[UPDATE: My panel was switched with another scheduled for a different hour in the same venue.  The post below now contains the corrected info.]

Greetings!  I'm slipping in a short post on this Labor Day weekend (Happy Labor Day, to workers and labor union members everywhere!), because I am excited about the upcoming Brooklyn Book Festival!  This will be my first opportunity to attend (I've had notoriously bad luck with the timing of this festival in past years), and it looks like it will be just as fantastic as I've always heard it was.

It's a one-day, free event taking place on September 18th, with more than 200 authors participating in panel discussions and readings in at least 13 different venues -- with an amazing list of vendors (including booksellers, publishers, and literary organizations) who will also be represented.  Authors will be signing books after their events, so this is a perfect opportunity to get some favorite works (and new discoveries!) personally autographed.

I am going to want to clone myself, so I can be in many places at once.  You'll see why, when you check out the Festival schedule.  Just a few of the panels that are most enticing to me include:

• "Apocalypse Now, and Then What?," with Tananarive Due, Patrick Somerville, and Colson Whitehead (Borough Hall Courtroom, 1:00 p.m.); 
• "Kids on the Skids," with Kevin Holohan, Justin Torres, and Red Roomer Tayari Jones (St. Francis Screening Room, 10:00 a.m.);
• "The Poetry of Loss," with Mary Jo Bang, Michael Dickman, Meghan O'Rourke, and Kevin Young (Brooklyn Historical Society Main Hall, 12:00 noon);
• "Memories and Wayfinding," with Binyavanga Wainaina, Paula Fox, and Phillip Lopate (Brooklyn Historical Society Main Hall, 4:00 p.m.); and
• "New Works: A Poetry Reading," with Albert Mobilio, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Matthew Rohrer (Brooklyn Historical Society Library, 5:00 p.m.).

I will be participating on a panel on "Politics and Poetry," with Timothy Donnelly, Nick Flynn, and Thomas Sayers Ellis (Brooklyn Historical Society Main Hall, 2:00 p.m.), and I anticipate a lively conversation!  If any of you Red Roomers make it to this event, please come up and introduce yourselves -- it would be great to meet you.  But in any case, if you're in the NYC area on the weekend of September 18th, you should swing through and enjoy a little taste (or a huge helping) of the literary!  It's just the thing to help ease you through the transition from summer to fall . . .

Peace.