Ishmael Beah’s previous book, the 2007 memoir A Long Way Gone, examined the life of child soldiers in Sierra Leone’s civil war. Beah’s new book, the novel Radiance of Tomorrow, explores the aftermath of war as people return to their homes and rebuild their lives. Beah read from the novel at Greenlight Bookstore where he was joined by Dinaw Mengestu in conversation. Mengestu is an Ethiopian born, American novelist. His novel, All Our Names is forthcoming in March, and is the author of three other books.

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Shovel Ready, the debut novel by Adam Sternbergh, is set in a future dystopian New York City featuring a trash collecting, hitman protagonist. BookCourt celebrated the release of his book by hosting Sternbergh for a reading. Sternbergh is the culture editor for the New York Times magazine and a former editor at New York Magazine.

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Rachel Cantor sends readers into a near future controlled by fast food corporations with her debut novel A Highly Unlikely Scenario: Or, A Neetsa Pizza Employee’s Guide to Saving the World. Cantor celebrated the release of the novel at Greenlight Bookstore along Hannah Tinti, co-founder and editor of the single story per issue journal One Story.

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Ben Marcus’s collection of stories, Leaving the Sea, was released on Tuesday. Tobias Carroll, managing editor of Vol. 1 Brooklyn, joined Marcus at Community Bookstore in Park Slope to discuss the collection.

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Novelist Ruth Ozeki was in New York’s unofficial sixth borough, Jersey City, to celebrate the release of the paperback edition of her novel A Tale for the Time Being. Brooklyn’s WORD Bookstore opened a second store in Jersey City late last month; Ozeki became the first author to read in the new space and she described the store as having that “new bookstore smell.”

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Laura Hemphill read from her debut novel Buying In (November 2013) at The Strand and then had a conversation with Teddy Wayne. Wayne is the author of two novels, The Love Song of Johnny Valentine (February 2013) and Kapitol (2012).

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Kevin Sampsell read from his new novel This Is Between Us (October 2013) at BookCourt (He reads at WORD on Friday, December 6th in an event hosted by Vol 1. Brooklyn). He is also the author of the memoir A Common Pornography (2010) and Creamy Bullets (2008), a story collection.

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The experience of art became the focus of the evening when Geoff Dyer and Ben Lerner came together for a reading and conversation moderated by Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review at McNally Jackson Books. Dyer read from his book, Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room (November 2013), that looks at the personal experience of viewing Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker. Ben Lerner read from his novel Leaving the Atocha Station (2011).

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