The Brooklyn Book Festival and Brooklyn Literary Council recently revealed the expansive list of writers participating in this year’s Festival Day and Literary Marketplace (Sunday, Sept. 29), Children’s Day (Saturday, Sept. 28) and Virtual Festival Day (Sunday, Sept. 22).
The Festival additionally announced renowned cartoonist Roz Chast as recipient of the 2024 Best of Brooklyn (BoBi) Award, to be presented at the annual award ceremony in September, and unveiled this year’s poster, designed by digital artist and illustrator Bria Benjamin.
Benjamin is a multidisciplinary artist, organizer and cultural worker. Through prose and illustration she interrogates Blackness, gender, labor and love, the politics of all these subjects mixed and muddled together under capitalism and the fight to end it. While a Texan at heart, she currently resides in Brooklyn.
Benjamin says of the poster, “As a reader, writer, illustrator, lifelong student of history and just overall lover of books, I was so excited to create the artwork for a festival celebrating books, readers and writers. In the artwork, I wanted to show characters who reminded me of the people I see walking around Brooklyn: those deep in a novel on the subway, pulling out a pen to save a resonating line at the cafe or at home in the sun, with a box to pass on a book or two to the passerby who finds it on the stoop.”
The Brooklyn Book Festival returns in 2024 (Sept. 22–30) with a lineup of international and local authors for adult and young readers. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and graphic novels are all represented at New York City’s largest free literary festival. Whether online or in person, the Festival’s panel conversations reveal the vitality and breadth of literature today, and its capacity to help us see our contemporary world with clarity. Celebrating Brooklyn’s spirit as a network of intersecting communities and as a global literary hub and cultural destination, the Festival offers Bookend events in all five boroughs as well as a celebratory Festival Day and Marketplace, and a festive Children’s Day in Downtown Brooklyn.
The nine-day festival kicks off with its online Virtual Festival Day (Sunday, Sept. 22), a tradition that started in response to the pandemic, but now allows the Festival to welcome authors and audiences from around the world who cannot travel for the event. The Brooklyn Book Festival continues to embrace the potential and transformative impact of virtual programming. Virtual Festival Day will open the festival with dozens of national and international authors participating.
The centerpiece Festival Day (Sunday, Sept. 29) takes place in the parks and plazas surrounding Downtown Brooklyn’s Borough Hall and other venues with eight stages overflowing with conversation. Diverse authors of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, comics, graphic novels and young adult literature come together to converse, read and sign books throughout the day.
Hundreds of authors — from standout emerging voices to iconic writers — convene for the event. As Brooklyn Book Festival often pairs young and debut authors with legends, Festival Day is an opportunity for audiences to think through some of today’s most urgent and complex issues, be uplifted and entertained by their favorite authors, and discover new favorites. Festival Day also stages the largest book market in the Northeast. This year the Brooklyn Book Festival’s vibrant Literary Marketplace with 220 publishers offers readers the possibility to discover new authors, independent publishers and literary organizations in hundreds of tents set up in Columbus Park and Borough Hall Plaza.
At Children’s Day (Saturday, Sept. 28) in Brooklyn Commons, families enjoy a full day of readings, workshops, performances, book signings and art projects with favorite children’s and middle-grade authors and illustrators. It’s a playdate with authors as kids get creative with their favorite writers and illustrators at workshops and book signing events. Plus, the whole family can find new favorite books at the Children’s Marketplace of Books.
As part of the Festival’s nine-day literary celebration, 50+ Bookend Events organized by dozens of cultural partners feature hundreds more authors reading and performing together across all five boroughs. The full schedule of these events will be announced later in August.
Brooklyn Book Festival Producer Liz Koch says, “The Brooklyn Book Festival is the city’s book festival, welcoming audiences from all five boroughs. This year we have authors coming from as far away as Taiwan and Brazil but also authors who live right down the street in Brooklyn and other boroughs. Everyone is welcome to join our free celebration of authors and books.”
Camille Rankine, co-chair of the Brooklyn Book Festival Literary Council, adds, “We’re so excited to present another round of incredible literary programs at the Brooklyn Book Festival this year, featuring both iconic and emerging authors from around the world. This year’s festival is sure to be 9 days of dynamic, engaging, and thought provoking words, ideas, and conversations.”
BoBi Award
The Best of Brooklyn (BoBi) Award, presented each year to an author from Brooklyn whose work best exemplifies or speaks to the spirit of Brooklyn, this year is conferred to New Yorker cartoonist and chronicler of the city, acclaimed author Roz Chast.
Roz Chast is a celebrated cartoonist and illustrator with work focusing on the mundane moments of life, from midday anxiety to parenting to the agony of waiting for the subway. She is a staff cartoonist for The New Yorker, with which she has published over 800 cartoons. Chast is the author and illustrator of several books including What I Hate From A to Z, Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York, and Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, winner of the inaugural Kirkus Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award in Non-Fiction. Chast has received numerous honors and accolades, including the National Cartoon Society’s Reuben Award, the Heinz Award for her lifelong work, and induction into the Society of Illustrator’s Hall of Fame.
The BoBi winner will be celebrated at an awards ceremony in the fall. Other past BoBi winners have included Hilton Als (2023), Esmerelda Santiago (2022), Toi Derricotte (2021), Lynn Nottage (2020), Mo Willems (2019), N.K. Jemisin (2018), Colson Whitehead (2017), Jacqueline Woodson (2016), Jonathan Lethem (2015), and others.
