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 Chloe 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) 

Greenlight welcomed lawyer and critic Hawa Allan to discuss her prescient and timely debut book of nonfiction, Insurrection, a deeply researched and felt history and critique of the paradoxical state of black citizenship in the United States. Tracing the origins of the Insurrection Act of 1807 to our current moment, Allan reveals how the Act empowered the Federal Government to either defend or violate Black enfranchisement at various times throughout history. Throughout, she draws from her own experiences as one of the only Black girls in her leafy Long Island suburb, as a Black lawyer at a predominantly white firm during a visit from presidential candidate Barack Obama, and as a thinker about the use and misuse of appeals to law and order. Author Anjuli Raza Kolb joined Allan for a penetrating conversation on law, the control of history and cultural narratives, and the concept of citizenship as entitlement. (Recorded February 24, 2022) 

Acclaimed and prolific local poet Valerie Hsiung, whose work pushes past the limits of genre and grammar, joined us virtually to present her fourth full-length collection, winner of the Colorado State University Poetry Center's 2019 Open Book Prize. An assemblage of verse, prose poems, scenes, and performance scores, outside voices, please lives in the hidden enmeshments between and underneath the individual stories, events, and facts of gendered and racialized violence, intergenerational trauma, diaspora, and the labor and exploitation involved in making art. Hsiung was joined by poet Ginger Ko for a moving conversation about solitude, belonging, and relating to language and art as “children of the diaspora.” (Recorded February 22, 2022) 

Paul Tran joined us virtually from lush, violet-lit quarters in Oakland for the virtual launch of their scintillating debut collection of poems, All the Flowers Kneeling. In a conversation with award-winning poet and critic Yanyi that both dug deeply into craft and cast its sights on the farthest horizons of becoming, they delved into the work of transforming trauma into monuments that honor one's past selves and forebears and how “the actualized poem requires the actualization of the poet.” (Recorded February 17, 2022) 

Sarah Manguso--award-winning author and one of the most acclaimed and genre-defying prose stylists working today—joined us virtually for the launch of her debut novel. At once an ungilded portrait of girlhood at the crossroads of history and social class as well as a vital confrontation with an all-American whiteness where the ice of emotional restraint meets the embers of smoldering rage, Very Cold People is a haunted jewel of a novel. Manguso and author Elizabeth McCracken discussed the crafting (and misnaming) of fragments, turning to fiction from poetry, and the particular frigid weirdness of New England in the late 20th century. (Recorded February 16, 2022) 

For our one-hundredth(!) podcast episode, we're releasing a very special conversation recorded at our first offsite book launch of 2022 celebrating the second volume of Moon Witch, Spider King, award-winning author Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, his “African Game of Thrones”. In the NYT-bestselling first volume, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Sogolon the Moon Witch proved a worthy adversary to Tracker as they clashed across a mythical African landscape in search of a mysterious boy who disappeared. Now, in Moon Witch, Spider King, James takes us deep into Sogolon's world as she fights to tell her own story, the chronicle of an indomitable woman who bows to no man. In a brilliant, hilarious, and expansive conversation with beloved Brooklyn author and commentator Isaac Fitzgerald at St. Joseph's College, James took us on an ecstatic odyssey through questions of power, personality, and whether truth is possible when the power of storytelling is available only to a select few. (Recorded February 15, 2022)   

For our first foray into livestreamed events and our first event held in-store since March 2020, Greenlight welcomed our Brooklyn neighbor Andrew Lipstein for the launch of his much-anticipated debut novel, Last Resort—which features a scene set in our own Fort Greene store! In a thrilling, metafictional story of fame, fortune, and impossible choices, Lipstein blurs the lines of fact and fiction and raises “thorny dilemmas about art, ethics, and what being a writer really means.” (Kirkus Reviews) Cara Blue Adams (You Never Get it Back) joined for a warm conversation and exploration of the writing process, the problem of authorial ego, and the art of grafting reality into fiction. (Recorded February 10, 2022)

