Annual Festival Harkens Book Lovers to Brooklyn

Authors and readers alike from all areas of New York recently challenged the chilly autumn wind for the 6th annual Brooklyn Book Festival.

Authors and readers alike from all areas of New York recently challenged the chilly autumn wind for the 6th annual Brooklyn Book Festival.

On September 18, Brooklyn Borough Hall and Plaza filled with masses of people who all shared one great interest: books. And books they got.

Over 180 different vendors crowded the site, many of them independent bookshops and publishing companies. The booths offered something for everyone, featuring everything from science fiction novels to children’s books.

One of the spots that caught the attention of festivalgoers was the Banned Books Readout booth. It was arranged by the National Coalition Against Censorship, giving people the chance to read books that had at some point been banned, challenged, or censored. Their collection contained well-known books like “Beloved” by Toni Morrison and “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley.

However, Brooklyn Book Festival wasn’t just about the booths and selling books, it also presented an opportunity for authors to speak to their fans. A long list of published authors, many of them local New Yorkers, were on hand to sign books or participate in one of the many panel discussions of the day. The discussions covered a wide range of topics. Some were purely about literature, giving aspiring authors some new inspiration for their writing. Other conversations took on subjects like politics, with change and revolution being popular themes.

One such panel discussion, 9/11 AT TEN, presented writers Alia Malek and Jeremy Scahill who addressed 9/11 from a different point of view. Curious visitors listened to the authors’ commentary on the tragedy’s impact on Middle Eastern and Arab Americans. The talk covered related issues from the current famine in Somalia to the panelists’ views on racial profiling of the Arab American community. Malek defined what she felt on the day of the attack, what she calls “twin fears”: fearing both for the safety of her friends near the towers, and for the possibly catastrophic impact on America’s view of Muslims. The steps in front of the stage were crowded during the discussion, which proved to be one of the most popular of the day.

Of the more literary discussions, were ones like Crashing Genres, where audiences could hear fantasy and science fiction authors Jewell Parker Rhodes and Cory Doctorow discuss the topic of writing books with supernatural themes, and the bias they observe against genre books from publishers. Parker Rhodes emphasized the importance of following one’s passion when writing, something that surely did pay off for her. Despite the obstacles when writing about both racial and paranormal themes, Parker Rhodes kept doing as she wished, and ultimately won an American Book Award. Her energetic way of speaking and obvious love for her art made many onlookers smile. Writers in the audience made sure to ask her their questions afterwards.

Another author that encouraged festivalgoers to follow their passions was Jhumpa Lahiri (“Interpreter of Maladies” “Unaccustomed Earth”), the winner of this year’s 2011 Brooklyn Book Festival BoBi Award. Lahiri’s main themes in her books are identity and the experience of being an immigrant in America. Her writing gained her the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, even though the prize had never before gone to a short story collection. She was present at the Brooklyn Book Festival to talk about her literary work and how she wrote her collections of short stories because, as she said simply, “certain ideas are meant to be stories.”

If panel discussions and vendors booths weren’t enough, the Brooklyn Book Festival also offered various book readings to satisfy even the pickiest visitor. Authors read chapters from their books, making literature lovers crave for more. Some notable book readings included that of “The Urban Underbelly,” which focuses on depictions of city life, ranging from 1920s Harlem to the Nairobi of today. Mukoma Wa Ngugi, son of well-known author Ngugi Wa Thiong'o (“Petals of Blood”), gave listeners a sample of his novel “Nairobi Heat,” a tale of crime set in his native country Kenya. Local New Yorker Pete Hamill was also present, reading a part of his newest creation, “Tabloid City.” In addition, a great treat for many attendees was Persia Walker, enchanting the audience with her smooth voice’s poetry-like rhythm and her dark and tempting novel, “Black Orchid Blues.”

After eight hours of literature and poetry, this years book festival was over, and the formerly crowded Borough Hall Plaza started to empty. Hopefully, visitors didn’t go home with just a book or two in tow, but also with new inspiration and new perspectives. After all, that’s what many books are for.