Greenlight Bookstore's February Schedule is Out

FORT GREENE, BROOKLYN — The Greenlight Bookstore's Fort Greene location released its packed February schedule Wednesday, with several fascinating book launches, panels, and discussions throughout the month.

The local independent bookstore, whose business is thriving, just opened a new location in Prospect Lefferts Gardens.

Here are the events happening at Greenlight's Fort Greene location at 686 Fulton St. (at S. Portland). All event descriptions written by Greenlight Book Store.

Thursday, February 2, 7:30 PM
Paperback launch: Rob Spillman presents All Tomorrow’s Parties
In conversation with Leigh Newman
German beer reception to follow sponsored by Radeberger
From Rob Spillman, the award-winning, esteemed cofounder and editor of Tin House magazine, comes the paperback launch of All Tomorrow’s Parties, an intimate memoir of a rebellious young man's fierce pursuit of an artistic life and a portrait of a shifting Berlin. Born in Germany to two driven musicians, Spillman’s childhood was spent among the West Berlin cognoscenti. After an unsettled youth moving between divorced parents in disparate cities, Spillman would eventually find his way into the literary world of New York City, only to abandon it to return to Berlin just months after the Wall came down in search of the bohemian lifestyle of his idols. But Spillman soon discovered he was chasing the one thing that had always eluded him: a place, or person, to call home. Leigh Newman, Books Editor at O Magazine and author of the memoir Still Points North, joins Spillman for conversation about the urban cultures of Berlin and New York and his own artistic trajectory. A German beer reception generously sponsored by Radeberger follows the conversation at the bookstore.

Tuesday, February 7, 7:30 PM
Book launch: Jason Rekulak presents The Impossible Fortress
In conversation with Austin Grossman
80’s themed reception to follow
As Publisher of Quirk Books, Jason Rekulak was responsible for such hits as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. He brings the same creative genius to a novel explores what happens when a fourteen-year old boy pretends to seduce a girl as part of a complex plot with his friends to steal the May 1987 issue of Playboy from the local convenience store, only to discover she is his computer-loving soulmate—forcing him to choose between her and his friends. The Impossible Fortress is a tender exploration of young love, true friends, and the confusing realities of male adolescence—with a dash of old school computer programming. Local author (Soon I Will Be Invincible, You, Crooked) and video game designer Austin Grossman joins Rekulak for conversation, followed by a reception to celebrate the launch with wine and thematically appropriate snacks. Attendees are invited to dust off their best 80’s threads and come in costume for the chance to win prizes!

http://www.jasonrekulak.com/
http://www.austingrossman.com/

Wednesday, February 8, 7:30 PM
Min Jin Lee presents Pachinko
(A Greenlight First Editions Club Selection)
In conversation with Harold Augenbraum
Korean food reception to follow
Min Jin Lee’s debut novel, Free Food for Millionaires, was acclaimed as one of the Top 10 Novels of the Year by publications in the US and abroad. Her new release, Pachinko, is a tour de force following one Korean family in exile from its homeland and caught in the indifferent arc of history; the book is acclaimed by critics and authors nationwide, and Greenlight selected the book as its First Editions Club pick for February. This story of family, faith, and identity is a great testament to the long and troubled history of legal and social discrimination against Koreans living in Japan, whose stories Min Jin Lee wanted to acknowledge while she was writing the book. Harold Augenbraum, former Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, joins Min Jin Lee for conversation about her work. The discussion is followed by a reception to celebrate the book’s launch, featuring Korean food and beer.

https://www.minjinlee.com/

Thursday, February 9, 7:30 PM
Book launch: Katie Kitamura presents A Separation
In conversation with Rivka Galchen
Wine reception to follow
Critics at the New York Times Book Review and Boston Globe have already declared Greenlight neighbor Katie Kitamura to be a “major” and “prodigious” talent. Adept at evoking complex psychological territory, she’s garnered praise from writers as distinct and disparate as Salman Rushdie, Teju Cole, Jenny Offill and Tom McCarthy. Kitamura’s new novel A Separation tells the story of a marriage’s end, the gulf that divides us from the inner lives of others, and the narratives we invent to mask our true selves. The novel evokes the psychologically taut atmosphere of a Patricia Highsmith story with the spellbinding stylings of an Elena Ferrante. And yet, there’s “a sweet coldness here that is all Kitamura’s” (Financial Times). A Separation is a riveting stylistic masterpiece of absence and presence, secrets and lies, that leaves the reader transformed. Rivka Galchen, author of American Innovations and Little Labors, joins Kitamura for conversation, followed by a wine reception to celebrate the book’s launch.

