Books: The Measure, The L Magazine

Interview: Greenpoint Comics Artist Lisa Hanawalt and the View From My Dirty Dumb Eyes

Jeff Klingman — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:42:00 -0400

In the comics of Greenpoint artist Lisa Hanawalt, familiar things get very odd, very fast. The award-winning artist, who's been published in The New York Times, The Believer, VICE, and Vanity Fair (to name a few) draws straight from her own dark Id, yet manages to turn subjects that could be icky into whimsical nonsense that can't help but confuse and delight.…

RIP to the Best Used Bookstore in Brooklyn

Henry Stewart — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:49:00 -0400

A few years ago, a girlfriend and I moved into a Park Slope apartment together and were so serious we combined our books, which led to quite a few redundancies. What to do with these duplicate copies of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Hitchock/Truffaut, and others?…

Another Author Who Hated Brooklyn? Henry Miller

Virginia K. Smith — Fri, 10 May 2013 14:06:00 -0400

This week kicked off with the sort of unfortunate news that the lit scene's favorite Brooklyn transplant, Martin Amis, may or may not completely hate it here. Sort of a bummer, but Brooklyn is a big place, and a lone hater is pretty easy to brush off.…

The 10 Best Author-to-Author Insults

Kristin Iversen — Fri, 10 May 2013 11:45:00 -0400

Words hurt. No one knows this more than a writer.…

Werewolves and Terrorism and Infectious Disease: An Interview with Benjamin Percy About His New Novel Red Moon

Kristin Iversen — Mon, 06 May 2013 15:21:00 -0400

In his novel, "Red Moon", author Benjamin Percy wrestles with such familiar coming-of-age issues as divorced parents, first infatuations, changing bodies, and clandestine handjobs. Also, werewolves.…

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Martin Amis Hates Brooklyn! What Are We Gonna Do?

Virginia K. Smith — Mon, 06 May 2013 10:48:00 -0400

So, I'm of two minds about this. One is that as a crotchety elder statesmen, this is the kind of stuff we love and expect from Martin Amis, and anyway, a short Evening Standard article citing a single anonymous source is... not exactly concrete proof of anything.…
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Nathaniel Rich Writes Cranky Letters to Potato Chip Companies

Henry Stewart — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:48:00 -0400

You might know Nathaniel Rich from his magazine writing, like the Times magazine story about the jellyfish that could live forever (!). But he's also a fiction writer.…
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Happy Birthday Stacey McGill, You Awesomely Sex-Positive NYC Diabetic

Henry Stewart — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 10:00:00 -0400

Yesterday was the birthday of Stacey McGill, treasurer of the Babysitters Club and its resident New Yorker, the series' author Ann M. Martin posted to her Facebook. Stacey was a multifaceted character: her favorite things were shopping, New York City, boys, fashion, math, pigs, opera, and blueberry pancakes.…
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Which Bushwick Bookstore Is Right For You?

Virginia K. Smith — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:41:00 -0400

Last week we wrote about the opening of Mellow Pages, a new reading room among the artists' spaces at 56 Bogart in Bushwick. And it's all part of a larger trend: in less than a year, the neighborhood has seen an explosion of small book-sellers.…
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Inside Mellow Pages, Bushwick's Low-Key New Reading Room

Virginia K. Smith — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 12:21:00 -0500

For most people in Brooklyn — most people anywhere, really — books and beer aren't exactly a tough sell. So it makes sense, then, that just a week after their opening on February 21st, Matt Nelson and Jacob Perkins have been garnering both publicity and word of mouth for their small but impressive new reading room, Mellow Pages.…
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Phillip Lopate On Brooklyn: The Old Days, Gentrification, and BK Lit

Henry Stewart — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 10:35:00 -0500

Phillip Lopate is the author of countless books and the editor of a number of anthologies on various topics: he's a fiction writer, an essayist, a memoirist, a movie critic, and more. Tomorrow, Free Press releases two new books: To Show and Tell, a guide to the craft of literary non-fiction (and a sort of companion piece to his essential anthology The Art of the Personal Essay), and Portrait Inside My Head, a new collection of personal essays that stretch back to his childhood in Brooklyn through marriage, parenthood, and sibling rivalry with Leonard.…
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"The Graham Avenue Stop is Still So Italian!"

Henry Stewart — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 09:55:00 -0500

Karolina Waclawiak is the deputy editor at The Believer and also the author of the novel How to Get Into the Twin Palms, which Two Dollar Radio released last summer. Tonight, she reads at the Franklin Park Reading Series in Crown Heights.…
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Does Simon Rich Hate Brooklyn?

Henry Stewart — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 10:45:00 -0500

The New Yorker has been publishing ex-Brooklynite Simon Rich's comic novella "Sell Out" on its website this week in daily installments. It tells the story of an early 20th-century immigrant living in Williamsburg and working in a pickle factory accidentally sent forward in time to the present day, when he meets his great-great-grandson Simon Rich, a script doctor, with whom he stays.…
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In Brooklyn, Even the Trash Piles are Shorter

Henry Stewart — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 09:00:00 -0500

Journalist Becky Aikman previously worked as a writer and editor at Businessweek and a reporter for Newsday. In her new book Saturday Night Widows: The Adventures of Six Friends Remaking Their Lives, which Crown Publishing released earlier this week, she writes about her experience of becoming a widow in her 40s, and of joining a support group with other women working through grief.…
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Novelist John Kenney Wishes He Could Take Back This Interview

Henry Stewart — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:40:00 -0500

Touchstone releases John Kenney's debut novel Truth in Advertising today; his 17 years in writing copy for New York ad firms informs the book's story of a middle-aged Bostonian working on Madison Avenue and reevaluating his life. Tomorrow, he reads from the book at Greenlight, then discusses it with Jami Attenberg (The Middlesteins).

