Edgy writers

By Meredith Deliso

This is for all you moms who are more Peg Bundy than Carol Brady.

Edgy Mother’s Day, a reading series that celebrates writing about motherhood, and the feisty moms who write it, returns to the Old Stone House on May 19 for another evening of witty, serious, touching, satirical, and overall illuminating pieces.

“They’ll rock you, sock you, make you laugh, cry, cheer and look at motherhood in a whole mother way,” said Louise Crawford, who writes the website Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn and curated the series with Sophia Romero.

This time around, the “edgy” lineup consists of novelists Paola Corso and Romero, graphic novelist Jennifer Hayden, and essayist Nancy McDermott, who will give their unique perspectives on motherhood, with a requisite dose of snark.

“I am fascinated by the peculiar culture of parenthood today — it is ripe with comedic potential,” said McDermott, a Park Slope-based writer who’s a regular contributor to the Park Slope Parents website. “Things like keeping journals of every lurid detail of our baby’s bowel movements or talking to our toddlers in public about terribly worthy things, like human rights or Beethoven, in a Stepford Momish voice as if we were being secretly filmed by the selection committee for mother of the year. God knows I’ve done all that — and worse.”

Edgy Moms reading at the Old Stone House [336 Third St. at Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, (718) 768-3195], May 19 at 8 pm. Tickets $5. For info, visit brooklynreadingworks.com.

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Funny girl

By Meredith Deliso

Sloane Crosley loves reading to people — and it doesn’t even have to be her own work.

“I’ve been known to get so excited about a short story and read it to my friends over the phone,” said Crosley. “I can’t believe I did this, this is so cruel, but I once read, ‘White Angel’ in its entirety to someone. And it was midnight.”

Of course, Crosley has plenty of her own material to pick from, including her latest humor collection, “How Did You Get This Number,” which will bring Crosley to BookCourt this Thursday.

The collection follows her sometimes awkward, always introspective adventures in New York and aboard — the travails of a kleptomaniac roommate; visiting a former brothel haunted by the ghosts of its former tenants (if only in her over-active imagination); taking a solo vacation to Lisbon, a place she chose by spinning a globe and landing a finger blindly picking a spot; and a run-in with a grizzly while visiting Alaska.

They’re witty, spot-on reads about the peculiarities of New York life — just like her prior best-selling collection, “I Thought There’d Be Cake.” Though as the author prepares to revisit of the work on the event of its paperback release, it’s not without some reservations about those readings she so dearly loves.

“I don’t want to be that person who’s at the party not taking the social cues that they just told this story,” said Crosley. “But you have to have a little bit of faith in yourself. And remember that they’re laughing with you, not at you.”

Sloane Crosley at BookCourt [163 Court St. between Pacific and Dean streets in Cobble Hill, (718) 875-3677], May 12 at 7 pm. Free. For info, visit www.bookcourt.org. Also at powerHouse Arena [37 Main St. at Water Street in DUMBO, (718) 666-3049], May 24 at 8 pm. Free. For info, visit www.powerhousearena.org.

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A visit from Jennifer Egan

By Meredith Deliso

The last thing Jennifer Egan wants is for you to get tired of her.

But since her book “A Visit from the Goon Squad” came out last June, the Fort Greene writer fears that she has been on a constant book tour to support the praised piece of fiction.

“It did not sell very well [at first], though it got really good reviews, so I felt like it really had to continue to support it,” said Egan. “In another situation, I might have just said, ‘Enough, I’m going to let it sink or swim on its own.’ I felt I couldn’t do that with his one.”

That effort — her “endless babbling,” as she calls it — seems to have paid off: the book is in its 11th printing, made numerous year end top-10 lists and, just this month, it won the prestigious National Book Critics Circle award for fiction, beating out the much-hyped “Freedom” by a non-Brooklynite named Franzen.

The Circle praised the experimental form of Egan’s third novel — her most ambitious, inventive piece to date — as it follows intersecting characters in the music industry, including an aging record exec, Lou; his protégé, Bennie; his troubled assistant, Sasha; and her children, whose chapters are told in surprisingly moving PowerPoint slides. It’s a tale that spans decades, jumping around from present day New York to 1970s San Francisco to a dystopian future — and is one as much about time (that cruel goon in question) as it is the music industry.

“The book is about time, and time and music are so interwoven. We walk around awash in our own past, listening to songs that meant a lot to us at certain points,” said Egan. “As a journalist, I had always wanted to learn more about the music industry, but I never did. It was just a yen to write about this world that was unfulfilled in the nonfiction realm.”

Now that she’s gotten that out of her system, Egan is looking to get back into her next big project — a novel about the women who worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II. But not before she does a bit more babbling, including two readings in Brooklyn in one week — at BookCourt tonight and the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Thursday.

“I’m keenly aware you can’t do this forever, or you will become deeply boring,” said Egan. “I’m happy to do it a bit longer, then I think I’m going to have to close my mouth for several years and go back to what I do — which is write.”

