Featured author events

S3, Ep. 1: Elaine Hsieh Chou & Larissa Pham

By: Elaine Hsieh Chou

Narrated by: Larissa Pham

Length: 54 minutes

Abridged: No

The Greenlight Bookstore Podcast kicks off its third season—though we remain far from the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re out of quarantine! One of our first successes in this new age of author events was the standing-room-only launch for Elaine Hsieh Chou’s acclaimed debut, Disorientation—an uproarious and bighearted story of a Taiwanese... Read more

S3, Ep. 2: Roger Reeves & A. Van Jordan

By: Roger Reeves

Narrated by: A. Van Jordan

Length: 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Acclaimed, Whiting Award-winning poet Roger Reeves probes the apocalypses and raptures of humanity—climate change, anti-Black racism, familial and erotic love, ecstasy and loss—in his second collection of poems, Best Barbarian. Roaming across the literary and social landscape, visiting with Beowulf’s Grendel and the jazz musician Alice Coltrane,... Read more

S3, Ep. 3: The Octavia Project & N.K. Jemisin

By: The Octavia Project

Narrated by: N.K. Jemisin

Length: 48 minutes

Abridged: No

As we continue to grapple with uncertainty in our world, how can writers and creators build community and make an imprint? Whose voices get heard and how can we use craft to shape a new blueprint for the future? MacArthur Fellow and author of The City We Became N. K. Jemisin joined us virtually for a night of discussion and community in support... Read more

S3, Ep. 4: Alejandro Varela & Rumaan Alam

By: Alejandro Varela

Narrated by: Rumaan Alam

Length: 56 minutes

Abridged: No

Greenlight welcomed author Alejandro Varela to celebrate his debut novel, The Town of Babylon--named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Buzzfeed, Lambda Literary, and more. Varela probes the intertwining of community and self and renders an intimate portrait of queer, racial, and class identity in this moving,... Read more

S3, Ep. 5: Alyssa Songsiridej & Julia Phillips

By: Alyssa Songsiridej

Narrated by: Julia Phillips

Length: 46 minutes

Abridged: No

When the unnamed narrator of Alyssa Songsiridej’s debut novel Little Rabbit first meets a choreographer at an artists' residency in Maine, it's not a match. But when they run into each other a few months later, their encounter sets off a summer of expanding her own body's boundaries—her body learns to obediently follow his, and his desires... Read more

Quarantine Session #107: Yanyi + Sandra Lim

By: Yanyi

Narrated by: Sandra Lim

Length: 53 minutes

Abridged: No

We bid farewell to our “Quarantine Season” of podcasts as we navigate our way back to in-person author events at Greenlight Bookstore! For our virtual season’s swan song, we reprise award-winning poet Yanyi’s virtual launch event for DREAM OF THE DIVIDED FIELD, a collection on heartbreak and transitions, written with a piercing lyric ferocity.... Read more

Quarantine Session #106: NoViolet Bulawayo + Novuyo Tshuma

By: NoViolet Bulawayo

Narrated by: Novuyo Tshuma

Length: 57 minutes

Abridged: No

In a virtual event co-presented with our friends at Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, MA, award-winning author NoViolet Bulawayo joined us to launch GLORY, her “manifoldly clever, brilliant... satire with sharper teeth” (The NYT Book Review). Inspired by the unexpected fall by coup in November 2017 of Robert G. Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president of... Read more

Quarantine Session #105: Rebecca Mead + Jia Tolentino

By: Rebecca Mead

Narrated by: Jia Tolentino

Length: 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Celebrated New Yorker staff writer and author Rebecca Mead joined us virtually from across the pond to discuss her topical new memoir, Home/Land—a moving reflection on the complicated nature of home and homeland, and the heartache and adventure of leaving an adopted country in order to return to your native land. In conversation with fellow New... Read more

Quarantine Session #104: Hawa Allan + Anjuli Raza Kolb

By: Hawa Allan

Narrated by: Anjuli Raza Kolb

Length: 58 minutes

Abridged: No

Greenlight welcomed lawyer and critic Hawa Allan to discuss her prescient and timely debut book of nonfiction, Insurrection, a deeply researched and felt history and critique of the paradoxical state of black citizenship in the United States. Tracing the origins of the Insurrection Act of 1807 to our current moment, Allan reveals how the Act... Read more

Quarantine Session #103: Valerie Hsiung + Ginger Ko

By: Valerie Hsiung

Narrated by: Ginger Ko

Length: 58 minutes

Abridged: No

Acclaimed and prolific local poet Valerie Hsiung, whose work pushes past the limits of genre and grammar, joined us virtually to present her fourth full-length collection, winner of the Colorado State University Poetry Center’s 2019 Open Book Prize. An assemblage of verse, prose poems, scenes, and performance scores, outside voices, please lives... Read more