Alam (June 10, 2021)

Thu, 10 Jun 2021 12:00:00 -0400

Greenlight neighbor Rumaan Alam (Leave the World Behind) talks with returning favorite Hala Alyan about her new novel The Arsonist's City, a rich family story which is also a love letter to Beirut. The two writers discuss the challenges of writing in the pandemic and their own writing routines as well as the differences between writing prose and poetry, while exploring how the book portrays Arab women, cities, and sexuality in fresh ways. (Recorded March 9, 2021)

Episode QS52: Carol Edgarian + Jennifer Egan (June 3, 2021)

Thu, 03 Jun 2021 14:00:00 -0400

Greenlight neighbor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan interviews bestselling author Carol Edgarian about her cinematic and adventurous novel Vera, set during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Their conversation delves into the history of the event and the parallels of a society teetering on disaster and fraught with political corruption, and the possibilities of fiction to explore -- and extrapolate from -- real life. (Recorded March 8, 2021)

Episode QS51: Naima Coster + Elizabeth Acevedo (May 27, 2021)

Thu, 27 May 2021 12:00:00 -0400

Duende District bookstore owner Angela Spring is the guest host for this special event with Naima Coster presenting her new book What’s Mine and Yours in conversation with National Book Award winning author Elizabeth Acevedo. The participants' mutual admiration is evident in their warm and brilliant craft- and character-driven discussion about the novel, a sweeping story of legacy, identity, the American family, and the ways that race affects even our most intimate relationships. (Recorded March 4, 2021)

Episode QS50: Hermione Lee + Tom Stoppard (May 20, 2021)

Thu, 20 May 2021 12:00:00 -0400

To celebrate the launch of her highly anticipated biography Tom Stoppard: A Life, venerated biographer Hermione Lee interviews Stoppard himself in an affectionate and witty accompaniment to the book. The biographer and the playwright -- both knighted by the British crown -- talk through Stoppard's life from his childhood in Darjeeling, his experiences in the New York and London theatre worlds, and his most recent play Leopoldstadt, which delves into his own Jewish European heritage in new ways. Their rich and multi-faceted conversation also addresses the relationship between biographer and subject, and the ways in which we act or inhabit our own lives. (Recorded February 24, 2021)

Episode QS49: Priyanka Champaneri + Grace Talusan (May 13, 2021)

Thu, 13 May 2021 10:00:00 -0400

Priyanka Champaneri presents her new book The City of Good Death, winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, in conversation with a past winner of the prize, Grace Talusan. In their discussion of Priyanka's novel set in Varanasi, India, a tale full of memory, ritual, and the uncanny, the two authors talk about personal and cultural superstitions and the obligations and rewards of fiction. (Recorded February 23, 2021)

Episode QS48: Marie Arnold + Zoraida Cordova (May 6, 2021)

Thu, 06 May 2021 11:00:00 -0400

Marie Arnold talks with award-winning middle grade author Zoraida Córdova about Arnold's debut middle grade novel, The Year I Flew Away. The book’s main character makes a deal with a witch to be popular and "American", and Marie and Zoraida's hilarious and moving discussion encompasses Haitian and Ecuadorian magic traditions, the challenges of depicting the experience of immigration, and the American foods of the authors’ 1990s childhoods in Brooklyn and Queens. (Recorded February 9, 2021)

Episode QS47: Ben Okri + Porochista Khakpour (April 29, 2021)

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 12:00:00 -0400

Booker Prize-winning author Ben Okri launches his timely new collection of stories, Prayer for the Living, in conversation with novelist and essayist Porochista Khakpour. Their passionate and poetic conversation touches on the spiritual, political, aesthetic and emotional aspects of writing fiction, and in particular the tension for non-white writers between the freedom to write about universal human ideas and the demand that they represent their specific cultural context. Their conversation unveils the power and necessity of storytelling in our time; as Okri says, "We as the human race are in the Last Chance Saloon of our great narrative... we're holding the bowl of the future in our hands and it's very, very fragile." (Recorded February 4, 2021)

Episode QS46: Clover Hope & Rachelle Baker + Briana Younger (April 22, 2021)

Thu, 22 Apr 2021 14:00:00 -0400

Journalist Clover Hope talks about the women who have shaped the music, power, and reach of rap in her new book, The Motherlode: 100+ Women Who Made Hip Hop, along with the book's illustrator Rachelle Baker and critic Briana Younger. Hope and Baker talk about the choices they made in representing the style, humor, agency, and influence of women rappers across the US, the progress in recognition for female artists, and what is still to be learned -- and unlearned -- in representation. (Recorded February 3, 2021)

Episode QS45: Gabrielle Korn + Whembley Sewell (April 8, 2021)

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 13:00:00 -0400

Gabrielle Korn, former editor-in-chief of Nylon, discusses her new essay collection Everybody (Else) Is Perfect: How I Survived Hypocrisy, Beauty, Clicks, and Likes with Whembley Sewell, editor-in-chief of Them. Along with discussions of editor vs. writer mindsets and the taboos around discussing money, especially for women, their conversation focuses on the queer elements of the book: the many moments of coming out, visibility and tokenism in the workplace and in the media landscape, and the necessity of self-affirmation. (Recorded January 27, 2021)

Episode QS44: Mahogany L. Browne + Renee Watson & Ellen Hagan (April 1, 2021)

Thu, 01 Apr 2021 15:00:00 -0400

Acclaimed YA authors Renee Watson and Ellen Hagan open for poet and Greenlight neighbor Mahogany L. Browne as she launches debut YA book, Chlorine Sky! Hagan reads from her forthcoming Reckless, Glorious Girl and Watson reads from her forthcoming Love is a Revolution to set the stage for Browne's reading from Chlorine Sky. All three authors then come together to talk about the power of friendship (as young girls the age of their books' protagonists, and as adult writers); flexing the different writing muscles of YA narrative and verse; and celebrating the ordinary beauties of girlhood and Blackness. (Recorded January 25, 2021)

Episode QS43: Janice Nimura + Emily Silverman (March 25, 2021)

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 12:00:00 -0400

Author and historian Janice P. Nimura launches her new book, The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women—and Women to Medicine, in conversation with Emily Silverman of The Nocturnists. Nimura contextualizes the often simplified story of Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell (among the first women in the U.S. to earn medical degrees and the founders of the first hospital staffed by women), and discusses the sisters' astonishing trailblazing, their complicated relationship with feminism, and their differences from one another. (Recorded January 19, 2021)

Episode QS42: Min Jin Lee + Jennifer Buehler (March 18, 2021)

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 11:00:00 -0400

Novelist Min Jin Lee and scholar Jennifer Buehler, who both contributed writing to the new Penguin Classics edition of The Great Gatsby, explore Fitzgerald's iconic American novel on the occasion of the publication of the new edition. Lee and Buehler discuss how their experience of Gatsby has evolved over time, the novel's deep-seated ethics and relation to American capitalism, queer readings of the text, and how the novel can give students permission to talk about race and sexuality in classroom discussions. (Recorded January 14, 2021)

Episode QS41: Daniel Loedel + Phil Klay (March 11, 2021)

Thu, 11 Mar 2021 14:00:00 -0500

Bloomsbury editor Daniel Loedel launches his debut novel Hades, Argentina with a resonant conversation with National Book Award-winning novelist Phil Klay. Set during Argentina's Dirty War and partially based on Loedel's family history, the book serves as a starting place for conversation about the ethics of representing traumatic historical events in writing, how morally ambiguous characters challenge and unsettle our view of the world, and love in times of war. (Recorded January 13, 2021)