Jennifer Egan at BookCourt [163 Court St. between Pacific and Dean streets in Cobble Hill, (718) 875-3677], March 28 at 7 pm. Free. For info, visit www.bookcourt.org; also at the Brooklyn Academy of Music [651 Fulton St. near between Rockwell and Ashland places in Fort Greene, (718) 636-4100], March 31 at 6:30 pm as part of its “Eat, Drink and Be Literary” series. Tickets $50 (includes dinner, wine, tax and tip). For info, visit www.bam.org.

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Myla's favorite's

By Adam Warner

Myla Goldberg is a Brooklyn writer, but no, she doesn’t live in Fort Greene, Park Slope or Boerum Hill. For the past six years, she’s called Kensington home, and wouldn’t have it any other way.

“If I was single and living in Kensington, I would be miserable. But it’s great to have a family here,” said Goldberg, a mother of two young girls. “There’s not much of a book scene in Kensington, but that’s fine. I can get to other parts to do that sort of thing if I wanted to. But to be honest, I don’t do it that often, anyway. That’s not the kind of person I am.”

Indeed, Goldberg is a big fan of “nerdy German board games” like Settlers of Katan and watching old French noir films. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t get out in Kensington. To follow, she shares with us some of her favorite places and why.

  

Brancaccio’s Food Shop

“Joe Brancaccio’s $6 whole roasted chicken stuffed with lemon, garlic, and herbs, is one of the best take-out deals in Brooklyn. He also does a great tapenade and a three-cheese mac and cheese with truffle oil, which he sells by the pound along with all his other homemade prepared foods. Plus, he carries Chinotto, an obscure Italian soda that I’m kind of addicted to.”

Brancaccio’s Food Shop [3011 Fort Hamilton Pkwy. between Third and Second streets, (718) 435-1997].

Monk Vintage Thrift Shop

“A genuine thrift store with genuine thrift store prices, and good music to boot. There’s always something interesting in here hiding in the racks, and I never feel like I’m not cool enough to set foot inside.”

Monk Vintage Thrift Shop [579 Fifth Ave. between 16th Street and Prospect Avenue, (718) 788-2950].

Green-Wood Cemetery

“Reading the gravestones in here is like sitting down with a really intense short story collection. The inscriptions and the dates of people’s births and deaths provide surprisingly in-depth family sagas, as well as a lot of unsolved mysteries. Not to mention all the spectacular trees.”

Green-Wood Cemetery [777 Fifth Ave. at 28th Street, (718) 768-3333].

Coots at Prospect Park Lake

“A coot is a small black water bird with a white beak, and there’s generally a few of them swimming among the ducks and geese at the lake. When one dives underwater to look for food, it’s this whole aquatic Marx Brothers routine, where it disappears beneath the water’s surface, and then pops up somewhere completely different, usually displacing a duck in the process. Think Harpo and Chico, if Harpo was a coot and Chico was a mallard. If you ever need a little cheering up, visit the coots.”

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Remember this - Myla Goldberg is the 'It' girl of literature

By Meredith Deliso and Adam Warner

When she was 10 years old, Myla Goldberg threw a pair of scissors at her friend. It wasn’t her best moment.

A few years ago, more than two decades later, the author found herself remembering that incident, and still felt pretty bad about it, so during Yom Kippur, she looked up the friend to atone for her sin. 

Turns out, the friend didn’t remember it happening at all, but accepted the apology anyway.

“It was this great amnestic moment,” said Goldberg. “We all subconsciously edit our lives, and you never know what random thing might bring something back.”

It’s moments like that that helped inspire the latest novel from Goldberg, who catapulted to literary fame 10 years ago with her debut, “Bee Season.”

“The False Friend,” out this month on Doubleday, focuses on a successful woman living in Chicago who, after 20 years, returns to her hometown to confess the role she played in the disappearance of a childhood friend, an assumed victim of abduction. All her life, she’s lied about what really happened, blocking the traumatic memory, only to face the consequences of confronting her family, friends, and a past she had come to forget.

The result is a book that explores aging, the unreliability of memory, and the truths we accept or reject. It’s thematically linked to the childhood trauma and remorse of Stephen King’s “It” — without the blood, gore or clowns.

“We all used to be someone else in one way or another,” said Goldberg. “It’s a weird sort of feeling to go back to where you’re from and face who you were.” 

This isn’t the first time Goldberg has put her memory in a time machine.

“Both in this novel and my previous, ‘Wickett’s Remedy,’ there is an interest in the fallibility of memory,” said Goldberg, whose previous novel was set during the influenza pandemic of 1918. (Don’t remember that bit of history? Exactly.) 

Both novels are dramatic departures from her debut book, “Bee Season,” a seemingly simple story about a girl, a spelling bee and its catastrophic effects on her family that put Goldberg on the literary map (having Hollywood turn it into a movie wasn’t bad, either). 

