Every year I feel overwhelmed about what to see and hear at the Brooklyn Book Festival; When I finally do shuffle over to Borough Hall I  realize that the three most interesting things (upon first glance at the distractingly large itinerary) are happening at the same time, so I just turn around and shuffle home, vowing to do a better job next year. This year ‘next year’ finally happened and I curated this list with you all in mind. You’re welcome. See you Sunday.

10 AM: A panel about using time travel and non-linear narrative featuring Seth Fried, Samantha Hunt and others. Or, if you’re feeling able to handle deep, dark stuff this early in the morning, Granta is having a panel about writing after trauma, focusing on 9/11.

11 AM: The Good, The Bad and The Family, a panel moderated by Rob Spillman of Tin House. Or, Radical Fictions a panel and readings by David Goodwillie, Jennifer Gilmore, and Justin Taylor.

Noon: Something called Epic Confusion which features Nadia Kalman, Chuck Klosterman, Sam Lipsyte, and Tiphanie Yanique who will read and talk about this confusion.

1 PM:  Apocalypse Now, and Then What? featuring Tananarive Due, Patrick Somerville and Colson Whitehead. Moderated by Paul Morris, Bomb Magazine.

2 PM: Politics & Poetry: Timothy Donnelly, Nick Flynn, Thomas Sayers Ellis and Evie Shockley.

3 PM: Lifestyles of the Rich and Richer. Chris Lehmann (Rich People Things) and David Graeber (Debt: The First 5,000 Years) discuss the current state of our economy and where we’re headed.

4 PM:  Where are we? A bunch of critics talk about where we are any why we’re anxious. Or go have a drink somewhere.

5 PM: And because life is not fair, you’ll be forced to chose between three awesome-sounding events all happening at the same time in the same building.
-Amelia Gray & others reading for Short and Sweet (and Sour)
-A panel titled The Sacred and the Profane: A Modern Pilgrim’s Progress. Featuring Darcey Steinke and others.
-Unholy Paths to Redemption:  Jennifer Egan, James Hannaham and John Burnham Schwartz  look at the alternative routes their characters take to lose themselves—jeopardizing work, family, and love—to find themselves again.

(Or, if you walk outside this building, David Shrigley will be drawing on audience members)

Locations & full details after the jump…

ST. FRANCIS MCARDLE HALL (180 Remsen Street)

10:00 A.M. In and Out of Time: Talking about Time Travel. Writers Diana Gabaldon (An Echo in the Bone), Samantha Hunt (The Invention of Everything Else) and Seth Fried (The Great Frustration) read from their work and discuss what happens when you go beyond a non-linear narrative and remove the boundaries of space and time from a novel.  Moderated by Andrea Montejo, Indent Agency.

BOROUGH HALL COMMUNITY ROOM (209 Joralemon Street)

10:00 A.M. Granta Presents Conflict, Trauma and Writing: How we Tell Stories After a Crisis. The attacks on September 11, 2001 brought up many questions about writing and representation. Ten years later, the question is still being asked. Madison Smartt Bell (The Color of Night), Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, and Amy Waldman (The Submission) explore how 9/11 continues to echo in fiction, and how one tells a story following crisis, trauma and conflict.

ST. FRANCIS MCARDLE HALL (180 Remsen Street)

11:00 A.M. The Good, the Bad, and the Family. Families, you can’t live with them, you can’t live without them. Writers Sergio Troncoso (From this Wicked Patch of Dust) Tom Perrotta (The Leftovers), and Elizabeth Nunez (Boundaries) read from their work and, while looking at how abuse, death, divorce, nationality, and religion can impact a person, these three authors examine what constitutes as home and what makes a family.  Introduced by Rob Spillman, Tin House.