Greenlight welcomed author, scholar, and activist Grace Lavery to our (virtual) stage for the launch of Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis—a “memoir” like nothing you've ever read before. Part literary theory, part musical theater parody, part feminist sci-fi reboot, Please Miss was hailed by author Torrey Peters (Detransition, Baby) as a “can't-look-away performance of wit, language, irreverence, and delight”, and by Carmen Maria Machado (In the Dream House) as “the queer memoir you've been waiting for; a dizzying mix of theory and pastiche, metafiction and memory… hilarious and sexy and terrifying in its brilliance.” In a scintillating conversation with Elif Batuman (The Idiot) that covered everything from finding one's voice through the process of transitioning to gendered roots of the word memoir, Lavery graced us with her singular brilliance. (Recorded February 9, 2022)

When Rachel Krantz met and fell for Adam, he told her that he was looking for a committed partnership—just one that did not include exclusivity. In her nonfiction debut, Open: An Uncensored Memoir of Love, Liberation, and Non-Monogamy, Krantz explores these questions with an unflinching eye and page-turning storytelling, tracing her search to understand what non-monogamy would do to her heart, her mind, and her life through interviews with scientists, psychologists, and people living and loving outside the mainstream. For the book's virtual launch, Krantz joined us along with Jen Winston, author of Greedy, for a frank and heartfelt conversation on non-monogamy, bisexuality, “stigmatization, feeling too much yet not enough of an identity, and struggling through the accidental poetry of everyday life” (--K., Greenlight event host)--and a resounding reminder to write the book you need to write. (Recorded January 25, 2022)

Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo (Girl, Woman, Other) graced our virtual stage from London for the U.S. launch of her new memoir Manifesto: On Never Giving Up. Manifesto offers readers an intimate and inspirational account of Evaristo's life and career as she rebelled against the mainstream and fought bring her creative work into the world over 40+ years of centering the stories and histories of Black Britons. In conversation with bestselling author Rumaan Alam (Leave the World Behind), Evaristo discussed her theory of unstoppability, which helped her chart a path as a young actor and playwright in London, through her political awakenings and activism, and ultimately led to her fierce determination to tell stories that were absent in the literary world around her. (Recorded January 18, 2021)

Acclaimed authors, Greenlight neighbors, and longtime friends Colette Brooks and Jennifer Egan (Manhattan Beach) joined us for a virtual conversation and launch for Colette's newest book of nonfiction, Trapped in the Present Tense. In a lyrical and inventive blend of history, memoir, and visual essays, Brooks explores the mechanics and malleability of the collective American memory. Revisiting some of the more forgotten aspects of recent events in the American story to explain our challenging and often puzzling present—including televised assassinations, the Doomsday Clock, and obsessive diarists—Brooks refreshes the American narrative and “ruminates upon the past while reframing…our present perceptions of what matters most” (Booklist). Brooks and Egan held court and eschewed reminiscence for a clear-eyed talk on craft and “irresponsible research” that kept a steady gaze on “American darkness writ large” (Recorded January 17, 2021)

Leanne Brown's wildly popular and NYT bestselling cookbook Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4/Day showed us that kitchen skill and resourcefulness—not budget—are the keys to great food. Brown returned (virtually) to Greenlight for the launch of her new cookbook, Good Enough: A Cookbook: Embracing the Joys of Imperfection and Practicing Self-Care in the Kitchen. Good Enough champions a different yet complementary approach to food and cooking through the lens of self-care, mental health, and the embrace of imperfection—because who hasn't eaten a handful of nuts over the sink and cold pizza for breakfast? In conversation with cookbook author, kitchen ingenue, and her real-life friend Hawa Hassan (In Bibi's Kitchen), Brown held forth on community, the sea change in home cooking over the pandemic, and focusing less on the outcome than the experience of cooking. (Recorded January 13, 2022)

For Greenlight's first poetry event of 2022, we welcomed Indonesian American poet Cynthia Dewi Oka and acclaimed poet and fiction writer Jenny Zhang (Sour Heart) to share, discuss, and celebrate Oka's third collection, Fire Is Not a Country. Oka's poems track how the energies of migration, exploitation, patriarchal violation, and political repression shape and spar with familial love and obligation. Jenny read as well—sweet and cutting poems from her collection My Baby First Birthday—and together she and Oka waxed affectionately and probingly on the meanings of fire, “the little knives that we are made of,” and the connections between a country, the body, and “how okay we are supposed to be.” (Recorded January 11, 2022)