Episode QS40: Dale Maharidge + Sarah Smarsh (March 4, 2021)

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 13:00:00 -0500

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dale Maharidge talks with friend and fellow journalist Sarah Smarsh about his new book Fucked at Birth: Recalibrating the American Dream for the 2020s. Maharidge has written about the American working class for decades, and the conversation ranges from the 1960s to the present exploring the intersections of poverty, technology, gender, and American self-image, including both raw first-hand experience and informed analysis in a bleak picture that yet offers a glimmer of hope. (Recorded January 12, 2021)

Episode QS39: Robert Jones, Jr. + Kiese Laymon (February 25,2021)

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 12:00:00 -0500

In this rich and powerful conversation, Robert Jones (creator of Son of Baldwin) launches his highly anticipated novel The Prophets in conversation with his friend and mentor Kiese Laymon. Jones addresses the necessity of depicting physical love in his story of black queer love in the era of slavery, the fierce brilliance of black women including the authors that influenced Jones, thoughts on the publishing process, and the “love and anger” he hopes that readers take from this novel, in a discussion charged with grief, joy, and mutual admiration. (Recorded January 5, 2021)

Episode QS38: Charles Yu + Charlie Jane Anders (February 18, 2021)

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 12:00:00 -0500

Award-winning novelist Charles Yu is joined by his friend, sci fi and fantasy author Charlie Jane Anders, to discuss Yu's novel Interior Chinatown, newly published in paperback and awarded the National Book Award just two weeks before this discussion! Their conversation touches on metafiction, working in TV, satire in 2020, subjectivity (especially for those who aren't often granted it), being a protagonist vs. being a narrator, and being the only Asian American in the room, and includes a brilliant image of the artist as musician: "the instrument you play makes a sound that only you can make." (Recorded December 1, 2020)

Episode QS37: Tina Chang + Aimee Nezhukumatahil (February 11, 2021)

Thu, 11 Feb 2021 15:00:00 -0500

Beloved poets Tina Chang (Hybrida) and Aimee Nezhukumatathil (World of Wonders) discuss their latest books, both of which meditate on the themes of race, motherhood, and home through different lenses. The two authors discuss the challenges of writing in a world in which they didn't see the voices of Asian women being published, the process of setting aside the language forms that they had learned in school and learning how to create their own forms, the challenges of writing during the pandemic, and the effect of their writing on their families, as well as offering welcome advice for writers in the virtual audience. (Recorded November 24, 2020)

Episode QS36: Jason Reynolds + Danica Novgorodoff (February 4, 2021)

Thu, 04 Feb 2021 11:00:00 -0500

Greenlight Bookstore events director Jessica Stockton Bagnulo interviews Jason Reynolds and Danica Novgorodoff about Novgorodoff's graphic novel adaptation of Reynold's award-winning young adult novel, Long Way Down. Their generous and brilliant conversation on craft and content explores the process of translating the novel's verse to the graphic novel, the complicated context of masculinity and violence particularly in Black communities with generations of trauma, the challenges of visually depicting violence realistically but not gratuitously, and an unforgettable story about a teacher and a goldfish. (Recorded November 17, 2020)

Episode QS35: Laura Marks + Carmen Maria Machado (January 28, 2021)

Thu, 28 Jan 2021 12:00:00 -0500

Two literary authors discuss their new horror-tinged graphic novels: Laura Marks on her blood-soaked 19th-century tale Daphne Byrne and Carmen Maria Machado on her spooky small-town story The Low, Low Woods. The authors talk about the connections between memoir, screenwriting, and comics writing, the rewards of working with a graphic artist on interpreting their work, and the space for ambiguity and suspense that the graphic novel form offers for horror stories, in this warm-hearted reading and discussion. (Recorded November 16, 2020)

Episode QS34: Adam Kirsch + Ruth Franklin (January 21, 2021)

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 12:00:00 -0500

Authors Adam Kirsch and Ruth Franklin explore the legacy of Jewish literature in the 20th century on the occasion of the publication of Kirsch's book The Blessing and the Curse: The Jewish People and Their Books in the Twentieth Century. Kirsch and Franklin explore the evolving ideas of Jewish identity, neuroses and depictions of faith, the dividing line of the Holocaust, and the audience for Jewish literature in this wide-ranging discussion. (Recorded November 12, 2020)

Episode QS33: Maureen Mahon + Bridgett M. Davis (January 14, 2021)

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 12:00:00 -0500

Acclaimed novelist and memoirist Bridgett M. Davis talks with music writer and educator Maureen Mahon about Mahon's book Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll and the challenges of Black female rule breakers and trendsetters. The two explore how thinking differently about genre allows us to think about music and musicians differently, and the fascinating stories and influence of women like Big Mama Thornton, Betty Davis, Marsha Hunt, the Shirelles, and others unfairly ignored in rock history. As Mahon says to her own Black teen rock-loving self, "There are so many different ways to be an African American woman." (Recorded November 11, 2020)

Episode QS32: Deesha Philyaw + Kiese Laymon (January 7, 2021)

Thu, 07 Jan 2021 13:00:00 -0500

Deesha Philyaw discusses her already beloved fiction debut The Secret Lives of Church Ladies in a joy-filled conversation with her close friend, poet and memoirist Kiese Laymon. While engaging with an enthusiastic virtual audience, the two authors discuss the challenges of the publishing world for Black writers -- especially when writing about pleasure, humor, and joy -- and about the potential for Black authors to offer gateways to one another. (Recorded October 28, 2020)

Episode QS31: Eric Adams + Bryant Terry (January 1, 2020)

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 11:00:00 -0500

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and award-winning chef, author, and educator Bryant Terry offer an inspiring conversation on food and racial justice as they discuss Eric's book Healthy at Last: A Plant-Based Approach to Preventing and Reversing Diabetes and Other Chronic Illnesses. Eric talks about the terrible commonness of diabetes in his family and the Black community, and his own moment of realization of the health problems that led him to adopt a plant-based diet. He and Bryant talk about the forces that keep people of color from having access to healthy food and preventative care, and the need to think about health not just as an individual, consumer issue but as a collective issue, along with discussing policy ideas and some great recipes. (Recorded October 20, 2020)

SPECIAL EPISODE: Greenlight All-Star Revue + Virtual Reopening (December 24, 2020)

Thu, 24 Dec 2020 11:00:00 -0500

Greenlight celebrates the re-opening of its stores with a star-studded evening with many of our favorite authors, MC’ed by poet Saeed Jones! Listen to Jia Tolentino read a nonfiction piece about her unborn child; Nathan Englander read from the beginning of his novel kaddish.com; Min Jin Lee read from an essay about public speaking from the New York Times; Jonathan Lethem surprise us by reading his poetry; Nicole Dennis-Benn read from her novel Patsy; Colson Whitehead read from his not-yet-published next novel Harlem Shuffle; Lev Grossman read from his forthcoming children's novel The Silver Arrow; Ann Patchett read from her piece about running an indie bookstore in a pandemic; Ta-Nehisi Coates read Richard Wright's poem "Between the World and Me"; Valeria Luiselli read a piece about listening to sirens with her ten-year-old; and Jennifer Egan read from her novel The Keep. (Recorded July 2, 2020)

Episode QS30: Roman Mars & Kurt Kohlstedt + Seth Godin (December 17, 2020)

Thu, 17 Dec 2020 13:00:00 -0500

The beloved 99% Invisible podcast takes book form in The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design, and host and creator Roman Mars and digital director and producer Kurt Kohlstedt talk with legendary podcaster, author and marketing expert Seth Godin about the transition. The trio of podcast pros talk about the strengths of different media for telling stories and why it was important to create a book, and Roman and Kurt share their favorite tidbits and the quirky things they discovered in creating the podcast and book, as well as the process of gathering information, and the stories they ended up not being able to pursue. (Recorded October 9, 2020)

Episode QS29: Brooklyn Indie Party (December 10, 2020)

Thu, 10 Dec 2020 11:00:00 -0500

Greenlight’s annual Brooklyn Indie Party (ten years and counting) goes virtual for 2020! Editors and publishers from eleven small publishers introduce authors Adam Smyer, Andrea Rosenberg, Stephanie Jean, Matthew Burgess, Kim McLarin, Jenzo DuQue, Megan Cummins, JinJin Xu, Rivka Galchen, Grace Schulman, and Zahra Patterson for an epic, cutting-edge reading from Brooklyn and beyond. (Recorded October 2, 2020.)

