With the line between trade and public book festivals coming under increasing scrutiny, the New York Comic Con is teaming up with New York City’s biggest book festival to include an even bigger graphic novel presence. There’ll be a performance tent, guest presentations, guest autographing sessions and a dedicated marketplace area, all devoted just to graphic novels, and cartoonists including Matt Madden, Guy Delisle, and Danica Novgorodoff, along with prose authors such as Paul Auster, Naomi Klein, Oliver Sacks, and many more. The Brooklyn Book Festival will be held Sunday, September 13th. PR below.

The renowned Brooklyn Book Festival and New York Comic Con (NYCC) announce that the premiere pop culture convention and its stars will have a powerful presence at this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival, which the L.A. Times has called “the center of the literary universe.” NYCC will have its own colorful and exciting programming area at the free Festival, which draws nearly 30,000 visitors to experience readings and panels featuring international literary superstars, buzzworthy newcomers and more than 150 booksellers, publishers, independent presses and literary organizations in a bustling literary marketplace.

“The Brooklyn Book Festival is an awesome gathering and I have had tremendous respect for the festival from the moment it started,” notes Lance Fensterman, Vice President and Show Manager for New York Comic Con. “We are proud to bring an intense graphic lit and pop culture presence to such a great festival. I am sure this will provide our customers with the opportunity to connect directly with lots of new fans. Plus, it’s all for free! This is a win-win in every respect.”

“These days, Brooklyn is a hotbed of pop culture, high-tech culture, literary and blog culture, ethnic culture, indie culture, and has basically become an international hub for in-your-face creativity,” says Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. “It’s only fitting that the Brooklyn Book Festival would form a dynamic duo with New York Comic Con!”



NYCC’s programming area at the Brooklyn Book Festival will include a performance tent, guest presentations, guest autographing sessions and a dedicated marketplace area. NYCC’s participation will be a positive way to spread further awareness of comics and graphic literature while providing free interaction and entertainment for thousands of NYCC fans. The next NYCC will take place October 8 – 10, 2010 at the Jacob K. Javits Center. Ranked by Crain’s New York Business as the second-largest annual event in NYC, it has grown from a convention that attracted 33,000 visitors when it was launched in 2006 to a show that will occupy the entire Javits Center and will attract well over 75,000 fans in 2010. For comics exhibitors and vendors, the NYCC programming area will provide a unique opportunity for them to not only have a home that attracts like-minded customers and fans, but to have a central location where new fans and readers can check out the latest in comics and pop culture entertainment. Comic book writer and editor Denny O’Neil, creator Phil Jimenez, and writer and editor Tom DeFalco are just a few of the many popular guests who will appear in the NYCC programming area. In addition to guest speakers, NYCC’s diverse Brooklyn Book Festival programming includes Hip Hop Hearts Anime, a live-performance featuring local DJs which focuses on the intermixing of American hip hop culture and Japanese anime. Some of the companies who will be participating include Captain Action, Midtown Comics, Moonstone Publishing, and Disney Publishing. An additional announcement with more guest names and participating companies will be made in the near future.

This year’s Brooklyn Book Festival will again feature a literary marketplace with more than 150 booksellers, publishers and literary organizations in Borough Hall Plaza as well as panel discussions and readings, a children’s authors stage and special programming for teens and exhibitors that will include bookstores, publishers and literary organizations. Readings are held at Brooklyn Borough Hall, in Borough Hall Plaza and Columbus Park, at St. Francis College and the Brooklyn Historical Society.

Confirmed authors include Jonathan Ames, Paul Auster, Staceyann Chin, Guy Delisle, Lupe Fiasco, Edwidge Danticat, Rawi Hage, Tao Lin, Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, David Lida, Matt Madden, Thurston Moore, Gary Shteyngart, Melvin Van Peebles, Sherman Alexie, M.T. Anderson, Naomi Klein, Danica Novgorodoff, Esmeralda Santiago, George O’Connor, Raina Telgemeier, Jessica Abel, Nick Bruel, Peter and Randall de Seve, Christopher Myers, Tom Tomorrow, Mo Willems, Russell Banks, Kate DiCamillo, Cynthia Ozick, Anne Carson, A.M. Homes, David Cross, Mary Gaitskill, Oliver Sacks, Nelson George, Amy Sohn, Jeffrey Rotter, Keith Gessen, Greg Milner, Francine Prose, and more.

