Pete's Candy Store Reading Series

FREE - Every other Thursday at 7:30pm

Curated and hosted by Jillian Capewell and Brian Gresko

Over the course of 15 years, Pete's Reading Series has earned a reputation as Brooklyn's premier reading series, where today's literary icons and tomorrow's stars take the stage regularly.

PAST AUTHORS 

Colum McCann, Jonathan Ames, Tom Beller, Lan Samantha Chang, Jennifer Egan, Hari Kunzru, David Lehman, Sam Lipsyte, Francine Prose, Said Sayrafiezadeh, Gary Shetyngart, Colm Toibin, Justin Torres, Hannah Tinti

THIS SEASON'S SCHEDULE

September 7 — Diksha Basu and Victor LaValle

September 21 — David Burr Gerrard and Eugene Lim

October 5 — Paula Bomer, Tamara Shopsin and Paul Sahre

October 19 — Gabe Hudson and Gabe Habash

November 2 — Courtney Maum and Marcy Dermansky

November 16 — Lynn Melnick, Lucy Ives and Melissa Ragsly

December 7 — Anelise Chen and Hannah Lilith Asadi

December 21 — Lit Hub Night

AUTHOR BIOS

Sept 21

David Burr Gerrard is the author of THE EPIPHANY MACHINE (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2017) and SHORT CENTURY (Rare Bird, 2014). He teaches creative writing at the 92nd Street Y, The New School, and the Sackett Street Writers' Workshop.            

Eugene Lim is the author of the novels Fog & Car (Ellipsis Press, 2008), The Strangers (Black Square Editions, 2013) and Dear Cyborgs (FSG Originals, 2017). His writings have appeared in Dazed, Fence, Little Star, The Denver Quarterly, The Brooklyn Rail and elsewhere. Pessimist of the intellect by night; by day, he’s house librarian at the Charles Xavier School for the Greatly Responsibled. He runs Ellipsis Press, and lives in Jackson Heights, NY.   

Oct 5

Paula Bomer is the author of the collection, Inside Madeleine (Soho Press, May 2014), the novel Nine Months (Soho Press, August 2012), which received exuberant reviews inThe Atlantic, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, The Minneapolis Star Tribune and elsewhere. Her collection, Baby and Other Stories (Word Riot Press, December 2010), received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, and O Magazine referred to it as a “brilliant, brutally raw debut.” Her latest book is Mystery and Mortality: Essays on the Sad, Short Gift of Life.    

TAMARA SHOPSIN is a graphic designer and illustrator whose work is regularly features in The New York Times and The New Yorker. She is the author of the memoir MUMBAI NEW YORK SCRANTON, designer of 5 YEAR DIARY, and coauthor, with Jason Fulford, of the photobook for children THIS EQUALS THAT. She is also a cook at her family's restaurant in New York.            

Paul Sahre is a visual contributor to the New York Times and the author of a book on ham radio. He once built and destroyed a life-size monster truck hearse for the band They Might Be Giants. Sahre received his BFA and MFA from Kent State University, has taught at the School of Visual Arts for the past 13 years, and is an in-demand lecturer worldwide. He is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale. He works in New York City.

Oct 19

GABE HUDSON is the author of Dear Mr. President, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Hudson was named one of Granta's 20 Best of Young American Novelists and was a recipient of the Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, the John Hawkes Prize in Fiction from Brown University, and the Adele Steiner Burleson Award in Fiction from the University of Texas at Austin. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Village Voice, McSweeney's, Black Book, and Granta. For many years, he was Editor-at-Large for McSweeney's. He lives in Brooklyn.     

Gabe Habash is the fiction reviews editor for Publishers Weekly. He holds an MFA from New York University and lives in New York. Stephen Florida is his first novel.  

Nov 2

Courtney Maum is the author of the novels Touch and I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You and the chapbook “Notes from Mexico.” She has been published in outlets such as The New York Times, Tin House, Electric Literature, and Buzzfeed, and she has co-written films that have debuted at Sundance and won awards at Cannes. Maum has been a trend forecaster, a fashion publicist, and a party promoter for Corona Extra. She currently works as a product namer for MAC cosmetics from her home in Litchfield County, CT.            

Marcy Dermansky is the author of the novels The Red Car, Bad Marie, and Twins. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, Salon, the Indiana Review, and elsewhere. She lives in New Jersey with her daughter.                              

Nov 16

Lynn Melnick is the author of the poetry collections Landscape with Sex and Violence (2017) and If I Should Say I Have Hope (2012), both with YesYes Books, and the co-editor of Please Excuse This Poem: 100 Poets for the Next Generation (Viking, 2015). Her poetry has appeared in The Guardian, The New Yorker, A Public Space, and elsewhere, and she has written essays and book reviews for Boston Review and LA Review of Books among others. A 2017-2018 fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, she also teaches poetry at the 92Y and serves on the Executive Board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts.            

Lucy Ives is the author of several books of poetry and short prose, including The Hermit and the novella nineties. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Lapham’s Quarterly, and at newyorker.com. For five years she was an editor with the online magazine Triple Canopy. A graduate of Harvard and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from New York University. She teaches at the Pratt Institute and is currently editing a collection of writings by the artist Madeline Gins.            

Melissa Ragsly is a fiction writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017, Joyland, Green Mountains Review, Epiphany, Cosmonauts Avenue and The Rag. She is an Associate Editor at A Public Space. She lives in the Hudson Valley.

Dec 7

Anelise Chen is the author of So Many Olympic Exertions (Kaya Press, Spring 2017), an experimental novel that blends elements of sportswriting, memoir and self help. She received her BA in English from UC Berkeley and her MFA in Fiction from NYU. Her essays, reviews, and profiles have appeared in the New York Times, Gawker, NPR, BOMB Magazine, New Republic, The Morning News, VICE, Village Voice and many other publications. A former fellow of the Asian American Writers' Workshop, she is now fiction editor of AAWW's online publication The Margins. She teaches writing at Columbia University.  

Hannah Lillith Assadi received her MFA in fiction from the Columbia University School of the Arts. She also attended Columbia University for her bachelor's where she received the Philolexian Prize for her poetry and fiction and graduated summa cum laude. She was raised in Arizona and now lives in Brooklyn. Sonora is her first novel.        

Dec 21

The Lit Hub