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.
“The most intimate reading space in Brooklyn. Think of a fine pre-war dining car with an endless supply of booze.”
“Pete’s Candy Store Reading Series is by far the best series in Brooklyn, at the best bar. It’s the KGB of Brooklyn!”
“It has never been clear to me who Pete is, but there is no finer place to give - or hear - a reading in this city.”
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
Jan. 25: Jen George, Hermione Hoby, and Matthew Lansburg
Feb. 15: Mikkel Rosengaard and Joanna Scutts
March 15: Danielle Lazarin and Rachel Lyon
April 19: Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars
May 17: Rumaan Alam, Alexander Chee, and Naima Coster
June 21: TBD
AUTHOR BIOS
Jan. 25: Jen George, Hermione Hoby, and Matthew Lansburg
Jen George was born in Thousand Oaks, California. She lives and works in New York City. THE BABYSITTER AT REST (Dorothy, a publishing project, 2016) is her first book.
Hermione Hoby writes about culture, especially books, film, music, and gender, for the Guardian, the New Yorker, the New York Times, the TLS and others. She also writes the Stranger of the Week column at the Awl. Her debut novel, published by Catapult, is Neon in Daylight.
Matthew Lansburgh's collection of linked stories, Outside Is the Ocean, won the 2017 Iowa Short Fiction Award. His fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, Electric Literature, StoryQuarterly, Guernica, Ecotone, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Joyland, and has won awards from Columbia Journal and the Florida Review. Matthew earned an MFA in Fiction from NYU, where he received a Veterans Writing Workshop Fellowship.
Feb. 15: Mikkel Rosengaard and Joanna Scutts
Mikkel Rosengaard is from Elsinore, Denmark. He has written for the Architectural Review and PBS's Art21, among others, and his fiction has been published in five languages. The Invention of Ana is his first novel.
Joanna Scutts is the inaugural Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Women’s History at the New-York Historical Society and a contributor to the New Republic, the Guardian, and other publications. She lives in New York.
March 15: Danielle Lazarin, Mira T Lee and Rachel Lyon
Danielle Lazarin’s short stories have won grants from New York Foundation for the Arts and the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, the Glimmer Train Family Matters Award, and Hopwood Awards. She is a graduate of the writing programs of Oberlin College and the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. She lives in her native New York City with her husband and daughters.
Mira T. Lee's debut novel, Everything Here is Beautiful, was selected by the American Booksellers Association as one of Winter/Spring 2018's Top 10 Debut titles. Her short fiction has appeared in journals such as the Southern Review, the Gettysburg Review, the Missouri Review, Triquarterly, Harvard Review, and American Short Fiction, and has twice received special mention for the Pushcart Prize. In her previous lives, Mira has also been known as a graphic designer, a pop-country drummer, a salsa dancing fanatic, and a biology grad school dropout. Mira is an alum of Stanford University, and currently lives in Cambridge, MA.
Rachel Lyon is the author of the novel SELF PORTRAIT WITH BOY. She teaches for the Sackett Street Writers Workshop, Catapult, Slice, and elsewhere. Most weeks she sends out a free writing/thinking prompts newsletter. She is a cofounder of the monthly reading series Ditmas Lit.
April 19: Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars
Readers to be announced.
May 17: Rumaan Alam, Alexander Chee, and Naima Coster
Rumaan Alam is the author of the novel Rich and Pretty and That Kind of Mother. 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.
Alexander Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, and an editor at large at VQR. His essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, T Magazine, Tin House, Slate, Guernica, and Out, among others. He is winner of a 2003 Whiting Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in prose and a 2010 MCCA Fellowship, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak. He is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.
Naima Coster is the author of the novel Halsey Street. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Arts & Letters, Lit Hub, Catapult, The Rumpus, Aster(ix), A Practical Wedding, Guernica, and has been anthologized in The Best of Kweli and This is the Place: Women Writing About Home. Naima is the recipient of numerous awards, most recently the 2017 Cosmonauts Avenue Nonfiction Prize, judged by Roxane Gay. Naima studied creative writing at Yale, Fordham University, and Columbia University, where she earned her MFA. She has taught writing to students in prison, youth programs, and universities. She currently teaches at Wake Forest University and is a Senior Fiction Editor at Kweli.
June 21: TBD