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 Chloé 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.)