The Greenlight Bookstore Podcast

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)  

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.)