BBF Bookends Opening Night: West Coast/East Coast Beef

Electric Literature must raise $35,000 to fund our next chapter. EL’s incoming Executive Director and Publisher, Denne Michele Norris, plans to grow EL’s reach and influence by every measure, while maintaining our sharp, independent spirit. We need your help to ensure our continued success.

Donate now to join us in building EL’s future.

Brooklyn Book Festival Bookends Opening Night Party: the event with a name so long it gets to be its own sentence. Electric Literature was tickled to play co-host with Tumblr, The New Inquiry, and the LA Review of Books. It all went down at Public Assembly, in all its dark and sprawling Williamsburg glory. The night’s theme was ‘East vs. West face off,’ although this could be observed nowhere except in endless cups of Brooklyn Lager (East Coast) and gin-‘n-juice (West Coast). Those cups might as well have been batteries and bottled water at the last bodega on earth on the eve of the apocalypse. It was that unhinged.

There were DJs (two!) instead of readers. There were bars (two!) instead of boxed wine or whatever brutal potable thing we’re used to finding at an event. And there was dancing. So much dancing. Full on, drunk-at-prom style dancing. And it was so good.

Rarely can such debauchery be found at a party where books are for sale. On a Monday, no less. Hats off to you, literary people. You’re animals.

More photos after the jump.

***

— Kai Twanmoh is a sometimes contributor to The Outlet. You can find her here.

More Like This

A Cruise Ship Novel Set in the Aftermath of 9/11

In “All the World Can Hold,” Jung Yun positions the cruise ship as a locus of performance, family, and unexpected trauma

Mar 10 - D/Annie Liontas

Exclusive Cover Reveal of “Asmodeus” by Rita Indiana, Translated by Achy Obejas

The cover is a mix of heavy metal, Dominican history, and psychedelic dread

Feb 26 - Electric Literature

7 Novels That Bear Witness to Latin America’s Dirty Wars

These authors interrogate the suppressed histories and horrors of colonial imperialism

Jan 29 - Jahia de Rose
Thank You!