Around Town: August 11th-17th

August 11th – Radiator Launch Party

Bookstore Cafe
126 Crosby Street
New York, NY 10012

Time: 7pm

The launch of a new literary journal from Praytell. Created in recognition of the creative minds of Brooklyn & NYC, Radiator is full of ideas from both up and coming and established local talents. Please join us for a brief reading, social gathering, snacks and beer. With readings from Kurt Boone, Christine Friar, Joshua Max Feldman, Meredith Haggerty, David Tomas Martinez, Bianca Stone, and Chris Messer.

Click here to read more about the readers! This event is free.

August 13th – Secret Histories: Austin Grossman & Lev Grossman

Greenlight Bookstore
686 Fulton Street

Brooklyn, NY 11217

Time: 7:30pm

Writers and brothers Austin Grossman (Soon I Will Be Invincible, You) and Lev Grossman (The Magicians Trilogy) return to Greenlight to discuss their most recent works, which infuse everyday life with the thrill of the uncanny. In a master work of alternative history and Lovecraftian suspense, Austin’s brand-new novel Crooked asks: what if Richard Nixon, our most reviled president, was really a pivotal figure caught in a desperate struggle between ordinary life and horrors from another reality? Lev’s trilogy of books The Magicians, The Magician King, and The Magician’s Land (just released in paperback), bring the spellcasting of C. S. Lewis and J. K. Rowling into a very real world, where sex, self-interest, and thwarted good intentions have a way of affecting the magical (and vice versa). Join us for a unique conversation with two talented authors exploring their “realist magic” worlds.

August 13th – Daughters of Brooklyn: Debut Novelists Read

Time: 7pm

An evening featuring Tanwi Nandini Islam and Naomi Jackson, whose debut novels share a setting in Brooklyn, home to so many families who call somewhere else home. Born to immigrant parents, Islam’s and Jackson’s heroines wrestle with competing cultural messages, gender norms, and a poignant sense of placelessness, all while navigating the tribulations of teenhood in America.

In Islam’s Bright Lines, the Bangladeshi Saleem family raises three girls on Cambridge Place: rebellious Charu, bookish adoptee Ella, and runaway Maya, who seeks refuge from her abusive father. Home and homeland come into conflict again in Jackson’s The Star Side of Bird Hill, when the Braithwaite sisters, Dionne and Phaedra, are torn from Brooklyn and sent to Bird Hill, Barbados to live with their grandmother.

This event is free, but you must register.