Episode QS28: Michael Ian Black + Liz Plank (December 3, 2020)

Thu, 03 Dec 2020 12:00:00 -0500

The multi-talented Michael Ian Black discusses his book A Better Man: A (Mostly) Serious Letter to my Son with award-winning journalist and author Liz Plank in a conversation about toxic masculinity that is highly irreverent in the best way. Michael addresses topics from his father's death to his "artsy" childhood, and the emotional hardening that was expected from him as an adult man and that he sees in his sons; he and Liz discuss the "pyramid scheme" of patriarchy and the space for conversations about gender that feminism has created, with a lot of laughs in between. (Recorded September 16, 2020)

Episode QS27: Mychal Denzel Smith + Brit Bennett (November 27, 2020)

Fri, 27 Nov 2020 12:00:00 -0500

Set squarely in the context of an America ravaged by a pandemic and racial and political violence, Mychal Denzel Smith's discussion of his book Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream with novelist Brit Bennett is a fierce, brilliant and unapologetic conversation, leavened with gallows humor. Mychal delineates the distinction between being forgetful of history and being intentionally committed to delusions, discusses selective ideas of American identity, and describes struggling against the futility of writing in the face of injustice, while noting "it's important that we leave a record of the alternative to what has been the dominant discourse." (Recorded September 14, 2020)

Episode QS26: Sid Meier + David Ewalt (November 19, 2020)

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 14:00:00 -0500

Legendary game developer Sid Meier (creator of Pirates, Railroad Tycoon, and Sid Meier's Civilization) talks about his own story, as related in his book Sid Meir's Memoir!, with award-winning technology journalist David Ewalt. Their conversation is a gamer's dream, covering Sid's four decades in game creation and answering questions about his philosophy, colleagues, setbacks and discoveries along the way. (Recorded September 9, 2020)

Episode QS25: Adam Smyer + Irma Herrera (November 12, 2020)

Thu, 12 Nov 2020 12:00:00 -0500

Author Adam Smyer discusses his biting and hilarious guidebook You Can Keep That to Yourself: A Comprehensive List of What Not to Say to Black People, for Well-Intentioned People of Pallor with writer and performer Irma Herrera. Their discussion addresses questions of impact vs. intent, the state of violence against black people in America, and how humor can illuminate the truth and make it easier to talk about the most serious topics. (Recorded September 2, 2020)

Episode QS24: Sebene Selassi + Mike Albo (November 5, 2020)

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 14:00:00 -0500

Buddhist thought leader and meditation expert Sebene Selassie provides some much-needed calm in her discussion of her new book You Belong: A Call for Connection with hilarious writer and performer Mike Albo. From racism to childhood acne, Sebene and Mike talk about the experience of being treated as though you don't belong, and what it means to achieve self-love by being able to see yourself clearly and accept what's there as it really is. (Recorded August 25, 2020.)

Episode QS23: Peter Cameron + Christopher Beha (October 29, 2020)

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 11:00:00 -0400

Peter Cameron joins Greenlight discusses his atmospheric, suspenseful new novel What Happens at Night with mutually admired fellow author Christopher Beha of Harper's Magazine. They discuss how Cameron create the dreamlike mood of his fiction, the potential for fiction to transport the reader, and whether writers have an obligation to engage with social issues, as well as Cameron's recurring motifs of grandmothers, strange cities, and hotels, among others. Recorded August 18, 2020.

Episode QS22: Nelson George + Melissa Kimble (October 22, 2020)

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 12:00:00 -0400

Beloved Brooklyn author and filmmaker Nelson George returns to Greenlight to discuss the fifth installment of his music-infused D Hunter mystery series, The Darkest Hearts, with Melissa Kimble of #blkcreatives. The conversation revolves around Black culture and Black music, including Nelson's documentary Finding the Funk, and the questions of how to make a creative living – and possibly be a moral person – in an increasingly polarized America. (Recorded August 10, 2020)

Episode QS21: Akwaeke Emezi + Rivers Solomon (October 15, 2020)

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 12:00:00 -0400

Two award-winning authors return to Greenlight as Akwaeke Emezi discusses their highly anticipated new novel The Death of Vivek Oji in a lively conversation with Rivers Solomon. The two talk about the challenges of writing a book where the main character dies in the first chapter, the origins of the book in ideas of mis-gendering, the setting in the Nigeria of Emezi’s youth, biological vs. chosen families, and how "writing deviants" challenges people's concepts of themselves. (Recorded August 6, 2020)

Episode QS20: Raven Leilani + Samantha Irby (October 8, 2020)

Thu, 08 Oct 2020 11:00:00 -0400

In this electrifying pre-publication event, Raven Leilani launches her highly anticipated novel Luster in conversation with fiercely brilliant comedian Samantha Irby. Leilani's novel of a young Black woman's artistic and sexual trajectory is the starting point for a passionate and hilarious conversation about (among other things) the intersection of writerly craft and honesty about the personal, the gross, and the awkward – and how a novel can make way for Black people to take up space in the world. (Recorded August 3, 2020)

Episode QS19: Douglas Martin + Darcey Steinke (October 1, 2020)

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 12:00:00 -0400

Douglas A. Martin discusses the reissue of his novel, Branwell: A Novel of the Brontë Brother, with his friend and fellow Brooklyn author Darcey Steinke. In their discussion of Martin's fictionalized story of the less-successful sibling of Emily, Charlotte and Anne Bronte, the two wrestle with how traditional biography fails to make room for queerness, and how writers discover their identify through their writing – as prose can inform life as much as life informs prose. (Recorded July 20, 2020)

Episode QS18: Kelli Jo Ford + Emily Nemens (September 24, 2020)

Mon, 28 Sep 2020 12:00:00 -0400

Talking about the weather takes on a new dimension when Kelli Jo Ford talks about her debut novel Crooked Hallelujah with Paris Review editor Emily Nemens. Set in Texas and Oklahoma, the novel-in-stories follows four generations of Cherokee women across four decades, and Ford and Nemen's conversation encompasses the novel's craft and language, the process of editing and publishing, and how living in an area prone to natural disasters informs the psyche of the book's characters. (Recorded July 15, 2020)

Episode QS17: David Randall + Celine Gounder (September 17, 2020)

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 13:00:00 -0400

David K. Randall presents the paperback edition of his eerily relevant book on a past pandemic, Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague. Along with journalist and infectious diseases specialist Dr. Celine Gounder – who has been working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic in NYC – Randall discusses the spread of the bubonic plague in San Francisco in the year 1900, and the anti-Chinese racism, anti-science sentiment, and politicization of public health that followed. Recorded July 9, 2020.

