The Greenlight Bookstore Podcast

Created and hosted by writers Patrick Sauer and David J. Roth, Squawkin’ Sports is an ongoing series featuring book chats with grown-up authors writing about grown-ups playing kiddie games. For this installment, Sauer and Roth chat with staff writer and editor at The Washington Post, Timothy Bella, about his new book Barkley: A Biography. Informed by over 370 original interviews and painstaking research, Bella’s Barkley is the most comprehensive biography to date of one of the most talked-about icons in the world of sports. Library Journal calls it "The definitive account of Barkley’s life so far. Essential reading for all basketball fans." Bella, Sauer, and Roth joined virtually for our final event of 2022 in our beloved series on sports and the stories that make them so gloriously human. (Recorded December 8, 2022.) 

When she left a chaotic home at eighteen, author Sarah Fawn Montgomery chased restlessness, claiming places on the West Coast, Midwest, and East Coast, while determined never to settle. Now her family is ravaged by addiction, illness, and poverty; the country is increasingly divided; and the natural worlds in which she seeks solace are under siege by wildfire, tornadoes, and unrelenting storms. In her new book Halfway from Home, Montgomery turns to nostalgia as a way to grieve a rapidly-changing world, excavating the stories and scars we bury and unearthing literal and metaphorical childhood time capsules and treasures. Montgomery joined us virtually with James Tate Hill for a conversation exploring writing disability and ways to discover hope and healing amidst emotional and environmental collapse. (Recorded November 3, 2022.) 

How can we live with integrity and pleasure in this world of police brutality and racism? In author, activist, and our own Brooklyn neighbor Ryan Lee Wong's extraordinary debut novel, an Asian American activist is challenged by his mother to face this question amidst generational change, a mother’s secret, and an activist’s coming-of-age. As humorous as it is profound, Which Side Are You On is a celebration of seeking a life that is both virtuous and fun, an ode to mothering and being mothered. Greenlight welcomed Wong for an in-store reading and conversation with award-winning author of A Burning, Megha Majumdar. Despite some technical difficulties, this packed and proud event was still so preciously intimate. (Recorded October 12, 2022.) 

Greenlight was thrilled to welcome award-winning author and long-time friend of the store Saeed Jones back to our store to celebrate the release of his new poetry collection, Alive at the End of the World. In haunted poems glinting with laughter, pierced by grief and charged with history, Jones explores the public and private betrayals of life as we know it. Jones ushers his readers toward the realization that the end of the world is already here—and the apocalypse is a state of being. Joined by Adam Falkner, Saeed offers an oasis of communion, with the self and with one another, in this standing-room only event. (Recorded September 22, 2022.) 

In her utterly profound and thought-provoking debut memoir and companion to her viral 2018 Salon article “What a Dominatrix Knows about #MeToo,” writer, professor, and former sex worker Belcher retraces her journey from broke gender studies PhD student in Los Angeles who remakes herself as L.A.’s Renowned Lesbian Dominatrix, specializing in male clients who want a domme to make them feel worthless, shameful, and weak—all the abuse regularly heaped upon women for free. Belcher joined us for a celebration of this stunning feat of a memoir in-store with award-winning author of Easy Beauty Chloé Cooper Jones for a scintillating reading and a conversation upending our ideas about desire, class, and power. (Recorded July 20, 2022.) 

Hannah used to be all about focus, back before she shattered her ankle and her Olympic dreams in one bad soccer play. These days, she’s all about distraction. Enter Bonanza, the local entertainment multiplex and site of Hanna’s summer employment. Under the neon lights of Bonanza--with flirty co-workers, ex-best friends, and her brother's hot best friend--Hannah must decide whether she can find a way to discover a new self in the midst of her old life. In this virtual event, Greenlight was delighted to once again host our Brooklyn neighbor and acclaimed YA author, Laura Silverman, in celebration of her new book, Those Summer Nights. Silverman was joined by friend and fellow author, Marisa Kanter (As If On Cue), for a rousing reading and conversation. (Recorded August 23, 2022.) 

Like a song that feels written just for you, Pham's debut work of nonfiction captures the imagination and refuses to let go. Pop Song is a book about love and about falling in love—with a place, or a painting, or a person—and the joy and terror inherent in the experience of that love. Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Electric Literature, and NPR, Pham's collection is "a warm and expansive portrait of a woman’s mind that feels at once singular and universal"(Buzzfeed). Pham joined us in person for the paperback release of Pop Song, in conversation with award-winning poet Sally Wen Mao (Oculus), where they extolled the virtues of documenting life. A probing conversation "balanced between, head, heart, and body" (-Jean, Greenlight event host). (Recorded June 30, 2022.)