BROOKLYN HISTORICAL SOCIETY MAIN HALL (128 Pierrepont Street)

11:00 A.M. Presented by Housing Works Bookstore Cafe: Radical Fictions. A family confronts the end of the Cold War in Washington, DC, 1979. A group of drunk punks await their prophet as the millennium looms in Gainesville, Florida, 1999. A beautiful eco-terrorist bombs an office building in New York, New York, 2010. Jennifer Gilmore (Something Red), David Goodwillie (American Subversive), and Justin Taylor (Gospel of Anarchy) read from their work and discuss the extremist ideologies and cultish communities their characters find themselves entangled in.  Moderated by Marcela Landres.

ST. FRANCIS MCARDLE HALL (180 Remsen Street)

12:00 P.M. Epic Confusion. Readings from Nadia Kalman (The Cosmopolitans), Chuck Klosterman (The Visible Man), Sam Lipsyte (The Ask) , and Tiphanie Yanique (How to Escape from a Leper Colony) followed by a discussion of confusion, the difficulties of communicating with others and the obstacles that create this confusion.  Moderated by Tiphanie Yanique (How to Escape from a Leper Colony).

BOROUGH HALL COURTROOM (209 Joralemon Street)   Tickets Required

1:00 P.M.  Apocalypse Now, and Then What? Sure you survived an earthquake and hurricane in the same week, but what about the apocalypse? Writers Tananarive Due (My Soul to Take), Patrick Somerville (The Universe in Miniature in Miniature), and Colson Whitehead (Zone One) look at iterations of the end of the world as we know it and what that means for their characters. Moderated by Paul Morris, Bomb Magazine.

BROOKLYN HISTORICAL SOCIETY MAIN HALL (128 Pierrepont Street)

2:00 P.M. Politics and Poetry. Poets Timothy Donnelly (The Cloud Corporation), Nick Flynn (The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands), Thomas Sayers Ellis (Skin, Inc: Identity Repair Poems) and Evie Shockley (The New Black) explore poetry’s capacity for social change role and the role of poetry in public life. Moderated by Camille Rankine of Cave Canem Foundation.

BROOKLYN HISTORICAL SOCIETY LIBRARY (128 Pierrepont Street)

3:00 P.M. Lifestyles of the Rich and Richer. We are living in an almost comic enactment of Marx’s predictions about class and labor: the rich get richer, the poor are getting, well, you know… Marx foresaw the decline of small business and the middle class at the hands of unrestrained capitalism more than 100 years ago. With a gimlet eye and wry outlook, Chris Lehmann (Rich People Things) and David Graeber (Debt: The First 5,000 Years…) discuss the current state of our economy and where we’re headed.

ST. FRANCIS  (180 Remsen Street) All these events are at 5 pm.

ST. FRANCIS VOLPE LIBRARY: Short and Sweet (and Sour). Short Story weavers Clark Blaise (The Meagre Tarmac), Seth Fried (The Great Frustration), Amelia Gray (AM/PM) read from their works followed by Q&A.  Moderated by Stephanie Opitz.

ST. FRANCIS MCARDLE HALL: The Sacred and the Profane: A Modern Pilgrim’s Progress. Darcey Steinke (Easter Everywhere), Michael Muhammad Knight (The Taqwacores), and Peter Bebergal (Too Much to Dream) explore unorthodox approaches to faith—how we find it, how we lose it, and how we redefine it for ourselves.  Moderated by Meera Subramanian, editor of Killing the Buddha.
ST. FRANCIS AUDITORIUM (Need Tickets): Unholy Paths to Redemption: Pulitzer Prize winning author Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad), James Hannaham (God Says No) and John Burnham Schwartz (Northwest Corner)  look at the alternative routes their characters take to lose themselves—jeopardizing work, family, and love—to find themselves again.  Moderated by Timothy Houlihan, St. Francis College.

NORTH STAGE (Borough Hall Plaza/Columbus Park)
5:00 P.M. Tatoo/Art. Word is that artist/author David Shrigley will be drawing some temp tattoos on audience members!