Episode QS16: Kyle McCarthy + Leslie Jamison (September 10, 2020)

Thu, 10 Sep 2020 12:00:00 -0400

Kyle McCarthy discusses her debut novel Everyone Knows How Much I Love You, about the dark side of female friendship, with award-winning author Leslie Jamison (The Recovering, The Empathy Exams). McCarthy and Jamison explore themes of obsessiveness, boundary breaking, and the complexity of friendships, and the parallels between the fragmented structure of the book and the way we carry multiple selves within us. Recorded July 9, 2020.

Episode QS15: Emily Temple + Téa Obreht (September 3, 2020)

Thu, 03 Sep 2020 13:00:00 -0400

Literary Hub senior editor Emily Temple launches her debut novel The Lightness—a meditation on adolescent desire, female friendship, belief, and the female body—with Téa Obreht, bestselling author of The Tiger’s Wife and Inland. The pair discuss the strangeness of writing and launching a debut novel in June 2020, their shared MFA program memories, writing from the perspectives of teens vs. adults, nostalgia, and Buddhism.

Episode QS14: Jia Lynn Yang + Michael Luo (August 27, 2020)

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 11:00:00 -0400

(Recorded June 12, 2020)

Author Jia Lynn Yang and journalist Michael Luo take a whirlwind ride through the legal, political and cultural history of American immigration in their discussion of Yang's book One Mighty and Irresistible Tide. Bookended by major immigration laws passed in 1924 and 1965, the book and discussion work out the questions: Are we a country predicated on race and ethnicity, or on something else? And who is allowed full participation in democracy?

Episode QS13: Zaina Arafat + Mallika Rao (August 20, 2020)

Thu, 20 Aug 2020 12:00:00 -0400

Palestinian-American writer Zaina Arafat presents her debut novel You Exist Too Much with Mallika Rao of the Atlantic. In unfolding the novel's explorations of the longing for love, and a place to call home, they also discuss Arab stereotypes and queer stereotypes in media, the tension between generations and cultures in immigrant families. Recorded June 9, 2020.

Episode QS12: Joseph Stiglitz + Felicia Wong (August 13, 2020)

Thu, 13 Aug 2020 12:00:00 -0400

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz discusses his newest book People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent, with Roosevelt Institute president Felicia Wong. Wong and Stiglitz expand on the book's analysis of the various and insidious ways in which contemporary capitalism is rigged against the average citizen and tilted in favor of big business and the wealthy, connecting Stiglitz's arguments to the current COVID-19 crisis and Black Lives Matter protests through the intersection of racial and economic injustice. (Recorded June 4, 2020)

Episode QS11: Meredith Talusan + Alok Vaid-Menon (August 6, 2020)

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 11:00:00 -0400

Award-winning author and journalist Meredith Talusan’s talks about her memoir Fairest — a coming of age story about a precocious boy with albinism, a “sun child” from a rural Philippine village, who would grow up to become a woman in America — with her friend (and former roommate), writer and performance artist Alok. Topics of conversation included combating the white cis gaze, different constellations of gender, and the multiplicity of truth, with plenty of warmth and humor in the mix. Recorded May 26, 2020.

Episode QS10: Ishmael Beah + Alexis Okeowo (July 30, 2020)

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 09:00:00 -0400

Alexis Okeowo interviews Ishmael Beah (author of the memoir A Long Way Gone) about his new novel Little Family, a story of the connections we forge to survive the fate we’re dealt. The two discuss the novel's origins in several African nations and the US, the development of its characters, and its relation to African politics and corruption, as well as the experiences of people living on the margins, and how much we're all learning about how interconnected we all are. (Recorded May 7, 2020)

Episode QS9: Marie-Helene Bertino + Alexandra Kleeman & more (July 23, 2020)

Thu, 23 Jul 2020 09:00:00 -0400

In the extraordinary days of early June 2020, Marie-Helene Bertino virtually launches her novel Parakeet in conversation with Alexandra Kleeman, co-hosted by BOMB Magazine. Poet Angel Nafis opens the event with a meditation and poetry reading, setting the stage for an evening encompassing love and family, dark humor, discussions of craft, racial justice, and pure literary magic. (Recorded June 2, 2020)

Episode QS8: Nicole Dennis-Benn + Imani Perry (July 16, 2020)

Thu, 16 Jul 2020 13:00:00 -0400

Author and professor Imani Perry interviews novelist Nicole Dennis-Benn for the paperback launch of her novel Patsy, in an evening that grapples with intergenerational trauma as well as embracing Black joy. The energetic and inspiring conversation delves into Black women's identity, oppression, and power; post-colonialism and racism; mental health and its stigmas; sexual identity and freedom; the intersection of language and class; literary influences; and much more. (Recorded May 28, 2020)

Episode QS7: John Freeman + Julia Alvarez (July 9, 2020)

Thu, 09 Jul 2020 12:00:00 -0400

Poet, essayist and editor John Freeman talks with novelist Julia Alvarez about his poetry collection The Park and her novel Afterlife. A beautiful cross-genre conversation ensues about public space, strangers, what we owe to our fellow humans, and the language and effects of poetry. (Recorded May 5, 2020)

Episode 60: Lidia Yuknavitch + Amber Tamblyn (July 2, 2020)

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 11:00:00 -0400

Novelist Lidia Yuknavitch rejoins fellow author/actor/activist Amber Tamblyn for a passionate conversation centered around Yuknavitch's newest book Verge. Their wide-ranging discussion circles around the intersection of feminine rage (regardless of gender) and a toxic political and the possibilities for art and love beyond binaries. (Recorded February 13, 2020)

Episode QS6: Jessica Anthony + Deb Olin Unferth (June 25, 2020)

Thu, 25 Jun 2020 12:00:00 -0400

Jessica Anthony's Enter the Aardvark and Deb Olin Unferth's Barn 8 both engage with the ethics of contemporary political and cultural realities. In tonight's virtual conversation the two novelists (and longtime friends) get a chance to compare and contrast Anthony's novel of Washington corruption, deception, and absurdity, and Unferth's novel of industrial farming and the complexity of activism. (Recorded April 27, 2020)

Episode 59: Ezra Klein + Ta-Nehisi Coates (June 18, 2020)

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 13:00:00 -0400

Acclaimed podcaster and political analyst Ezra Klein of Vox talks with Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me) in front of a packed house about the evolution of America’s broken system as outlined in his book Why We’re Polarized. (Recorded at St. Joseph’s College on February 2, 2020)

Episode QS5: Kathy Valentine + Lizz Winstead (June 11, 2020)

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 12:00:00 -0400

Rock legend Kathy Valentine, bassist for the Go-Gos drummer, riffs on her memoir All I Ever Wanted with fellow icon Lizz Winstead, humorist and founder of the Daily Show. Like the book, their conversation covers a lot of ground: the highs and lows of rock & roll, the challenges of being a woman in entertainment, abortion rights, addiction, difficult familial relationships, feminism, and more. (Recorded April 20, 2020)

Episode 58: Paul Yoon + Hernan Diaz (June 4, 2020)

Thu, 04 Jun 2020 15:00:00 -0400

Award-winning author Paul Yoon discusses Run Me To Earth, his heartbreaking novel of three orphans in 1960s Laos, with Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Hernan Diaz. With charm and humor, the two authors talk about how to write about trauma and violence in a way that is delicate, respectful, and beautiful), touching on both the history that informs the novel and the craft that shaped it. (Recorded at our Fort Greene store on January 30, 2020)

