Brooklyn Was Mine for DDDB

pitu

There's a new anthology with some heavy hitters (Jonathan Lethem, yeah!), called "Brooklyn Was Mine."
It's a fundraiser for the anti-Atlantic Yards folks, and there's a few readings coming up . . .

"Brooklyn Was Mine" Book Readings:

Wednesday, January 9, 7:30pm.
Park Slope Barnes and Noble (267 7th Avenue at 6th Street). Brooklyn.
Authors contributing to the new anthology "Brooklyn Was Mine" will be reading from their work. The authors for this night's reading are:

Jennifer Egan
Susan Choi
Darin Strauss

Tuesday, January 15, 7pm.
BookCourt (163 Court Street near Pacific Street). Brooklyn.
Authors contributing to the new anthology "Brooklyn Was Mine" will be reading from their work. The authors for this night's reading are:

Emily Barton
Darcey Steinke
Alexandra Styron

Anthology Aids Anti-Atlantic Yards Fight
The Observer
by Lysandra Ohrstrom | January 2, 2008

Two senior editors at Vogue and 20 writers joined the fight to "protect (the) fragile miracle" that is Brooklyn from the Atlantic Yards project. On Wednesday, they publicized the release of Brooklyn Was Mine, an anthology of short stories whose proceeds will be donated to the nonprofit Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn. The book is published by Riverhead Trade.

The contributors "were motivated by their commitment to Brooklyn and its future--a future threatened by a development that is overwhelmingly dense, grossly out-of-scale with its surrounding neighborhood and will divide and dislocate area residents", reads the press release posted on the D-DDB Web site Wednesday.

Essays range from nostalgic accounts of childhood baseball games and trips to Coney Island to a fictional romance set against the backdrop of World War II.

"Ruckus Flatbush [by Jonathan Lethem] is a wild, dystopian ride into Brooklyn's future, meant to serve as a warning shot to the barbarians on the horizon," reads the release.

"Who is to say what will become of the place, or whether Brooklyn will retain its soul?" asks Phillip Lopate in an excerpt from the book's introduction. "Whatever happens to Brooklyn its literary soul is sound and robust, and its writers fiercely loyal."

...And only slightly polemical, but what else would you expect from a band of writers and staunch Brooklynites? Two readings will be held in Brooklyn next week.