My grandfather, Luigino Adamo, sold most of what he had in the summer of 1957 to buy four one way tickets for a boat to America. He landed with only the Italian language and a fifth grade education. Born in the southern Italian farming town of San Mango D’Aquino, Calabria, his first destination was a relative’s farm in Pennsylvania. After working with them for three months without seeing financial results, Luigino took his family to Brooklyn and set about finding work. As an uneducated laborer, his options revolved around factory work, plumber assistantships, and gardener positions. He worked, saved, and looked toward his future. By 1958, he acquired a part-time, seasonal job in a cemetery that would eventually turn into a full-time gravedigger position and then a heavy equipment operator.

More »

Pacifist, celibate, and highly religious, the Shakers are perhaps best remembered for their furniture. But they also possessed a fascination with the mysticism surrounding teenage girls who spoke tongues. Two of these teenage girls are the focus of Rachel Urquhart’s new novel The Visionist. She was joined by Tin House co-founder Elissa Schappell at Community Bookstore to talk about the novel and the Shaker influence.

More »

No one brought up “The Worm in Philly”—there will be few band names that ever beat the fictional “The Annihilation of the Soft Left”—but Sam Lipsyte moderated a discussion about rock and roll and literature with the same gritty humor that permeates his fiction. On Friday night at Housing Works, in front of an intimate […]

More »

Super Sad True Love Story (2010) turned Gary Shteyngart into a superstar. He is now the kind of author that fills venues. In January, he released a memoir, Little Failure. He met up with his longtime friend and fellow author Suketu Mehta at New York City’s Tenement Museum to discuss the book.

More »

What began as a short story eight years ago grew into Ted Thompson’s debut novel, The Land of Steady Habits. Thompson, a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s workshop, launched the novel at BookCourt in Brooklyn. Cupcakes were served.

More »

Tova Mirvis returned to the Upper West Side to read from her new novel Visible City. The 82nd Street Barnes and Noble served a fitting host for the sprawling novel that unfolds in the surrounding neighborhood.

More »

D. Foy’s debut novel, Made to Break was sixteen years in the making. It is the story of five friends trapped in a mountain cabin as they explore their various failures and vicious behavior. He read from the novel at McNally Jackson and was joined in conversation by Sean Madigan Hoen. Soho Press will release Hoen’s memoir, Songs Only You Know next month. It examines his crumbling family alongside his time as an indie musician.

More »

Community Bookstore hosted a discussion between Kyle Minor and Vol 1 Brooklyn editor Jason Diamond. Minor’s story collection Praying Drunk (January 2014) has been more than a decade in the making and includes a novella. Diamond asked him about that and his future projects.

More »