GG's Guide to the Brooklyn Book Festival

Are you ready to get nerdy and wordy? The 2012 Brooklyn Book Festival is this Sunday, Sept. 23rd!

This year's fest features a record 208+ authors and 104 panels—including Tony Danza and Mary Markowitz discussing education and writing; a once-in-a-lifetime chance to witness literary greats Paul Auster, Pete Hamill, and Edwidge Danticat in conversation; and straight talk about everything from sex and violence to cyborgs in contemporary lit. Not to mention hundreds of vendors, including publishers large and small, literary magazines, bookstores, literacy organizations, nonprofit groups, writers unions, universities, and on and on. And there are "bookend events" all over the city all week long.

Seem a little overwhelming? Never fear! Gotham's intrepid Director of Operations and resident ambassador to the Brooklyn literary scene has you covered. Here's Oriana's list of "must see" author events to check out throughout the day. And you can find the full roster of offerings (along with a festival map) here.

See you in Downtown Brooklyn!

Literary Lions. 
2:00 pm, St. Ann and the Holy Trinity Church (157 Montague Street)
Readings by award winning authors Pete Hamill (Tabloid City), Edwidge Danticat (Create Dangerously) and Paul Auster (Winter Journal). Whether their point of view is a palimpsest of Brooklyn fiction or set in other places, they have each lived in Brooklyn and been influenced by it. Followed by Q & A. Introduced by Johnny Temple, Publisher, Akashic Books and Chair of the Brooklyn Literary Council.
Oriana says: If there's a more potent Brooklyn literary pairing than luminary Paul Auster and king of the indie presses Johnny Temple, I'd like to hear about it.

Ice or Salt: The Personal in Fiction. 
11:00 am, Brooklyn Borough Hall Courtroom (209 Joralemon Street)
W.B. Yeats wrote, “All that is personal soon rots; it must be packed in ice or salt.” Authors Siri Hustvedt (Living, Thinking, Looking), Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård (My Struggle)and Sheila Heti (How Should a Person Be?) will consider how writing technique—“ice or salt”—transforms the personal into art that connects to a broad audience. Moderated by Phillip Lopate.
Oriana says: Sheila Heti is a small-press darling-of-the-moment. I heard her read at Powerhouse recently and she was terrific.

Let’s Talk About Sex: Grappling with Gender in the 21st Century.
2:00 pm, Main Stage (Borough Hall Plaza)
Is biology destiny? What does it mean today to be a man, a woman, or to feel somewhere in between? Naomi Wolf (Vagina: A New Biography), Carlos Andres Gomez (Man Up: Cracking the Code of Modern Manhood) and Kate Bornstein (A Queer and Pleasant Danger) consider the role of sex and gender in culture today, how it makes us, and how we react to the trappings of gender put upon us by society at large. Moderated by Hanna Rosin (The End of Men).
Oriana says: I've been a huge fan of Bornstein since I read Gender Outlaw in college, and of course Naomi Wolf is always fascinating and smart.

Worlds Built over Time.
2:00 pm, Saint Francis Auditorium (180 Remsen Street)
This all-star panel brings together the narrative geniuses of Jaime Hernandez (Love and Rockets), Carla Speed McNeil (Finder), Adrian Tomine (New York Stories) and Gabrielle Bell (The Voyeurs) to discuss how they’ve developed characters, stories, and imagined worlds over serial publications. Moderated by Bill Kartalopoulos, co-organizer, Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival. Featuring screen projection.
Oriana says: The Hernandez brothers are some of the godfathers of the modern comics scene, and Adrian Tomine's Summer Blonde was the book that brought me back to graphic novels almost a decade ago.

The PEN Translation Committee Presents North African Writing in the Wake of the Arab Spring.
5:00pm, Brooklyn Borough Hall Community Room (209 Joralemon Street)
Noted translators, editors and poets Pierre Joris (Exile Is My Trade: a Habib Tengour Reader), Deborah Kapchan (Gender on the Market: Moroccan Women and the Revoicing of Tradition) and Peter Thompson (A Passenger from the West by Nabile Farès) explore the effects of the Arab uprisings in North Africa on poetry and narratives and discuss their recent works in translation. Moderated by Nathalie Handal (Language of a New Century: Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond).
Oriana says: One of the best parts of the Book Fest is exposure to different cultures and styles, and PEN always presents amazing authors.