Episode QS4: Katy Simpson Smith + Rivka Galchen (May 28, 2020)

Thu, 28 May 2020 12:00:00 -0400

Novelist Rivka Galchen interviews Katy Simpson Smith about her new novel The Everlasting, a portrait of the "Eternal City," Rome, over four centuries. The two authors explore the freedom fiction allows to explore marginalized peoples whose voices history has erased or ignored, the ways in which faith and love intertwine, and the disgusting and miraculous thing that is the human body. (Recorded April 15, 2020)

Episode 57: Leah Greenberg + Ezra Levin (May 21, 2020)

Thu, 21 May 2020 16:00:00 -0400

Wife and husband political dynamos Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin talk about Indivisible–both the movement they co-founded and the book they co-wrote–and the inspiring strategies they are proving are effective for grassroots political change. (Recorded at our Prospect Lefferts Gardens store on November 5, 2019)

Episode QS3: Emily Gould + Naomi Fry (May 14, 2020)

Thu, 14 May 2020 15:00:00 -0400

Author and publisher Emily Gould chats with her good friend (and New Yorker staff writer) Naomi Fry about Gould's new novel of music and parenthood, Perfect Tunes. Their quarantined conversation includes the difficulties of mothering in a pandemic, the ubiquity of vomit in the novel, lots of one-liners, and even some impromptu musical numbers. (Recorded April 14, 2020)

Episode 56: Lindy West

Thu, 07 May 2020 17:00:00 -0400

The inimitable Lindy West (author of Shrill) owns the stage at St. Joseph’s College for a reading from her new book The Witches Are Coming and a frank and hilarious talk on women (and men) in media and politics, internet trolls, abortion stories, and more. (Recorded at St. Joseph’s College on November 7, 2019)

Quarantine Season Episode 2: Robert Reich with Anand Giridharadas

Sat, 02 May 2020 10:00:00 -0400

Robert B. Reich, the best-selling author and commentator who has served in three presidential administrations, discusses his new book The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, with Anand Giridharadas (Winners Take All). Speaking from opposite coasts, the two generate a blistering analysis of elections, banking, capitalism, corruption, and hope, including insights on how the spread of COVID-19 was affected by -- and will affect -- America's policies and political culture. (Recorded March 31, 2020)

Quarantine Season Episode 1: Emily St. John Mandel + Isaac Fitzgerald

Sat, 25 Apr 2020 08:00:00 -0400

In Greenlight's first-ever virtual event, bestselling Brooklyn author Emily St. John Mandel launches her new novel, The Glass Hotel, in a brilliant and charming conversation with beloved author and interviewer Isaac Fitzgerald. The two discuss Ponzi schemes, ghosts, music, alternate universes, and of course the increased interest in Mandel's previous novel Station Eleven, which imagines the aftermath of a worldwide pandemic. (Recorded March 24, 2020.)

Episode 55: Ibi Zoboi + Rita Williams-Garcia (March 12, 2020)

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 16:00:00 -0400

Rising star Ibi Zoboi (author of the young adult novels American Street and Pride) presents her middle grade fiction debut My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich, in a conversation with her mentor, iconic young people’s fiction author Rita Williams-Garcia, centered on the culture of 1980s Harlem, hip-hop, and sci-fi and black girl nerdiness. (Recorded in our Fort Greene store on September 12, 2019.)

Episode 54: Tash Aw + Chimamanda Adichie (February 27, 2020)

Thu, 27 Feb 2020 16:00:00 -0500

Novelist Tash Aw talks with his close friend, literary superstar Chimamanda Adichie, about his newest novel We, the Survivors, touching on questions of representation (or the lack of it), the intersections of poverty and violence, and the evolving state of immigrant literature. (Recorded at the Fort Greene store on September 9, 2019.)

Episode 53: Dan Rather + Katy Tur (February 13, 2020)

Thu, 13 Feb 2020 14:00:00 -0500

Legendary journalist Dan Rather launches the paperback edition of his book What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism in conversation with fellow news correspondent Katy Tur, in an evening focused on American ideals, journalistic integrity, and great storytelling. (Recorded at St. Joseph’s College on September 3, 2019.)

Episode 52: Susan Straight + Emily Bernard (January 30, 2020)

Thu, 30 Jan 2020 15:00:00 -0500

In this in-depth and personal discussion of race and womanhood in America, authors and close friends Susan Straight (In the Country of Women) and Emily Bernard (Black Is the Body) discuss their new memoirs and their differing but overlapping experiences. (Recorded at the Fort Greene store on August 20, 2019.)

Episode 51: Rick Moody + Amy Hempel (January 16, 2020)

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 14:00:00 -0500

Beloved Brooklyn novelist and essayist Rick Moody discusses his memoir The Long Accomplishment: A Memoir of Hope and Struggle in Matrimony in an emotional and moving conversation about writing and family with fellow fiction writer Amy Hempel. (Recorded at the Fort Greene store on August 15, 2019.)

Episode 50: Jess Row + Yahdon Israel (January 2, 2020)

Thu, 02 Jan 2020 13:00:00 -0500

Novelist Jess Row talks with poet and educator Yahdon Israel about Row’s book of literary criticism White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination, in a brilliant conversation and Q&A turning on privilege, space, and the hidden assumptions of the American literary canon.(Recorded at the Fort Greene store on August 14, 2019.)

Episode 49: Tom Campanella + Philip Lopate (December 19, 2019)

Thu, 19 Dec 2019 09:00:00 -0500

Renowned essayist Philip Lopate interviews native Brooklynite and urban studies professor Thomas Campanella about his magisterial new book Brooklyn: The Once and Future City, for a rollicking and wide-ranging conversation on our borough’s history and lore. (Recorded in our Prospect Lefferts Gardens store on September 19, 2019.)

Episode 48: Eric Foner + Chris Hayes (December 5, 2019)

Thu, 05 Dec 2019 14:00:00 -0500

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner discusses his newest book The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution with Chris Hayes of MSNBC and The Nation, in an erudite, energetic and surprisingly funny conversation about the Reconstruction period and its enormous relevance for contemporary American life and politics. (Recorded at St. Joseph’s College on September 29, 2019.)

Episode 47: Mark Bittman + Melissa Clark (November 21, 2019)

Thu, 21 Nov 2019 13:00:00 -0500

Acclaimed food writer Mark Bittman celebrates the release of the 20th anniversary edition of his classic cookbook How To Cook Everything, in a lively conversation about America’s evolving foodways with fellow New York Times food writer Melissa Clark. (Recorded at St. Joseph’s College on October 2, 2019.)

Episode 46: Oyinkan Braithwaite + Bridgett M. Davis (November 7, 2019)

Thu, 07 Nov 2019 15:00:00 -0500

Oyinkan Braithwaite discusses her smash hit debut My Sister the Serial Killer -- a short, darkly funny hand grenade of a novel that encompasses both sibling rivalry and anti-patriarchal catharsis -- onstage with previous podcast guest Bridgett M. Davis. (Recorded at the Fort Greene store on August 5, 2019.)

Episode 45: Robert MacFarlane + Philip Gourevitch (October 24, 2019)

Thu, 24 Oct 2019 19:00:00 -0400

In his highly anticipated US book launch, beloved British writer Robert MacFarlane presents his latest exploration of the natural world, Underland, diving deep into both the landscape and the human heart in his conversation with acclaimed journalist Philip Gourevitch. (Recorded at the Fort Greene store on June 10, 2019.)

