The Greenlight Bookstore Podcast

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)

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.)

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.

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)

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) 

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)

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)

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)

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.

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.