I’d Like To Apologize To Every Teacher I Ever Had. Tony Danza in Conversation with Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.
1:00 pm, Main Stage (Borough Hall Plaza) 
As an actor, Danza conquered nearly every entertainment realm—TV, the movies, even Broadway—and he wanted to give something back. Inspired by a documentary made by Teach for America, he decided to take time out to teach! Markowitz converses with Brooklyn born Danza about his career and his book about teaching high school.
Oriana says: What could I even say about this pairing? I can't wait to hear what they'll have to say.

The Politics of Identity—Do They Still Matter?
12:00 pm, St. Francis McArdle (180 Remsen Street) 
As America grows more diverse, “minorities” will soon be the majority and this shift in demographics affects our culture and the ways we think about it. Can—and should—we move beyond the idea of race in America? Baratunde Thurston (How to Be Black), Rebecca Walker (Black Cool) and Wesley Yang (author of the New York magazine “Paper Tigers” and a forthcoming book on Asians in America) will interrogate the stereotypes we still have of each other, both positive and negative, and examine the ways we run from and cling to various aspects of identity, race, and heritage. Moderated by Amitava Kumar.
Oriana says: Did you see Baratunde reporting from the RNC? Fantastic.

Artisanal Everything.
11:00 am Main Stage (Borough Hall Plaza)
David Rees (How to Sharpen Pencils), the world's only artisanal pencil sharpener, in conversation with Sam Anderson, critic at large for the New York Times Magazine. They discuss the artisanal culture of the Hudson Valley, Rees' pencil business (he hand-sharpens pencils for mail order customers), and the artisanalization of everything in Brooklyn, from mayonnaise to soda.
Oriana says: David Rees' blend of hilariously earnest and earnestly hilarious is unbeatable, plus let's please keep beating that dead artisanal-mayonnaise horse.

Around the Word

Reviewola. There's been a lot of talk recently about the rise pay-for-play, and the general lack of transparency and accountability in the book review business, especially when it comes to self-publishing. Getting those stars on Amazon can make or break a book's success, so it's unfortunately unsurprising that there are those who will write a positive review—for a price. Data mining expert Bing Liu estimates that "about one-third of all consumer reviews on the Internet are fake. And it's not just paid reviews that are problematic: "puppet" reviews by authors themselves (or their spouses) are also a serious issue. Bestselling UK author ER Ellory came under fire recently for using several pseudonyms to flood his Amazon page with positive feedback. It is all but impossible to tell when reviews have been written by marketers, retailers, authors themselves, or by customers who can get a deal from a merchant for giving a good score. So what's a book lover to do? The Society of Authors has issued a call to arms of sorts, suggest that readers should take to Amazon and reclaim the reviews from the puppeteers. In the meantime, GalleyCat has put out this handy guide to decoding Amazon's star system.

Writers are from Mars, Editors are from Venus. Here at the GG office we frequently refer to ourselves as matchmakers or couples therapists for writing relationships, and this piece in the Columbia Journalism Review, "Five Types of Problem Writers," and its accompanying entry on the author's blog (complete with gifs!) caught our eye. Some represented types: the "newbie" writer who has yet to grow the emotional calluses to deal with the sometimes harsh reality of critism, or the power-drunk sadistic editor who eviscerates just to eviscerate, leaving a manuscript littered with backhanded comments. Do you recognize yourself in the list, or maybe someone you've worked with? How do you deal with a less-than-easy collaborator?

The Best of the Worst. Every year The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, the literary world's version of film's Razzie Awards, "celebrates" the worst passages written in the past year. (The contest was named for the author who penned what is arguably the best-worst line in literary history: "it was a dark and stormy night.") This year's top prize went to Cathy Bryant of Manchester for this gem:

As he told her that he loved her she gazed into his eyes, wondering, as she noted the infestation of eyelash mites, the tiny deodicids burrowing into his follicles to eat the greasy sebum therein, each female laying up to 25 eggs in a single follicle, causing inflammation, whether the eyes are truly the windows of the soul; and, if so, his soul needed regrouting.

She was congratualated by last year's winner, Suzanne Fondrie: “I take pleasure in passing the guttering torch of Bad Writing to this year’s winner. May you write long and badly, Cathy!”