Episode 44: Nathan Englander + Colson Whitehead (October 10, 2019)

Thu, 10 Oct 2019 15:00:00 -0400

Two former Brooklyn neighbors (and longtime friends) of Greenlight take the stage as Pulitzer finalist Nathan Englander discusses his novel kaddish.com with Colson Whitehead, in a conversation about family, faith, and the temptations of the internet. (Recorded at the Fort Greene store on March 26, 2019.)

Episode 43: John Waters + Rob Spillman (September 26, 2019)

Thu, 26 Sep 2019 14:00:00 -0400

Transgressive auteur/icon John Waters serves it up raw in his memoir-cum-self-help-book Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder. Fellow Baltimore native Rob Spillman, author of the memoir All Tomorrow's Parties, interviews Waters in an hour full of outrageous one-liners. (Recorded at St. Joseph's College on May 22, 2019.)

Episode 42: Bridgett Davis + James Hannaham (September 12, 2019)

Thu, 12 Sep 2019 07:00:00 -0400

Award-winning writer and filmmaker Bridgett M. Davis offers an homage to an extraordinary parent in her memoir The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers. She discusses the book (and complicated mothers) with James Hannaham, author of the novel Delicious Foods. (Recorded at the Fort Greene bookstore on February 26, 2019.)

Episode 41: Blythe Roberson + Phoebe Robinson (August 29, 2019)

Thu, 29 Aug 2019 09:00:00 -0400

Blythe Roberson, writer, comedian, and researcher at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, launches her debut book How to Date Men When You Hate Men, in conversation with New York Times bestselling author and comedian Phoebe Robinson who praises, “Thank sweet baby Jesus that Blythe Roberson’s How to Date Men When You Hate Men exists. Funny, sharp, and feminist fun in a way we’re led to believe isn’t possible.” (Recorded at our Fort Greene location on January 10, 2019.)

Episode 40: Shelley Jackson + Darcey Steinke (December 13, 2018)

Thu, 13 Dec 2018 00:00:00 -0500

Experimental author Shelley Jackson discusses her new book, Riddance: Or The Sybil Joines Vocational School for Ghost Speakers and Hearing Mouth Children, with author Darcey Steinke. Together, they talk about 19th Century Spiritualism, how the neutral experience is a white fantasy, the fine line between genius and insanity, and how Jackson's childhood has an influence on her surreal novel.

Episode 39: Anne Lamott + Edward L. Beck ( November 29, 2018)

Thu, 29 Nov 2018 00:00:00 -0500

Bestselling author Anne Lamott talks about her new book, Almost Everything, with author, playwright and CNN-Commentator Father Edward L. Beck. Together they discuss their faith, her struggle with addiction, how recovery works, the pleasures and pain of family, and Anne's "inner Trump."

Episode 38: Barbara Kingsolver + Julie Orringer (November 15, 2018)

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 00:00:00 -0500

Beloved, award-winning author Barbara Kingsolver talks about her new book Unsheltered with author Julie Orringer. Together they talk about writing and reading historical novels, how people deal with catastrophe, the literary art of editing, and why to be cautious with screen adaptations.

Episode 37: Eleanor Kriseman + Julie Buntin (October 12, 2018)

Fri, 12 Oct 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Social Worker, author, and Greenlight Bookstore staff alum Eleanor Kriseman discusses her debut novel, The Blurry Years, with author Julie Buntin. Together they talk about how novels grow out of short stories, the interior lives of children, working in publishing, and the struggles of female writers with being taken seriously.

Episode 36: Justin Phillip Reed + Angel Nafis + Jayson Smith (October 3, 2018)

Wed, 03 Oct 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Poet Justin Phillip Reed discusses his debut poetry collection, Indecency with Greenlight staff alums, poets Angel Nafis and Jayson Smith. Together, they read their poems, discus poetic construction, and talk about blackness and white supremacy.

Episode 35: Ibi Zoboi + Elizabeth Acevedo (September 21, 2018)

Fri, 21 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Young adult novelist Ibi Zoboi talks about her new book, Pride, with actor and best-selling author Elizabeth Acevedo. Together they discuss the intersections of race, class, and gender, their experiences with gentrification, the secret subversion of romance novels, and how much their heritage influences their writing.

Episode 34: Amanda Stern + A. M. Homes (July 31, 2018)

Tue, 31 Jul 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Fiction writer, Memoirist, and children's author Amanda Stern discusses her new book, Little Panic: Dispatches from an Anxious Life, with author A.M. Homes. Together they talk about where anxiety begins, what rituals it creates, how adult anxiety is different from the anxiety of youth, and how much Amanda hates yoga.

Episode 33: Rachel Cusk + Alexandra Schwartz (July 25, 2018)

Mon, 23 Jul 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Critically acclaimed author and memoirist, Rachel Cusk sits down with book critic Alexandra Schwartz to discuss her new book Kudos, the final novel of her beloved Outline Trilogy. Together they discuss Cusk's unique prose style, the particulars of her process, and her radical view of fiction that has built her an enormous following and made her novels the source of passionate fascination. She also admits to the fact that sitcoms give her anxiety.

Episode 32: Caryl Phillips + Hilton Als (July 10, 2018)

Mon, 09 Jul 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Celebrated author and professor, Caryl Phillips speaks with Cultural Critic, Hilton Als to discuss his new book, A View of the Empire at Sunset. They cover a wide range of topics including colonialism, classism and racism in British society, the process of art-making, the necessity of imagination and much more.

Episode 31: Michael Chabon + Julie Orringer (June 11, 2018)

Mon, 11 Jun 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Happy Father's Day from Greenlight Bookstore! From the Brooklyn Voices Series, held at St. Joseph's College, author Julie Orringer speaks with Pulitzer Winner and bestselling writer Michael Chabon about his new book of essays, Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces. They discuss how parenthood and writing fit together in his life, his family ambitions from an early age, how strange his children can seem to him, and his relationship with his own father.

Episode 30: Brittney Cooper + Rebecca Traister (May 27, 2018)

Sun, 27 May 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Academic and writer Brittney Cooper speaks to Rebecca Traister, writer at large for New York Magazine and author, about her new book, Eloquent Rage. They cover her working class background, the political uses of rage, the implications of interracial dating, her complicated support for Hilary Clinton, the beauty of female friendship, and Black Panther.

Episode 29: Amy Siskind

Mon, 30 Apr 2018 00:00:00 -0400

President and co-founfer of The New Agenda Amy Siskind speaks with reporter Nomiki Konst about her new book The List: A Week-by-Week Reckoning of Trump’s First Year. In their conversation they talk about the difference between normal and abnormal political maneuvering, the polarization of ICE, attacks on our voting systems, the deep web of Russian and moneyed connections with the Trump Administration, and the impact of the Weekly list on her life.

Episode 29: Amy Siskind + Nomiki Konst (April 30, 2018)

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Writer Zinzi Clemmons speaks with author and cultural critic Margo Jefferson about her debut novel, What We Lose. They talk about the experience of being biracial, struggling with terminal disease, black womanhood and motherhood, and how fiction can be influenced by creative essay writing.

Episode 27: Nick Harkaway + Jenn Northington (March 29, 2018)

Thu, 29 Mar 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Beloved British literary genre fiction writer Nick Harkaway talked with megafan Jenn Northington of BookRiot about his cerebral epic scifi novel Gnomon in his first ever New York City public event. Harkaway and Northington discussed the complex diagrams required for Harkaway to keep track of his own plot, genre categories in the US and the UK, the proud tradition of the police procedural, the need for writers to help readers imagine possible and inevitable futures, and the weird reality of mice sharing a single brain.

