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

Sept 15th – Rumaan Alam, Nicole Dennis-Benn, and Anna Noyes

Oct 6th – Andrea Kleine and Anna Solomon

Oct 20th – Tobias Carroll, Rachell Hall, and Imbolo Mbue

Nov 3rd – Lindsay Hatton and Caroline Leavitt

Nov 17th – Annie DeWitt, John Jodzio, and Megan Snyder Camp

Dec 1st – Chloe Caldwell, Amina Gaultier, and Jade Sharma

Dec 15th – A Night with Joyland Magazine, featuring m.j. corey, Alison Hart, and Kyle Lucia Wu

AUTHOR BIOS

Sept 15th

Rumaan Alam is the author of the novel Rich and Pretty. His stories have appeared in StoryQuarterly, Crazyhorse, Meridian, and elsewhere. He's written on design and other subjects for the Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, and other places, and he's published essays on BuzzFeed, The Lit Hub, Elle.com, The Cut, and others . Rumaan studied writing at Oberlin College, and now lives in New York with his husband and two kids.

Nicole Dennis-Benn is the author of the highly acclaimed debut novel, HERE COMES THE SUN, which was called one of the best books to read this summer and beyond by The New York Times, NPR, BBC, and BuzzFeed, among a host of other prestigious publications. Her work has appeared in ELLE Magazine, Electric Literature, Lenny Letter, Catapult, and many other venues. She's been awarded a Richard and Julie Logsdon Fiction Prize, and two of her stories have been nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize in Fiction. Nicole has an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, and now lives with her wife in Brooklyn.

Anna Noyes is the author of the debut story collection, Goodnight, Beautiful Women, which was named a New York Times Editors' Choice. She has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in Vice, A Public Space, and Guernica, among others. She has received the Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellowship, the James Merrill House Fellowship, and the Lighthouse Works Fellowship, and has served as writer-in-residence at the Polli Talu Arts Center in Estonia. Goodnight, Beautiful Women was awarded the 2013 Henfield Prize for Fiction and the 2016 Lotos Foundation Prize, and is a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and an Indie Next Great Reads pick for June. Noyes was raised in Downeast Maine.

Oct 6th

Andrea Kleine is a writer, choreographer, and performance artist. She is a five-time MacDowell Colony fellow and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow. Her debut novel, CALF, was described by Publishers’ Weekly as “unsettling, scary, and often brilliant” and named one of their Best Fiction Books of 2015.

Anna Solomon is the author of Leaving Lucy Pear and The Little Bride and a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe, One Story, Ploughshares, Slate, and MORE. Solomon is co-editor with Eleanor Henderson of Labor Day: True Birth Stories by Today's Best Women Writers. Previously, she worked as a journalist for National Public Radio. She was born and raised in Gloucester, Massachusetts and lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her husband and two children.

Oct 20th

Tobias Carroll is the managing editor of Vol.1 Brooklyn. His writing has been published by Bookforum, Men's Journal, Tin House, Hazlitt, and Rolling Stone. He is the author of the collection Transitory and the novel Reel. He's on Twitter at @TobiasCarroll.

Rachel Hall is the author Heirlooms, (BkMk Press) which was selected by Marge Piercy for the G.S. Sharat Chandra book prize. Hall’s recent work appears in Natural Bridge, Bellingham Review,Crab Orchard Review, Midwestern Gothic, and Lilith, which awarded her the 2016 fiction prize. She teaches creative writing and literature at the State University of New York at Geneseo, where she holds the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

IMBOLO MBUE is a native of Limbe, Cameroon. She holds a B.S. from Rutgers University and an M.A. from Columbia University. A resident of the United States for over a decade, she lives in New York City. BEHOLD THE DREAMERS is her first novel.

Nov 3rd

Lindsay Hatton is the author of the novel MONTEREY BAY. She is a graduate of Williams College and holds an MFA from the Creative Writing Program at New York University. She currently resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but was born and raised in Monterey, California, and currently resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and two daughters.

Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times Bestselling author of Pictures of You and Is This Tomorrow, and 8 other novels. Her 11th novel Cruel Beautiful World is an October Indie Next Pick. A book critic for People Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle and the Boston Globe, she's the recipient of a New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship, a finalist in the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, and was long listed for the Maine Readers' Prize. She teaches novel writing online at both Stanford and UCLA and works with private clients. Visit her at carolineleavit.com

Nov 17

Annie DeWitt it a fiction writer, essayist and critic, and a recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Tin House, The Believer, Guernica, Esquire, BOMB, Electric Literature, and many other venues. Annie holds a B.A. from Brown University and an M.F.A. in Fiction from Columbia School of the Arts where she now teaches. Annie was a Co-Founding Editor of Gigantic, a literary journal of short prose and art. Her debut story collection CLOSEST WITHOUT GOING OVER was shortlisted for the Mary McCarthy prize. WHITE NIGHTS IN SPLIT TOWN CITY is her debut novel.

John Jodzio's work has been featured in a variety of places including This American Life, McSweeney's, and One Story. He's the author of the short story collections, Knockout (Soft Skull Press, Spring 2016), Get In If You Want To Live and If You Lived Here You’d Already Be Home. He lives in Minneapolis. 

Megan Snyder-Camp's most recent collections are Wintering (Tupelo Press, 2016) and The Gunnywolf (Bear Star Press, 2016). She lives in Seattle. 

Dec 1st

CHLOE CALDWELL is the author of the novella, WOMEN and the essay collection Legs Get Led Astray. Chloe’s next essay collection,I’ll Tell You in Person, will release fall of 2016 from CoffeeHouse & Emily Books. She teaches creative nonfiction writing in New York City and online. She grew up in the hamlet of Spencertown, New York and after living in New York City, Washington, Oregon, and a brief stint in Berlin, currently resides in Hudson.

Amina Gautier is the author of the short story collections At-Risk, Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award (University of Georgia Press, 2011), and Now We Will Be Happy, Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction (University of Nebraska Press, 2014). She has published over eighty-five short stories. They appear in Agni, Best African American Fiction, Callaloo, Glimmer Train, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, New Stories From the South, Notre Dame Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Review, and Storyquarterly among other places.

Jade Sharma is a writer living in New York. She has an MFA from The New School.

Dec 15th

mj corey grew up all over the country, moved to New York in 2008, and received her MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Columbia University in 2014. In 2011 she received an honorable mention in Fiction from the Astraea Foundation, and in 2013 she wrote and produced her first short film, Rebound, which was recently featured by The Big Apple Film Festival. Her work has been seen in The Brooklyn Rail, Killing the Buddha, Medium, and Papercut Press, among others. For more, visit mjwriting.tumblr.com.

Alison B. Hart's writing has appeared in The Missouri Review, The Offing, Hippocampus Magazine, The Scofield and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of the long-running Pete's Reading Series in Brooklyn, and she received her MFA from the New School.

Kyle Lucia Wu is a writer based in Brooklyn. She has an MFA in creative writing from The New School and is the managing editor of Joyland. Follow her on Twitter @kylelucia