Labor Day: Writing Like Your Own Boss

In honor of Labor Day, we've been pondering the nature of freelancing and its rise as the "new normal" in our current economy. Here's a roundup of news specific to the freelance writer's life.

In a run-up to International Freelancers Day (September 21st), the International Freelancers Academy has released their 2012 Freelance Industry Report. You can read the report, or check out the breakdown in illustration form here.

We recently  took a pole of GG writers that echoed the high level of job satisfaction many freelancers seem to enjoy. But as we all know, being your own boss isn't always wine and roses. As the Freelancers Union points out, many independents experience issues getting deserved compensation (as demonstrated by their World's Longest Invoice project), and some report suffering from the loneliness of a life outside the office. But for many, the cost-benefit analysis is solidly in positive territory.

The "7 Days in June" project, which spent a week filming freelancers in the UK (using freelance filmmakers, natch), will release their finished project for the country's National Freelancer's Day in November.

Finally, check out GalleyCat's guide to union and guild resources for independent authors. And happy writing!

Uppercase of the Mondays: Now on the BloGG!

We recently started a weekly series on our Facebook and Twitter called "Uppercase of the Mondays": humorous comics and images relating to publishing, grammar, and the like to brighten up the beginning of your work week. And now, Uppercase is coming to the BloGG!

Here's a roundup of all the posts so far. Have a funny writing-related comic of your own? Send it our way!

Happy Uppercase : )

Around the Word

Crisis of Creativity or Just History Repeating? With the Jonah Lehrer scandal in full swing, a summer during which the box office has been almost nothing but remakes and sequels, knock-off ebooks, and a unparalleled literary phenom that could be flirting with copyright infringement, it's hard not to ask whether there are any original ideas left to be had. Animator and filmmaker Drew Christie explores this conundrum in a recent NY Times op-doc, "Allergy to Originality." Through a very creative use of various Wikipedia entries (solidly in the Creative Commons), the animated video explores the age-old question of whether a idea can ever be truly unique, or if everything is just an appropriation or amalgamation of previous cultural memes and icons. Is it really Hollywood's fault that we seem to find comfort in reworkings and extensions of the familiar (reflected in booming box office sales)? What do you think? Are there any original thoughts left to be thought?

Before They Were Stars. Ever wondered what your favorite celebrity New York Times columnists were up to before they were granted tenure and guaranteed precious column inches to fritter away? Most of them were actually out chasing down leads and risking their jobs in pursuit of the story. In this great article from The Awl, we learn that before Nicholas Kristoff got a little "White Man's Burden," he gave us stories about the people in crisis instead of preaching to them. Tom Friedman was on the ground in Beirut, and Maureen Dowd, now best known for her politics-lite repartee, authored one of the first long-form pieces to shed light on those in the shadows of the AIDS epidemic. While not heralded far and wide, Dowd's profile of Gay Men's Health Crisis challenged some of the more traditional views held by Times editorial staff, and almost cost her the job. 

The Book Critic's Burden. It happens to all heavy readers at one time or another: you start a book and then realize you're just not feeling it. Most of us ditch it in favor of something more enticing, but what if your job depends on powering through? Getting paid to read and review books may seem like a charmed life, but a reviewer has to read them all—the good, mediocre, and the painfully bad. What's a critic to do? In a recent column, "I Hate This Book So Much: A Mediation," Times book critic Lev Grossman discusses the anxiety and inner conflict he faces when he has to review a book he dislikes. Should he dig in and write that negative review? What if he's missing a point that's obvious to everyone else? How does he face someone whose novel he's dissed? It's a a heavy cross to bear. How do you, dear editors and writers, deal with a despised project?

Of Books and Booze. Writers are notorious drinkers, perhaps none more so than Earnest Hemingway. Did you know that one of Hemingway's favorite drinks was the daiquiri? That may seem a little incongruous with his "man's man" image, but apparently he developed a taste for them during the twenty years he spent in Cuba. So to commemorate his 113th birthday, Havana watering hole El Floridita decided to mix up the world's largest daiquiri in honor of the author's love for the drink and his ties to the island. If you want to pay homage to your favorite author through drink, or make your next cocktail hour a little more literate, here are a few sites that offer authors' favorite cocktails, drinks inspired by books and authors, and drinks from classic literature. If going out is more your style, check out the The Dead Poet on Manhattan's Upper West Side, which is owned by a former English teacher and features an actual lending library.