Acclaimed YA author Leah Konen's second novel for adults, The Perfect Escape, is a pacey, suspenseful, unforgettable thriller about a girls' weekend in the Catskills turned deadly. For Greenlight's first virtual author event of 2022, Konen joined us for a scintillating book launch and conversation with bestselling author and NYT journalist Andrea Bartz (We Were Never Here) that explored the craft of mystery, pregnancy and the writing process, and the question of writing mystery as a “plotter” or a (fly by the seat of your) “pantser”. (Recorded January 5, 2022)

In Greenlight's longstanding tradition of celebrating the debuts of new literary voices, Cara Blue Adams graces our (virtual) stage to present her first story collection, You Never Get It Back—winner of the 2021 John Simmons Short Fiction Award. In these poised and perceptive linked stories set in rural New England and across the country—including Maine, Virginia, and New Mexico—the power of place shines through the journey of a young woman in search of vocation and belonging, grappling with social class and privilege, gender, ambition, violence, and the distance between longing and having. Acclaimed novelist Alexandra Kleeman (You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine) joined Adams for a warm and searching conversation that delved into questions of craft, writing from experience, and what it means to “come of age” for young women today. (Recorded December 13, 2021)

Whiting Award-winning author Amy Leach graces Greenlight's virtual stage  to present The Everybody Ensemble, her newest collection of short, gloriously inventive essays that invite us to see and celebrate anew the “clattering, sometimes discordant but always welcoming chorus of glorious pandemonium” that is our world. In a discussion covering dragonflies, petunias, and encounters with beavers alongside questions of honesty and precision in writing and the comparative merits of research vs. experience, Leach and acclaimed author Eula Biss (Having and Being Had) concoct a potent and effervescent tonic for our times. (Recorded December 9, 2021)

In The Case for Rage, philosopher Myisha Cherry turns popular prejudices about anger on their head and argues for anger's utility—and importance—in the fight against injustice. Anger has a bad reputation; s a “negative emotion”, it's seen by many as counterproductive, distracting, and destructive. But Cherry argues that in fact the transformative and liberatory power of anger—what she terms “Lordean rage”—is crucial to the anti-racist struggle and challenging the status quo. Cherry joined us virtually for a searching, mutually inspiring conversation with celebrated novelist Jacqueline Woodson (Red at the Bone) that paid homage to Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, and Ida B. Wells, and made a strong case not just for rage, but for the power of philosophy and asking critical questions. (Recorded December 6, 2021)

Nostalgia is the defining emotion of our age. Political leaders promise a return to yesteryear. Old movies are remade and cancelled series are rebooted. Veterans reenact past wars, while the displaced across the world long for home. But who is behind this collective ache for a home in the past? Grafton Tanner joins us (virtually) alongside Roisin Kiberd (The Disconnect) to present his newest book about nostalgia, that most ubiquitous and enigmatic of affects, in a conversation that traversed emotions, generations, and modern technology and featured a brief nod to the bygone “lumbersexual”. (Recorded November 10, 2021)

In the lengthening shadow of an exceptional year, Greenlight welcomed to its virtu Donald Cohen, founder and executive director of In the Public Interest, an Oakland-based national research and policy center that studies public goods and services, to discuss his new book co-authored with Allen Mikaelian, The Privatization of Everything. Hailed by Naomi Klein as “an essential read for those who want to fight the assault on public goods and the commons,” Cohen and Mikaelian discuss what happens when we subscribe to the theory that public power over essential public goods—such as clean water and air, education, public transportation, and the social safety net—is dangerous, and they lay out a road map for how to put power over public goods back in the hands of the people. Recorded December 1, 2021.