Greenlight welcomed Zakiya Dalila Harris in-person to our Fort Greene events stage to celebrate the paperback release of her New York Times-bestselling novel The Other Black Girl, a "dazzling, darkly humorous story" that explores the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing (Publishers Weekly, Starred Review). Acclaimed journalist and author Andrea Bartz joined Harris for a warm and witty conversation on the writing process, the strangeness and delight of going from being an editor among authors to an author among editors, and the complicated value of “frenemyship”. (Recorded June 13, 2022.) 

Jessi Jezewska Stevens graced our events stage to launch her brilliant new novel out from And Other Stories, one of the most forward-thinking independent publishers based in the UK. The Visitors is a mordantly funny tour through a world where not only civic infrastructure but our darkest desires (not to mention our novels) are vulnerable to malware; where mythical creatures talk like Don DeLillo; where love is little more than a blip in our metadata. Critic Christian Lorentzen joined Stevensen for an evening exploring How We Got Here and What We Do Next as we chart the last days of a broken status quo. (Recorded June 8, 2022.) 

Created and hosted by poet and former Greenlight bookseller Angel Nafis, Greenlight’s Poetry Salon welcomes locally and nationally celebrated poets for a powerful and moving evening of poetry and performance. For our triumphant return to in-person Salons, we welcomed Renia White and her collection Casual Conversation, alongside esteemed poet Aracelis Girmay (The Black Maria), who selected it for BOA Editions's Blessing the Boats Selections. White’s debut poetry collection strikes up a conversation, considering what’s being said, what isn’t, and where it all comes from, probing the norms and mores of everyday interactions. Listen back to a reverent and joyful evening in verse, led in ceremony by our masterful host Nafis. (Recorded May 26, 2022.)  

When artists and athletes age, what happens to their work? Does it ripen or rot? Achieve a new serenity or succumb to an escalating torment? Acclaimed author of Out of Sheer Rage and “one of our greatest living critics” (New York) Geoff Dyer considers these questions in his newest book, The Last Days of Roger Federer, an extended meditation on late style and last works. Joining us virtually in conversation with Sam Lipsyte, Dyer gave us the span of his study and delved into the heart of its questions—what would John Coltrane’s music have become if he hadn’t passed so suddenly? Beethoven’s, if he had retained his hearing? Is it better to peak and eke out into oblivion, or better to go out on a high note? (Recorded May 18, 2022.) 

Greenlight welcomed celebrated Korean author and Man Asian Literary Prize winner Kyung-sook Shin (Please Look After Mom) and acclaimed translator Anton Hur, who called in live from Seoul, Korea to grace our virtual stage. Celebrating their joint achievement, Violets—written by Shin, translated by Hur, and published by Feminist Press—Hur both interviewed and translated for Ms. Shin, who led a contemplative, lyrical discussion regarding her process and aspirations for the book, traveling to farms in the middle of the night to get the smell of soil and flowers just right, and how “sadness becomes beauty the more you look at it, and beauty likewise becomes sadness the more you look at it.” (Recorded May 10, 2022.) 

When the unnamed narrator of Alyssa Songsiridej’s debut novel Little Rabbit first meets a choreographer at an artists' residency in Maine, it's not a match. But when they run into each other a few months later, their encounter sets off a summer of expanding her own body's boundaries—her body learns to obediently follow his, and his desires quickly become inextricable from her pleasure. This must be happiness, right? Songsiridej sticks a singular landing with this exhilarating and deeply unflinching look at desire, creativity, ambition, sex, and power. Songsiridej joined us for the launch in conversation with acclaimed author Julia Phillips (Disappearing Earth), where they discussed questions of craft, the writing of sexuality, and the recentering of female lust and creative ambition. (Recorded May 5, 2022.) 

Greenlight welcomed author Alejandro Varela to celebrate his debut novel, The Town of Babylon--named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Buzzfeed, Lambda Literary, and more. Varela probes the intertwining of community and self and renders an intimate portrait of queer, racial, and class identity in this moving, politically engaged tale. Andrés, a gay, Latinx professor, returns to his suburban hometown to help his ailing father and ends up attending his 20 year high school reunion, which brings him back into contact with the many characters from his youth: his first love who is now married with children, his former best friend who is being institutionalized for mental illness, a man he thinks killed someone in high school in a homophobic rage who is now a minister, and more. In conversation with Rumaan Alam (Leave the World Behind), Varela discussed “public health fiction”, the distance between experience and fiction, the liberatory politics of queerness, and the basic desire to figure out “how one can stand to live in this world and enjoy it.” (Recorded May 4, 2022.)