Q&A with Aziz Isham of reKiosk.com

reKiosk is not like any other online marketplace you’ve seen. With this new site, now in beta with a launch planned for August, you act as your own distributor for your favorite books and music, and instead of the marketplace eating up a big chunk of the payment, most of the profit goes to the creator, with a small slice for you. 

So say you buy your friend's ebook from their reKiosk page and share it on your own kiosk. If someone then buys the book through you, your friend gets 70 percent and you get 25 percent of the profit. It’s kind of like owning your own private store that only sells things you like, and it’s certainly a great venue for promoting self-publishing.

Aziz Isham

We talked to founder and CEO Aziz Isham to get the full scoop.

How is reKiosk different from other online marketplaces?
We were built with two things in mind: 1) How do we make an alternative marketplace that puts creatives in control and remunerates them for their work; and 2) How do we empower curators (bloggers, publishers, or aspiring digital storeowners) to become an active (and paid) part of the process. We found that if we keep things simple and take as small a portion of each sale as possible, we could do both of these things and still create a beautiful, engaging e-commerce experience.

What inspired the idea for the site?
You could say that I've been working on this project for the last decade, in various forms. Three of my four grandparents are artists, and I've always been attracted to business models that try to make creativity a more economically sustainable occupation for as many people as possible. We all have enough toaster ovens, but I've never met anyone who's got enough poetry.

Who would you say is the “average” reKiosk user?
Either a content provider (a musician, record label, publisher, or writer, for example) or a curator. One person or company could be both, of course. The average customer is probably someone who's already interested in independent media, as that's the lion's share of what's on the site right now, though we hope that might change in the not-too-distant future.

How do you think reKiosk will benefit writers?
Any easy-to-use marketplace that encourages smaller, curated marketplaces will benefit writers. Right now we have a huge market for front-list titles and lots of strong, small niche markets, but we're in danger of loosing the mid-list, and that’s really scary. Some of the best authors of the twentieth century were firmly mid-list—James Salter, Phillip Dick, and Mike Davis, to name a few personal favorites. Would any of these writers have viable careers in today's publishing landscape?

Where do you see reKiosk heading in the future?
Hard to say. We've had some great advance praise so far and a lot of interest from all sectors, but we're really hoping to become a way to usher in a new form of the independent, digital bookstore or record shop, the internet version of the great spaces you could once find in any mid-size town or city, but which have since been replaced by Walmarts and e-retailers.

Request an invite at www.rekiosk.com to get a head-start before the site is fully open. The possibilities seem almost endless, and we definitely agree about not needing another toaster!

The Writing Life Rocks

Our friends at Ragan recently published the results of a poll, in which they ask freelance writers and editors what they enjoy about the writing life. We thought this was a great question, and we were curious to know what keeps our Gotham Ghostwriters (and editors) going. So we asked, "What's the best part of having a job as a writer or editor?" We got a lot of creative and informative answers.  

The basic breakdown:

• I get to be creative every day: 5
• I get to write for a variety of platforms: 2
• I help others sound better: 5
• I produce a tangible finished product: 3
• Other (please elaborate!)
• I get to be alone
• I get to meet interesting (and famous) people
• I like seeing my name in print

And here are some of our favorite answers :

"Permit me to offer a quote from English writer W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), from his novel, 'Cakes and Ale': 'Whenever he has anything on his mind, whether it be a harassing reflection, grief at the death of a friend, unrequited love, wounded pride, anger at the treachery of someone to whom he has shown kindness, in short any emotion or perplexing thought, he has only to put it down in black and white, using it as the theme of a story or the decoration of an essay, to forget all about it. He is the only free man.'" - Harold Gordon

"...when people ask me what I do for a living, it's a kick to say, 'I'm a writer.' Always the same thing follows. 'Do I know your work? Have you written any books?' That I can say 'yes and 'yes' is rewarding. Books are not all I write or edit or direct. At this point in my career I write, edit and direct it all, and I've learned more about such an array of businesses, industries and topics that this in and of itself is very rewarding. I can even talk about hernia repair and medical conditions. Now that's something!" - Sandra Rea-McGinty

"The money, the travel, the danger, and the women." - Peter Roff