For phenomenal local writer, theatermaker, and educator Diane Exavier's début collection, The Math of Saint Felix, Greenlight's own Poetry Salon host Angel Nafis held court with Exavier and fellow poets Carlos Sirah and Shayla Lawz for a powerful, multivocal evening of reading, reverie, and irreverence. Exavier's book-length lyric is an attempt to do the math of a woman, a family, a country, and a diaspora, plotting how the sum of one life reveals permutations of many— daughters, sisters, lovers—and the uncountable cost of a single death. Nafis, Lawz, Sirah, and Exavier held space for one another as well as the invisible multitudes living between their lines, delving into questions of “the math of survival”, of audience and witness, and the duty of the writer to witness and tend to their grief. Recorded November 29, 2021.

To commemorate the 2021 edition of the Best American Poetry anthology, Greenlight invited editor and former poet laureate Tracy K. Smith, series editor David Lehman, and contributing poets Chen Chen, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Nancy Miller Gomez, and Dora Malech for a reverent evening. Selected by Smith, this year's exceptional collection explores and reckons with the difficult emotions exposed by a year of collective upheaval and incalculable loss in a panoply of themes, voices, and styles. We laughed, we mourned, we paged through eternities, we rode Tilt-A-Whirls, and we remembered the sense of connection and healing for which we return, year after changing year, to poetry. Recorded November 9, 2021.

Celebrated local writer and performer Nelson Simon graced Greenlight's (virtual) stage to share his new book, Soul of the Hurricane, the unlikely and harrowing true account of his experience sailing into Hurricane Grace, the southern end of the “Perfect Storm.” It was October 1991, and Simon didn't exactly want to sign up as a last-minute crew member transporting a Norwegian schooner from Brooklyn to Bermuda. But one thing led to another, and there he was. What began with an unexpected invitation and ended far from home in a dark, angry sea makes for an epic true story of grit and courage. Writer, journalist, and longtime All Things Considered contributor Amy Eddings joined Simon for a scintillating conversation on surviving near-death experiences and the power of storytelling. Recorded October 28, 2021.

For the better part of a decade, Uli Beutter Cohen rode the subway through New York City's underground to observe society through the lens of our most creative thinkers: readers of books. Greenlight welcomed the acclaimed creator of Subway Book Review to our (virtual) stage to launch her new book Between the Lines, a timely collection of beloved and never-before-published stories that reflect who we are and where we are going in the form of over 170 interviews. In an ebullient, lively conversation with Glory Edim (Well-Read Black Girl) and Lupita Aquino (aka Lupita Reads), Beutter Cohen discussed the history of the Subway Book Review project, the power of community and its status in the book industry and in the age of social media, and the importance of the interview as an act of co-creation between interviewer and subject—a principle the three put into practice with aplomb! (Recorded October 20, 2021)

New Yorker staff writer and acclaimed music journalist Kelefa Sanneh joined Greenlight virtually to launch Major Labels, his debut book of nonfiction and a deeply researched, expansive study of popular music over the past fifty years, refracted through the big genres that have defined and dominated it: rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance music, and pop. Interviewed by Zoe Chace of This American Life, Sanneh discussed the status, politics, and stakes of musical genres in an age replete with streaming and multimedia crossovers, “hipsterdom”, the influence of social media on music criticism, his “nostalgia for a time when people were less nostalgic,” and so much more. (Recorded October 19, 2021)

In his memoir Never Silent, Peter Staley shares the untold story of his journey from closeted Wall Street bond trader to one of the leading AIDS and LGBTQ rights activists of his generation. Infusing personal chronicle with what Tony Kushner (Angels in America) praises as an “incisive, precise, and revelatory insider's history of ACT UP” and “an electrifying primer for anyone who's thinking/worrying/wondering about how to change/save the world,” Staley's firsthand experience at the frontlines of AIDS activism generated a fascinating conversation full of insight and reminiscence with Ann Northrop, veteran journalist and fellow longtime ACT UP member. Staley and Northrop joined Greenlight virtually to discuss the trajectory of their activism, sex positivity and white privilege within the movement, and the present political climate concerning public health, and much more. (Recorded October 18, 2021)

PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of literati darlings Call Me Zebra and Fra Keeler took to Greenlight's virtual stage to launch her third novel, Savage Tongues—a personal and political exploration of desire, power, domination, and human connection that's equal parts Marguerite Duras and Shirley Jackson, Rachel Cusk and Clarice Lispector, tracing a young woman's search for healing in the fall-out of an affair with a much older man. Joined by the inimitable poet Eileen Myles, Oloomi discussed the kaleidoscopic thinking propelling her book, the power of women's retelling, the practice of transcribing life, and how life eludes transcription. (Recorded October 12, 2021)

Episode QS79: Caoilinn Hughes + Diane Cook (December 23, 2021)(Recorded September 30, 2021)Award-winning authors Caoilinn Hughes and Diane Cook took to the Greenlight virtual stage to discuss their recent novels, The Wild Laughter (winner of the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award 2021) and The New Wilderness (shortlisted for the 2020 Man Booker Prize). Along with exploring shared themes of legacy, climate change, “generational robbery”, and the ever-changing challenges of parenting, Hughes and Cook bantered spiritedly about the mystery & process of writing and pondered together the impulse to build new worlds in fiction—to look elsewhere—in order to tell the stories we need to tell.

Mina Stone, author of the cult-favorite Cooking for Artists, joined Greenlight (virtually!) to launch her stunning new cookbook, Lemon, Love & Olive Oil—featuring 80 Mediterranean-style recipes rooted in the traditions passed to her by preceding generations. Stone learned to cook from her Yiayia, who taught her that food doesn't have to be complicated to be delicious—and that almost any dish can be improved with judicious amounts of lemon, olive oil, and salt. Stone's friend, collaborator, and world-renowned artist Urs Fischer joined her for a charming conversation on the ways in which food and cooking touches off from our lives, families, and creative urges—and the secret importance of knowing how to make an ice cream cake! (Recorded September 14, 2021)

In a heartrending and deeply moving evening, two Asian-American literary luminaries, Qian Julie Wang and Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown) welcomed Wang's incandescent debut, Beautiful Country--an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light. Wang and Yu discussed the emotional journey that led her to write this searing memoir and the hard-won process by which she realized it; the transformative powers of education, therapy, and the affection of animals; and the complex, fierce resilience of immigrant parents. A conversation—and book—not to be missed! (Recorded September 13, 2021)

Jai Chakrabarti graced our virtual stage to launch his debut novel, A Play for the End of the World--an unforgettable love story set in early 1970's New York and rural India, a provocative exploration of the role of art in times of political upheaval, and a deeply moving reminder of the power of the past to shape the present. Chakrabarti, joined in conversation by Brigid Hughes of A Public Space (where he was previously a writing fellow!), discussed the entwining of place and personhood, how one moves and exists in the city versus in the country, and the differences between who we are in moments of turmoil and in moments of abundance. (Recorded September 8, 2021)

When acclaimed author Yiyun Li and A Public Space magaine invited people to read War and Peace together at the start of the pandemic, thousands around the globe joined for an 85-day journey through Tolstoy's epic novel. Tolstoy Together, based on this experiment, is a book about the art of reading and an invitation to the collective act of book discussion, with contributions from fellow readers and such writers as Tom Drury, Garth Greenwell, Elliott Holt, Sara Majka, and many others. In a conversation moderated by A Public Space editor Brigid Hughes, Yiyun Li and Alexandra Schwartz spoke before a robust (remote) audience of the comfort of connecting with others during lockdown, resonances between Tolstoy's novel and the present, and the evergreen argument for the power of communal reading. (Recorded August 31, 2021)

Award-winning journalist Eyal Press joined Greenlight to present his groundbreaking, urgent book Dirty Work, which illuminates the moving, sometimes harrowing stories of the people doing the work that society considers essential but morally compromised. Urging us to think about both secrecy and apathy as enabling injustice, Dirty Work reveals fundamental truths about the moral dimensions of work and the hidden costs of inequality in America. In a heavy-hitting, incisive conversation with E. Tammy Kim, New York Times contributor and co-host of the podcast Time to Say Goodbye, Press explored the complexity of activism against structures of power and complicity that shape the lives of “essential workers” who perform the “dirty work” that upholds the current social order. (Recorded August 17, 2021)