The full list of authors participating in Children’s Day, Festival Day and/or Virtual Festival Day includes:
Festival Day Authors (Sept. 29)
Hala Alyan /Mateo Askaripour / Ben Austen / Diego Báez / Catherine Barnett / Clare Beams / Billy-Ray Belcourt / Marie-Helene Bertino / Olivie Blake / Jonathan Blitzer / Tara Booth / Solomon Brager / Dionne Brand / Kate Brody / Mircea Cărtărescu / Karla Cornejo Villavicencio / Vanessa Chan / K-Ming Chang / Ryan Chapman / Roz Chast / Kyle Chayka/ Ava Chin / Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig / Gina Chung / Garrard Conley / Leela Corman / Jennifer Croft / DéLana R.A. Dameron / Edwidge Danticat / Armen Davoudian / Timothy Donnelly / Akwaeke Emezi / Álvaro Enrigue / Glynnis Fawkes / Alexene Farol Follmuth / Liana Finck / Nick Flynn / Tanisha Ford / Temim Fruchter / Christi Furnas / Kay Gabriel/ Camille Gomera-Tavarez / Chloe Gong / Rigoberto González / Lorna Goodison / Danny Goodman / Thomas Grattan / Jas Hammonds / Terrance Hayes / Marie Howe / Jordan Ifueko / Melissa Jacoby / Tania James / Kristopher Jansma / Barbara Jenkins / Frederick Joseph / Jonell Joshua / Chris Knapp / Lisa Ko / Gabrielle Korn / Amitava Kumar / Hari Kunzru / K’wan / R.O. Kwon / Claire Legrand / Kelly Link / Carlos Lozada / Jon Macy / Allyson McCabe / John Vasquez Mejias / Clyo Mendoza / Iman Mersal / Luke Messac / Petra Molnar / Yesenia Montilla / Lorrie Moore / Russell Muirhead / Samhita Mukhopadhyay / Jonah Newman / Diana Khoi Nguyen / Urayoán Noel / Hamilton Nolan / Ali Novak / Emily Nussbaum / Julie Otsuka / Chrystin Ondersma / Tracy O’Neill / Ed Park / Deborah Paredez / Daniel Saldaña Paris / George Pelecanos / Ross Perlin / Helen Phillips / Megan Pinto / Jive Poetic / Regina Porter / Ann Powers / Vijay Raghavan / Margaret Ray / Ava Reid / Devika Rege / Djamila Ribeiro / Ari Richter / Farah Naz Rishi / Nancy Rosenblum / Maurice Carlos Ruffin / Lucy Sante / Esmerelda Santiago / Lynn Schmeidler / Eliot Schrefer / Dash Shaw / John Schu / Nicole Sealey / Carrie Sun / Astra Taylor / Justin Taylor / Swati Teerdhala / Dustin Thao / Héctor Tobar/ Dorothy Tse / Lena Valencia / Laura van den Berg / Adelle Waldman / David Walsh / Amélie Wen Zhao / Andrew Joseph White / Crystal Wilkinson/ Olivia Worley / Jenny Xie / Andrew Yang / Yasmin Zaher / Ada Zhang
Virtual Festival Day Authors (Sept. 22)
Kevin Barry / Chelsea Bieker / Christina Cooke / Lexi Freiman / Marcela Fuentes / Bhanu Kapil / Attica Locke / Sean Michaels / Julia Phillips / Kiley Reid
Children’s Day Authors (Sept. 28)
Denise Rosario Adusei / Tracey Baptiste / Cece Bell / Alex Boniello / Hilda Eunice Burgos / Jorge Cham / Ruth Chan / Lian Cho / Rebecca Donnelly / Maris Pasquale Doran / Stacy Ebert / C.G. Esperanza / Gale Galligan / Tatiana Gardel / Raj Haldar / John Hendrix / Bess Kalb / Julie Kwon / April Lavalle / Lian-En Lin / Jason Logan / Carlos Matias / Cat Min / George O’Connor / Dave Roman / Aimee Sicuro / R.L. Stine / Sarvenaz Tash / Gabriel Valentin / Booki Vivat / Steven Weinberg / Brian Yanish / Deeba Zargarpur
About the Brooklyn Book Festival
The Brooklyn Book Festival was launched in 2006 to address the need for a major literary event that embraced the diverse constituencies of New York City. The Festival’s mission is to celebrate published literature and support the literary community through free and low-cost programs that connect New York City readers with local, national, and international authors, publishers, and booksellers. To this end, the staff collaborates with the Brooklyn Book Festival Literary Council, co-chaired by Johnny Temple and Camille Rankine, to develop original programs that are hip, smart, diverse, and inclusive, including Festival Day & Literary Marketplace, citywide Bookend events, Virtual Festival Day and the BKBF Children’s Day.
BKBF is presented by the non-profit Brooklyn Book Festival, Inc. and the Brooklyn Book Festival Literary Council. The Festival is proud of its roster of supporters including the Academy of American Poets, Amazon Literary Partnership, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Brookfield Properties, the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President, Antonio Reynoso, CityPoint, Con Edison, Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, Hawthornden Foundation, JP Morgan Chase, the Kirby Family Foundation, the Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment, the National Endowment for the Arts, National Grid, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Council Members Darlene Mealy and Lincoln Restler, New York City Tourism Foundation, the New York Review of Books, the New York State Council on the Arts, NYU, State Senator Andrew Gounardes, TD Charitable Foundation, Taipei Cultural Center, NY, and the Tiger Baron Foundation.