As we continue to grapple with uncertainty in our world, how can writers and creators build community and make an imprint? Whose voices get heard and how can we use craft to shape a new blueprint for the future? MacArthur Fellow and author of The City We Became N. K. Jemisin joined us virtually for a night of discussion and community in support of The Octavia Project, which fosters spaces of imagination and exploration for NYC teens, using speculative fiction to envision new futures. In a lively conversation with next generation of writers from The Octavia Project, Jemisin discussed what it means to be a storyteller, the challenge of working on one’s craft as a marginalized person, and the importance and power of building community. (Recorded April 5, 2022.) 

Acclaimed, Whiting Award-winning poet Roger Reeves probes the apocalypses and raptures of humanity—climate change, anti-Black racism, familial and erotic love, ecstasy and loss—in his second collection of poems, Best Barbarian. Roaming across the literary and social landscape, visiting with Beowulf’s Grendel and the jazz musician Alice Coltrane, reckoning with immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border and thinking through the fraught beauty of the moon on a summer night after the police have killed a Black man, Reeves’s formally elegant and daring poems ask urgently “Who has not been an entryway shuddering in the wind / Of another’s want, a rose nailed to some dark longing and bled?” Reeves joined us virtually in conversation with fellow poet and old friend A. Van Jordan (Rise) for a positively bibliographic conversation covering craft, grief, jazz, theory, and time as a structure—a visionary meeting of minds. (Recorded March 29, 2022.) 

The Greenlight Bookstore Podcast kicks off its third season—though we remain far from the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re out of quarantine! One of our first successes in this new age of author events was the standing-room-only launch for Elaine Hsieh Chou’s acclaimed debut, Disorientation—an uproarious and bighearted story of a Taiwanese American woman’s coming-of-consciousness that ignites chaos on a college campus. Chou was joined by author and critic Larissa Pham (Pop Song) for a sharp, searching, and sincere discussion of the politics of Asian-American solidarity and the perils of contemporary dating. Despite some technical difficulties, this golden conversation was a triumphant return to our beloved and well-missed in-store events programming—we're so glad to be back! (Recorded March 24, 2022.) 

We bid farewell to our “Quarantine Season” of podcasts as we navigate our way back to in-person author events at Greenlight Bookstore! For our virtual season’s swan song, we reprise award-winning poet Yanyi’s virtual launch event for DREAM OF THE DIVIDED FIELD, a collection on heartbreak and transitions, written with a piercing lyric ferocity. How can we carry our homes with us? Informed by Yanyi’s experiences of immigration, violent heartbreak, and a bodily transition, these poems explore the contradictions that accompany shifts from one state of being to another. Acclaimed poet Sandra Lim (THE CURIOUS THING) joined Yanyi in a generous conversation that telescoped through questions of astrology, craft, the importance of journaling, and the chorus of influences that sing through one poet’s voice. (Recorded March 17, 2022.)

In a virtual event co-presented with our friends at Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, MA, award-winning author NoViolet Bulawayo joined us to launch GLORY, her “manifoldly clever, brilliant... satire with sharper teeth” (The NYT Book Review). Inspired by the unexpected fall by coup in November 2017 of Robert G. Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president of nearly four decades, GLORY shows a country's imploding, narrated by a chorus of animal voices that unveil the ruthlessness required to uphold the illusion of absolute power and the imagination and bulletproof optimism to overthrow it completely. Bulawayo was joined by fellow acclaimed Zimbabwean author Novuyo Tshuma (House of Stone) for a reading and heartening discussion of the power of allegory, the importance of “reading dangerously”, and their vital belief that “a better Zimbabwe is possible”. (Recorded March 9, 2022.)

Celebrated New Yorker staff writer and author Rebecca Mead joined us virtually from across the pond to discuss her topical new memoir, Home/Land--a moving reflection on the complicated nature of home and homeland, and the heartache and adventure of leaving an adopted country in order to return to your native land. In conversation with fellow New Yorker staff writer and author of Trick Mirror Jia Tolentino, Mead lead us through a reading focused on the architectural idea of “historical movement”--the sinking and cracking of buildings as a city ages—and a conversation that wound through the privilege and pitfalls of moving one's home and the relationship between geography and the character of places. (Recorded March 3, 2022)