“I basically won the literary lottery,” said Goldberg. “The lifestyle I have now — I can be a full-time writer — is due entirely to the fact that my first book did extremely well. It’s extremely gratifying.”

The hard part was how to follow that up, though the author feels at peace with people’s expectations as she celebrates her third novel. In fact, she’s pretty distanced from the borough’s literary scene, save for her infrequent, low-stakes poker games with the likes of Colson Whitehead, Darin Strauss and Jonathan Lethem, “before he flew the coop.” 

“There’s a very vibrant arts scene in Brooklyn, but I don’t feel like I have any scene,” said Goldberg, who’s perfectly content playing board games at her Kensington home, seeing film retrospectives at BAM and playing the occasional gig with her art-punk band, the Walking Hellos. 

After spending the last five years working on her new novel, she’s also content to take a little breather from writing. Whether or not her next novel continues to explore the facets of memory — that remains to be seen.

“Certain issues stick with authors whether or not they want them to,” said Goldberg. “Memory might be mine.”

Myla Goldberg reads from “The False Friend” at Book Court [163 Court St. between Pacific and Dean streets in Cobble Hill, (718) 875-3677], Oct. 7 at 7 pm. Free. For info, visit www.bookcourt.org.

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One 'Super' writer

Gary Shteyngart is a performer. He says as much in a recent interview in New York Magazine. With his quick wit and self-deprecating style, he always makes for an fun reading., and you can see him in the flesh this Friday when he reads at Greenlight in Fort Greene to celebrate the release of his new book, "Super Sad True Love Story."

Until then, check out the trailer he did for his new book - yes a trailer. And it has cameos by none other than James Franco and Jeffrey Eugenides.

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Chicken & egg thing

By Elizabeth Dana

Ditmas Park backyard farm since 2007. But he’s not only doing it for the meat.

Inspired by the “locavore movement” that encourages eating locally grown food, Howard took it one step further: to live off only what he could grow in his backyard for an entire month.

He did it — and got a book out of it, too.

“My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned His Big-City Backyard into a Farm” chronicles how Howard converted his urban backyard into a vegetable garden, chicken coop, rabbit hutch and duck pond. His summer was filled with demanding physical labor, chasing rabbits and, of course, castrating chickens.

The idea — at least originally — was to go beyond the trendiness of being a locavore and actually learn what it means to grow food and raise livestock in an urban setting.

But animal deaths, a near breakdown of his marriage, a tornado — the first to hit Brooklyn in over a hundred years — and a severed finger tested his physical, mental and emotional strengths.

“I didn’t have any idea that this thing would grab me by the ears and pull me into the ground with it,” said Howard. “It was certainly all-consuming, but it was never a question that I would finish.”

Nearly three years later, “the farm” is still functioning, albeit on a smaller scale — more low-maintenance chickens have replaced the now-deceased rabbits, for example.

The experience made him realize that the locavore movement falls short.

“Knowing the farmer and being the farmer are two totally different things,” he said.

Manny Howard will read from “My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned His Big-City Backyard into a Farm” at Sunny’s Bar [253 Conover St. between Beard and Reed streets in Red Hook, (718) 625-8211] on May 2 at 3 pm; and Greenlight Book Store [686 Fulton St. at Portland Ave. in Fort Greene, (718) 246-0200] on May 13 at 7:30 pm.

Photo by Stefano Giovannini

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A novel idea

What if your heroes are found at the bookstore instead of the ballpark? What if books are your game?

For David Bukszpan, they are, so he teamed up with a friend to launch Novel-T, which produces jersey-style literary t-shirts of famous writers and characters.

Bukszpan explains: “Last year, riding the 4 train after work one day, I saw all these folks on their way to a Yankee game wearing jerseys for Jeter, A-Rod, Petitte, Mantle, Mattingly, etc. I thought, man, it’s great to be able to show your support for your heroes. Too bad my heroes are mostly writers.

“So the thought struck me: why not jerseys for the folks I identify with? Why can’t I show my support for Whitman, or Huck Finn, or crazy old Ahab?”

The public is invited to the launch party and BBQ for Novel-T September 20 from 2-5 p.m. on the deck of Freebird Books, 123 Columbia Street.

The first line of shirts, which will be available for purchase through Freebird, will be debuted, and one dollar from each shirt will go to Eggers’ 826NYC Project, a nonprofit based in Park Slope to help kids, ages six to 18, with their writing skills.

Each shirt features the name of a writer or character on the back, above a number. On the front, each “player” has his/her own unique graphic. There are nine players on the first “team”: Whitman, Bartleby, Finn, Sawyer, Ahab, Dick (Moby), Prynne, Thoreau and Poe. There’s also a second, special edition Poe shirt, bringing the inaugural line of shirts up to 10.

New lines will debut as demand warrants. The first line is limited to the American canon, but future lines will feature foreign writers and characters, and more.

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