Monday, February 13, 7:30 PM
Sana Krasikov presents The Patriots
In conversation with Matthew Thomas
Ukranian native and National Book Foundation “Five Under 35” honoree Sana Krasikov follows up her PEN/Hemingway Award-winning story collection One More Year with her new novel The Patriots, a sweeping multigenerational debut novel about idealism, betrayal, and family secrets ranging from Brooklyn in the 1930s to Soviet Russia to post-Cold War America. The novel is at once a mother-son story and a tale of two countries bound in a dialectic dance; a love story and a spy story; a grand, old-fashioned epic and a contemporary novel of ideas. Through the history of one family moving back and forth between continents over three generations, The Patriots is a poignant tale of the power of love, the rewards and risks of friendship, and the secrets parents and children keep from one another. Krasikov discusses her work with Matthew Thomas, author of We Are Not Ourselves (a past Greenlight First Editions Club selection).

Thursday, February 16, 7:30 PM
Paperback launch: Álvaro Enrigue presents Sudden Death
In conversation with Garth Risk Hallberg
From internationally celebrated Mexican author Álvaro Enrigue comes a kaleidoscopic, genre-bending book. Hand-selected by Natasha Wimmer— the inimitable translator for Roberto Bolaño and Mario Vargas Llosa—to be her latest project, Sudden Death has already secured some of the most prestigious awards in the world, including the Herralde Prize in Spain, the Elena Poniatowska International Novel Award in Mexico, and the Barcelona Prize for Fiction. A dazzling, shape-shifting work of literary fiction, Sudden Death daringly imagines the clash of empires and ideas, told through a 16th century tennis match in Rome between the Italian artist Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Quevedo, played with a ball made from beheaded Anne Boleyn’s hair. Garth Risk Hallberg calls the book, “A novel that does full justice to the phrase 'cutting edge’… once formally audacious and piercingly humane.” Hallberg joins Enrigue for conversation.

http://garthriskhallberg.com/

Tuesday, February 21, 7:30 PM
Damion Searls presents The Inkblots
In conversation with Maria Konnikova
When we think of the most influential interpreters of the human psyche, Hermann Rorschach may not be among the first that comes to mind. With The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and the Power of Seeing, distinguished translator and essayist Damion Searls sets out to change that. In this first-ever biography of both the Rorschach test, or inkblot test, and the man who created it, Searls documents Rorschach’s groundbreaking contributions to modern psychology as well as the surprising — and deeply enduring — afterlife of his work, as the inkblots spread out of the clinic and into our cultural imagination. Searls is joined by psychology and culture writer Maria Konnikova for a conversation about the twentieth century’s most visionary synthesis of art and science.

http://damionsearls.com/
http://www.mariakonnikova.com/

Thursday, February 23, 7:30 PM
Cara Hoffman presents Running
In conversation with Rae Meadows
Introduction by Ira Silverberg
From Cara Hoffman, the critically acclaimed author of Be Safe I Love You and So Much Pretty (both of which she presented at Greenlight) comes Running, a dark, breathtaking novel of love, friendship, and survival set in Athens’ red light district in the late 1980s. Running follows the lives of three friends and lovers who meet while working as runners: riding trains looking for tourists to lure back to the four-dollar-a-night Hotel Olympos. Hoffman began writing Running over twenty-five years ago when she was working as a runner herself. Hoffman talks about her work with fellow novelist Rae Meadows (and fellow former runner), author of four novels including the recent I Will Send Rain. The conversation is introduced by Cara’s editor at Simon & Schuster, publishing great Ira Silverberg, former editor-in-chief of Grove and longtime literary agent.

http://carahoffman.net/
http://raemeadows.com/

Tuesday, February 28, 5:30 PM
Greenlight Young Readers Book Group (FG) discusses The Thief Lord
Led by Greenlight receiving manager Grace and geared toward kids ages 9 to 12, our young readers book group meets on the fourth Tuesday of each month in Fort Greene to discuss great contemporary and classic chapter books. Parents are welcome (but not required) to attend, and pizza is served. For February, the group discusses The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke. Two orphaned brothers, Prosper and Bo, have run away to Venice, where crumbling canals and misty alleyways shelter a secret community of street urchins. Leader of this motley crew of lost children is a clever, charming boy with a dark history of his own: He calls himself the Thief Lord. Prosper and Bo relish their new "family" and life of petty crime. But their cruel aunt and a bumbling detective are on their trail. And posing an even greater threat to the boys' freedom is something from a forgotten past: a beautiful magical treasure with the power to spin time itself.

Current book group picks are always 15% off at Greenlight, in the store or online.

Tuesday, February 28, 7:30 PM
Book Launch: Lauren Elkin presents Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London
Wine reception to follow
Lauren Elkin’s Flâneuse was released in the UK in 2016 and was promptly named one of the best books of the year by both The Financial Times and The Guardian. Just published in the US, the book is a mixture of memoir and a study of the Flâneuse: a woman who roams the streets of the cities she inhabits, building a relationship to the world around her through walking. Well research and filled with cultural history, Flâneuse is an uplifting, gender-bending critique of how women (past and present) negotiate public space. Elkin discusses the book at Greenlight, followed by a wine reception to celebrate the book’s US launch.

http://laurenelkin.tumblr.com/

Lead photo via Greenlight Bookstore's Facebook