Episode 26: Light the Dark (Febuary 22, 2018)

Thu, 22 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0500

Editor Joe Fassler leads a panel of brilliant writers in a discussion expanding the themes of his anthology Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process. Starting with the premise that much of creative writing happens in response to what writers read and love, authors Lev Grossman (The Magicians), Ayana Mathis (The Twelve Tribes of Hattie), and Leslie Jamison (The Empathy Exams) reflect on their struggles and triumphs as creators, their transcendent reading experiences and inspirations, connections between literature and music, the demands of metaphor, and the the essential question of why they write.

Episode 25: Jessica Bruder + Dale Maharidge (January 10, 2018)

Wed, 10 Jan 2018 00:00:00 -0500

Journalist Jessica Bruder celebrated the launch of her new book Nomadland, an immersive narrative of the time Bruder spent with the new nomadic communities of older, low-income Americans who can no longer afford to retire. With Pulitzer Prize-winning fellow journalist Dale Maharidge, Bruder discussed the surface happiness of a nomadic life, often branded and exploited by corporations, as opposed to the economic tragedies that lead to “houselessness”; the predominance of women on the road, and the need to tell their stories in a genre formerly dominated by men; and the work, including farm work, warehouse work (especially Amazon’s CamperForce) and other seasonal labor that Americans in their 70s find themselves performing, often for minimum wage -- and how they might be a canary in a coal mine for the American economy.

Episode 24: Karl Ove Knausgaard + Kita Kitamura (December 14, 2017)

Thu, 14 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0500

As part of the Bookends event series surrounding the 2017 Brooklyn Book Festival, bestselling Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard read and discussed his newest book Autumn with Brooklyn novelist Katie Kitamura at St. Joseph's College. Among the topics addressed: the similarities and differences between Knausgaard’s new quartet of books and his My Struggle series, the primal shaping influence of family, the formal challenges of creating fiction without plot or character, the tension between the specificity of the material world (which Knausgaard conveys with an insistent poetics) and his sense of internal boundlessness.

Episode 23: Nathan Englander + Jonathan Safran Foer (November 7, 2017)

Tue, 07 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0500

Nathan Englander talks about his literary political thriller Dinner at the Center of the Earth with his longtime friend Jonathan Safran Foer in an erudite, kind, and high-energy conversation at St. Joseph’s College. Among the topics the two authors touch on are how Englander’s tendency to write in circles reflects the cycles of violence and vengeance in the Israeli / Palestinian conflict, the conflict between devotion to people and devotion to ideals, and how the hope for peace may be as unlikely and as possible as putting a man on the moon.

Episode 22: Jesmyn Ward + Ayana Mathis (October 24, 2017)

Tue, 24 Oct 2017 00:00:00 -0400

National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward talked with fellow author Ayana Mathis about Sing, Unburied, Sing, Ward’s beautiful, searing novel of a haunted rural south, in front of a packed house at Greenlight's Fort Greene store location. Mathis and Ward engaged with topics including ghosts as a manifestation of racial violence, the true and horrific history of Mississippi’s Parchman prison, how a writer can push back against dehumanization by depicting the complex inner lives of poor people, the desire to take care of one’s troubled characters, and the ways in which history bears down on the present.

Episode 21: Teju Cole + Ben Lerner (September 1, 2017)

Fri, 01 Sep 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Two brilliant novelist/essayists dive deep into issues of photography and text as Teju Cole talks with Ben Lerner on June 14, 2017. Cole returns to St. Joseph’s College to present his book Blind Spot, which uniquely synthesizes his photography and essays; after a reading accompanied by images on screen, Cole talks with Lerner about the uses of syntax, montage and interconnection; influences including John Berger and filmmaker Chris Marker; the tension between certainty/objectivity and freedom/positionality; and the complex relationship of political responsibility and visual arts, among other topics.

Episode 20: Hala Alyan + Mira Jacob (July 26, 2017)

Wed, 26 Jul 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Palestinian-American poet and clinical psychologist Hala Alyan talked with novelist Mira Jacob (The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing) about her debut novel Salt Houses, a story of family, displacement, and diaspora catalyzed by Israel’s Six Day War. The two writers talked about the work of writing (and reading) about politicized issues without creating heroes and villains, and about how Alyan’s work as a psychologist with Muslim immigrants and her own family's experience informs her writing, as well as delving into process and practices for creating writing that feels like magic. (Bonus: Listen for how Alyan was influenced by Elizabeth Gilbert’s ideas about creativity, then listen to Episode 3 of our podcast to hear more on the topic from Gilbert herself!)

Episode 19: Chris Hayes + Wesley Lowery (May 19, 2017)

Fri, 19 May 2017 00:00:00 -0400

On April 8, 2017, MSNBC's Chris Hayes presented his new book A Colony In A Nation to his hometown in Brooklyn, in a interview with Wesley Lowery. The two journalists' wide-ranging conversation with each other and the audience at St. Joseph's College covers personal experiences of criminal justice on either side of America's racial divide, the political landscape from Black Lives Matter to Trump's election, the history of systemic racism, and what citizens can do to make a difference.

Episode 18: Álvaro Enrigue + Garth Risk Hallberg (April 17, 2017)

Mon, 17 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Internationally acclaimed Mexican author Alvaro Enrigue and New York City author Garth Risk Hallberg (City on Fire) start with Enrigue’s genre-bending book Sudden Death — which starts with a 16th century tennis match — to launch a far-ranging conversation. Topics covered include political anger and artistic style, the history of racist narratives (“moments in which the world crunched and the bad guys imposed a discourse”), inventing historical events (“the weirdest stuff is true”), paintings made of feathers, and the embarrassing demands of both authors’ children.

Episode 17: Marie Ponsot (November 4, 2016)

Fri, 04 Nov 2016 00:00:00 -0400

The beloved poet Marie Ponsot returns to her alma mater, St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, for an evening celebrating the publication of her magisterial Collected Poems. A constellation of poetry world luminaries reads poems and shares impressions of the great writer’s work and life; as one friend observes, “If you want to know what legitimate skill looks like, Marie Ponsot is a model to study. Her force is true, it’s genuine, it’s powerful, and those who encounter it come away with the knowledge that they have seen something rare. I have seen taxi drivers bow to her.” The evening’s speakers include Alice Quinn, L. B. Thompson, Cynthia Zarin, Timothy Small, Rosemary Deen, Edward Hirsch, Hettie Jones, and Jackson Taylor, concluding with a reading by the 95-year-old poet herself.

Episode 16: Jeff Chang + Rebecca Carroll and Nikole Hannah-Jones (September 29, 2016)

Thu, 29 Sep 2016 00:00:00 -0400

In front of a packed house at Greenlight Bookstore, author Jeff Chang discussed his book We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation, with panelists Nikole Hannah-Jones, New York Times Magazine investigative journalist, and Rebecca Carroll, a producer of special projects on race at WNYC. In their discussion on stage, and in an impassioned audience Q&A, Chang, Hannah-Jones, and Carroll dig deep into story telling and code switching, the complexities of educational “diversity”, the manifestations and effects of gentrification, and the way that studying the long history of American racism can actually keep you sane.

