Literary t-shirt creator Novel-T will debut its second team of ten baseball-jersey style tees at the Novel-T Team 2 Opening Day Party on May 7, from 7pm to 9pm. The free party will feature beer and Cracker Jacks and a Wii home run derby in a bookstore that’s itself something of a stadium for the written word: the powerHouse arena in Dumbo.
So here’s the thing: I live in Manhattan. I realize this admission may count as blasphemy in these parts, but I spend what seems like several night a week in Brooklyn, and well, there’s nothing like an outsider’s perspective to keep people honest. I also write about Brooklyn a great deal, in both my fiction and non-fiction, so why don’t we start there and see what happens.
Every third Wednesday, in the middle of the afternoon, the ghost of my Great Grandfather stops into to my favorite bar in Prospect Heights. Inconveniently for everyone, he always sits at the center stool, creating gaps on either side of him as nobody likes getting wet from the splashing beer falling through his translucent body.
As much as Annabelle hated to admit it, the neighborhood really had changed. More progressive types had moved to Brooklyn in the past few years and their liberal antics sometimes made her seriously consider moving back to Montana. Annabelle wasn’t from Fort Greene originally, but she’d lived in the neighborhood a hell of a lot longer than these yo-yos. She was taller and longer than each of them, by at least a foot in both directions. Her tail and claws were much more serious too.
Storyteller Ryan Britt at the Franklin Park Reading Series on April 12, 2010.
Throughout the five-boroughs, the aliens leveled all apartments, condos, townhouses, brownstones, high-rises, and houses systematically with top-of the line laser death-rays. Afterward, new buildings were constructed, and nearly everyone was relocated to a new apartment; a 10-foot by 10-foot living space with an incredibly low ceiling and a sliver of a window. That is, except for a few railroad apartments in Bushwhick.
In the video enclosed author Mary Gaitskill reads “The Astral Plane Nail and Waxing Salon” at the Franklin Park Reading Series in Crown Heights. This fictional story about Ashley Dupre and Silda Wall, Elliot Spitzer’s tryst and wife respectively, originally appeared in New York Magazine last fall and deals – intensely – with the dichotomy of Eve and Lilith. The tale features cameos by Elizabeth and John Edwards, Rielle Hunter, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. It’s a long one – three parts – but we’re sure you’ll enjoy the ride.