What neighborhood do you live in?
I live in Brooklyn Heights.…
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A Dreamy Evening at the Fireside Follies

Sarah Lerner — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:20:00 -0500

For those unfamiliar with the monthly reading series Fireside Follies—which, you shouldn’t be, after our sister publication Brooklyn Magazine’s inclusion of founders Mike Lala and Eric Nelson in their Indie Lit Impresario round-up—it goes a little something like this: a few out-of-town and local Brooklyn writers walk into a bar, Bushwick's Brooklyn Fire Proof East to be exact, and read—one right after the other, sans any highfalutin introductions that some other shall-not-be-named reading series dwell in, with a little time built in to sneak to the bar and mingle with the literati, of course. This past Saturday featured the dreamy line-up of Rebecca Wolff (The Beginners), Scott McClanahan (Stories V! and the forthcoming Crapalachia), Kathleen Alcott (The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets and one of our Five Breakout Brooklyn Book People of 2012) and newcomer Jacob Kaplan, who more than held his own with an excerpt from his short story “Sayonara, Sad Sack”—he was a highlight of an already exceptional evening.…
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Adam Mansbach to the War on Graffiti: "Go the Fuck to Sleep!"

Henry Stewart — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 10:45:00 -0500

"Go the Fuck to Sleep was a time-consuming event in my life," its author Adam Mansbach said last night at the powerHouse Arena in DUMBO, "so it's nice to be talking about something else." That something else is his new novel, Rage is Back, about the effects of The War on Graffiti, waged in New York City and around the world toward the close of the 20th century, on a mixed-race teenager, the son of two famous graffiti writers, living in the present day (well, 2005); when the book opens, he has been expelled from his private school, which Mansbach did not confirm was modeled after Dalton, and from his mother's Fort Greene apartment.…
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Novelist and Brooklyn Native Ben Schrank Talks About How the Borough Has Changed—Or Not!

Henry Stewart — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 11:35:00 -0500

Sarah Crichton Books published last week Ben Schrank's third novel, Love is a Canoe, about a writer of relationship advice looking back over his work after the death of his wife. Schrank, who is the publisher of Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers, lives in Brooklyn—where he grew up—with his wife and son.

What neighborhood do you live in?
I live in Gowanus, on Carroll Street, up from Monte’s, around the corner from Littleneck.…
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Short-Story Writer Amber Sparks: "My Loss of Sanity is Your Gain!"

Henry Stewart — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:35:00 -0500

Curbside Publishing released Washington, D.C.-based Amber Sparks's debut story collection May We Shed These Human Bodies in October. Harper Perennial editor (and friend of The L) Cal Morgan named it the year's Best Small Press Debut in the Atlantic Wire.…
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Good News, Print: The E-Reader May Be Dying Already

Virginia K. Smith — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 14:55:42 -0500

The crazy new technology that everyone over the age of 40 (and every lame, self-conscious young luddite) decried as the inevitable death of the book industry — the dedicated e-reader — is already dying a slow but steady death, just 5 years into its existence. Because everyone realized they weren't getting the full, sentimental hands-on experience, "the smell of thing thing," right?…
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Brooklyn Writers' Favorite Books of 2012

Kristin Iversen — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 05:00:00 -0500

We've told you our favorite books of 2012, as has every other critic in the county. But we figured you might also want to hear from some writers themselves about what's good!…
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5 Breakout Brooklyn Book People of 2012

Henry Stewart — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 05:00:00 -0500

Brooklyn is the lit capital of the world, which means it's home not only to large numbers of established novelists with several books to their name but also to many of the unpublished kind. Every year, a lucky few of them release their first book; these are five of our favorites from 2012.…
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The 10 Best Books of 2012

The Editors — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 05:00:00 -0500

The above is a photo of our desk at the office: perpetually covered in stacks of tottering books. Flat surfaces in our apartments don't look much neater.…
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A Seriously Magical Reading in Boerum Hill

Sarah Lerner — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 11:35:00 -0500

Something seriously magical occurred at 61 Local on Wednesday night. The inaugural reading series for The Atlas Review, an as-yet unpublished literary journal (it’s expected in February), featured all of the elements a seasoned event could hope for: a packed house; young, strong talent (poet Justin Boening and writer/Brooklyn Magazine contributor Catherine Lacey); a unique element (exquisite drawings based on the texts accompanied each reader); a dynamic “it” poet (Camille Rankine, in one of her three readings this past week); an engaged audience; and the candid, practiced elocution of star talent (Kathleen Ossip and Eileen Myles).…
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Poet Kendra Grant Malone: "The Day Jessica Lange Yelled at Me Was the Best Day of My Life"

Henry Stewart — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 09:00:00 -0500

Bushwick poet Kendra Grant Malone, author of Everything is Quiet and Morocco, will read tomorrow at NY Tyrant's launch party for Blake Butler's Sky Saw at Franklin Park (not a part of its monthly reading series, which is the following Monday). The last time we went to a Blake Butler launch party he was pretty tipsy by the end when he read, so it should be fun.…
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