The Greenlight Bookstore Podcast

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!)

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.

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. 

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.

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.