Episode 15: Ann Patchett + J. Courtney Sullivan (September 19, 2016)

Mon, 19 Sep 2016 00:00:00 -0400

On the publication date of her seventh novel Commonwealth, author and bookseller Ann Patchett (Bel Canto, Run, State of Wonder, etc.) launched the book onstage with her friend J. Courtney Sullivan (The Engagements, etc.). The conversation touched on the joys and pitfalls of first chapters, Ann's mother's take on the new novel ("None of it happened and all of it is true"), the freedom Patchett learned from Catholicism, engaging with the Nashville community as a retailer vs. as an artist, and a lot of really great book recommendations.

Episode 14: Teju Cole + Amitava Kumar (August 17, 2016)

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 00:00:00 -0400

On a hot August night in Brooklyn, novelist, art critic and photographer Teju Cole (Open City, Every Day is for the Thief) celebrates the launch of his essay collection Known and Strange Things. His conversation with novelist and essayist Amitava Kumar (Lunch With a Bigot, Nobody Does the Right Thing) encompasses the difference between an essay and a take, the concept of the punctum in a work of art, the importance of constellational thinking, and several jokes about air conditioning. Part of the Brooklyn Voices series at St. Joseph's College.

Episode 13: Khaled Hosseini + Anand Giridharadas (June 6, 2014)

Tue, 30 Dec 2014 00:00:00 -0500

Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner) uses the release of his latest, And The Mountains Echoed, to discuss east and west, war and peace, and everything in the middle. Plus two excellent graphic novels, one old and one new.

Episode 12: Alexi Zentner + Téa Obreht (December 2, 2014)

Tue, 02 Dec 2014 00:00:00 -0500

Alexi Zentner (Touch) talks to friend and fellow novelist Téa Obreht (The Tiger's Wife) about Shakespeare, shellfish, and his newest novel, The Lobster Kings. Also, Denis Johnson's heart of darkness, and getting cosmic with Italo Calvino. Find the books mentioned in this episode at www.greenlightbookstore.com/radio12

Episode 11: Luke B. Goebel + Tobias Carroll (Sept 22, 2014)

Tue, 18 Nov 2014 00:00:00 -0500

The intense and soulful Luke B. Goebel talks about his debut novel Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours with Tobias Carroll of Vol. 1 Brooklyn. Also, Bryan Stevenson on justice and redemption and Merritt Teague on sex, drugs, and the soup du jour. Find all the books described in this episode at Greenlightbookstore.com/radio11

Episode 10: Damon Galgut (September 30, 2014)

Mon, 03 Nov 2014 00:00:00 -0500

Damon Galgut (In a Strange Room) speaks about his latest – Arctic Summer, a fictionalization of E.M. Forster’s life while writing A Passage to India. Also, new poetry from Saeed Jones, and Atul Gawande on what we talk about when we talk about dying.

Episode 9: Ghost Stories with David Mitchell + John Freeman (October 27, 2014)

Mon, 27 Oct 2014 00:00:00 -0400

Happy Halloween! In this bonus mini-episode, David Mitchell and John Freeman tell each other ghost stories. S'mores not included. Find a selection of appropriately spooky literature at: Greenlightbookstore.com/radio9

Episode 8: Emily St. John Mandel + Emma Straub (September 8, 2014)

Mon, 20 Oct 2014 00:00:00 -0400

Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven, sits down with fellow author Emma Straub to talk about the craft of writing, the vicissitudes of publishing, and the how her particular dystopian vision was influenced by survivalist blogs, King Lear, and Calvin and Hobbes. Also, reviews of Lila by Marilynne Robinson, and Splash State by Todd Colby. Find all the titles discussed in this episode at Greenlightbookstore.com/radio8

Episode 7: David Mitchell + John Freeman (October 27, 2014)

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:00:00 -0400

David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas, Number9Dream) on his new novel, The Bone Clocks, his illicit dreams of Amsterdam, and why Optimism is probably the best choice – in conversation with John Freeman (How to Read a Novelist). Also: exciting new reissues from Wakefield Press and a second look at Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca. Find all the titles discussed in this episode at Greenlightbookstore.com/radio7

Episode 6: Jack Livings + Brigid Hughes (August 21, 2014)

Mon, 15 Sep 2014 00:00:00 -0400

Brigid Hughes (A Public Space, The Paris Review) speaks to Jack Livings about his debut collection of stories, The Dog, as well as the agonies and ecstasies of obsessive research and Tobias Wolff. Also – reviews of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy and The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross. Find all the titles discussed in this episode at Greenlightbookstore.com/radio6

Episode 5: Lev Grossman + Friends (August 5, 2014)

Tue, 02 Sep 2014 00:00:00 -0400

Levapalooza! Lev Grossman (The Magicians) assembles the Super Friends of Brooklyn-based fantasy and sci-fi authors to help launch his latest, the New York Times #1 Bestseller The Magician’s Land. Also: reviews of Fives and Twenty-Fives by Michael Pitre and Further Out Than You Thought by Michaela Carter. Special appearances by Margaret Stohl (Beautiful Creatures), Michelle Hodkin (The Mara Dyer Trilogy), Lauren Oliver (The Delirium Trilogy), Erin Morgenstern (The Night Circus), and Austin Grossman (Soon I Will Be Invincible). Find all the titles discussed in this episode at Greenlightbookstore.com/Radio5

Episode 4: Tom Rachman + Susan Kamil (June 19, 2014)

Fri, 15 Aug 2014 00:00:00 -0400

Tom Rachman (The Imperfectionists) talks with Susan Kamil, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Random House and Dial Press, about his new novel, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, and why writing books is like flying with the Marx Brothers. Also: reviews of The Story of Land and Sea by Katie Simpson Smith and Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey; and new releases for August 15th – 30th, 2014. Find all the titles discussed in this episode at Greenlightbookstore.com/radio4

Episode 3: Elizabeth Gilbert + Rebecca Mead (Tuesday, June 24, 2014)

Mon, 04 Aug 2014 00:00:00 -0400

Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) talks to Rebecca Mead (My Life in Middlemarch) about her newest novel, The Signature of All Things, as well as the joys of being a grown-up and the independent will of ideas. Also: reviews of Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique and The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway, new releases for August 1st – 15th, 2014. Find all the titles discussed in this episode at Greenlightbookstore.com/radio3

Episode 2: One Story Magazine 2014 Literary Debutantes (Thursday, May 5, 2014)

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 00:00:00 -0400

We meet One Story Magazine’s 2014 Literary Debutantes, a collection of fiction writers who have published their first full-length books in the past year: James Scott (The Kept), Rachel Cantor (A Highly Unlikely Scenario), Ben Stroud (Byzantium), Celeste Ng (Everything I Never Told You), Molly Antopol (The UnAmericans), David James Poissant (The Heaven of Animals), and Amelia Kahaney (The Brokenhearted). Also – reviews of The Book of Unknown Americans, by Christina Henríquez, and The Log of the SS Mrs. Unguentine, by Stanley Crawford; and new releases for July 15th – July 31st, 2014. Find all the titles discussed in this episode at greenlightbookstore.com/radio2 .

Episode 1: Colum McCann + Phil Klay (May 19, 2014)

Sat, 28 Jun 2014 00:00:00 -0400

In our debut episode: Colum McCann (Let the Great World Spin) in conversation with Phil Klay (Redeployment) about writing, war, and the shifting sands between fiction and reality. Also - reviews of The Vacationers by Emma Straub and Ideas of Heaven by Joan Silber, and new releases for early July 2014.Find all the titles discussed in this episode at greenlightbookstore.com/radio1 (www.greenlightbookstore.com/radio1)