Programming will include fiction, nonfiction and poetry panels on hot topics such as: “The International Graphic Novel,” featuring Guy Delisle (The Burma Chronicles), Peter Kuper (Diario de Oaxaca: A Sketchbook Journal of Two Years in Mexico), and Sarah Glidden (How To Understand Israel In 60 Days Or Less), moderated by Matt Madden; “The Great Recession” (featuring Justin Fox, Naomi Klein, Kai Wright and moderator Errol Louis of the New York Daily News); “The Naked City: Urban Realism and the Global City in Fiction & Non-Fiction” (featuring David Lida, Meera Nair, Hirsh Sawhney and moderator Cheryl Harris Sharman; “Literature in a Digital Age” (John Freeman, Dwight Garner, Sarah Schmelling); “Poetry, Pop and Hip-Hop” (Lupe Fiasco, Thurston Moore, Tracie Morris, Matthew Zapruder and moderator Touré); and “PSA Presents” (a reading by the nation’s oldest poetry organization, featuring some of the country’s best bards, including Anne Carson, Sonia Sanchez, Philip Schultz, Arthur Sze and Alice Quinn).

BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL

The 2009 Brooklyn Book Festival is presented by Brooklyn Tourism and the Brooklyn Literary Council, initiatives of Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. Sponsors include the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation; the NYC & Company Foundation; New York Comic Con; Astoria Federal Savings; Citi; Boar’s Head Provisions; the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge; and Time Out New York, media sponsor again this year. Cultural partners are BAM; the Brooklyn Historical Society; Brooklyn Public Library; and the National Book Foundation. Programming partners include Housing Works Bookstore Café; PEN American Center; Poetry Society of America; The New York Review of Books; St. Francis College; and The Nation. For more information about the Brooklyn Book Festival, visit www.visitbrooklyn.org or check out the official Facebook page at www.facebook.com/pages/Brooklyn-Book-Festival-Official-Site/20650359836. On Twitter, follow the Brooklyn Book Festival at bkbf.

1 COMMENT

  1. Cool!

    New York is Book Country had a great GN presence in the last few years of its existence, and it is nice to see BBF offer this programming.

    (Smart move on Reed’s part… NY Anime Festival is two weeks later, allowing for lots of advertising.)

    Hmmm…. Jonathan Lethem and Colson Whitehead would make an interesting panel discussing comics-inspired literature. (“John Henry Days” is required reading for anyone who makes a living from Pop Culture.)

  2. My cousin, of course, had to pick that weekend to get married. In Colorado.

    Oh well. It’s still good news and it sounds like it will be a good time.

  3. Hmm. So the East Coast version of SDCC is teaming up with the East Coast version of the Los Angeles Festival of Books?

    Great coup by REED— but now wondering if this is the first step of buying the Brooklyn Book Festival, and rebranding it into the reconfigured version of the BEA…

  4. I am with dean on this…we publish books about brooklyn, live in brooklyn and get in fights over the place. why arent we involved???

    dean, whats up with that…heidi?

    answers…i want answers…lol..

    JIMMY P

  5. All are welcome. This is announcing we are doing this – we literally have a big tent to fill! Email me or yes, check your spam filter for the email that went out a week or so ago on this…..

    Also, I’ve been involved with Johnny Temple and the BBF crew since very early on via BEA so it seemed like a natural fit for NYCC. I think a lot of this fair and we can bring a whole new presence and fan base to it while brinig a whole new set of fans/customers to our artist, retailer and publisher friends.

    Cool.

    Lance

  6. Too bad we didn’t know about this earlier, since Batton Lash’s “Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre”/”Supernatural Law” is based in Brooklyn (the strip started in The Brooklyn Paper 30 years ago, on September 19!), and of course Batton is a Brooklyn cartoonist born and bred, We are making a trip to Brooklyn in Setempber, but not until the end of the month. Maybe next year!