Your Favorite Brooklyn Author May Also Be a Bookseller (For a Day)

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middlesteinsIf you reserve a good chunk of your holiday shopping for indie bookstores, this year you can stop in on a day when your favorite Brooklyn author is behind the register. On Nov. 30, Small Business Saturday, local writers like Emma Straub, Teddy Wayne, and Jami Attenberg will be selling and recommending books at nearly every indie bookstore in Brooklyn, including Community Bookstore, Greenlight, WORD, powerHouse Arena, powerHouse on 8th and Bergen Street Comics.

The author-turned-bookseller concept, called “Indies First,” was spearheaded by Sherman Alexie, who sent an open letter to writer friends last month, encouraging his fellow book nerds to work at their favorite, indie bookstores for a day, as he did in Seattle this spring. Wrote Alexie: “We will make recommendations. We will practice nepotism and urge readers to buy multiple copies of our friends’ books. Maybe you’ll sign and sell books of your own in the process. I think the collective results could be mind-boggling (maybe even world-changing).” This may be stretching things a bit, but it’s not hard to imagine the concept becoming an anticipated, annual event in Brooklyn, or one that record stores wind up copying.

Over 20 local writers of children’s books, YA books, graphic novels, non-fiction and literary fiction have signed on to work the inaugural Indies First on Nov. 30. Below are the participants, and the bookstores where you can find them.


Nick Abadzis, author and illustrator of Laika and Hugo Tate (Bergen Street)
Jami Attenberg, author of The Middlesteins (WORD Brooklyn)
Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, author of Sexy Feminism (WORD Brooklyn)
John Bemelmans Marciano, author of The Nine Lives of Alexander Baddenfield (WORD Brooklyn)
Stefan Merrill Block, author of The Storm at the Door (POWERHOUSE on 8th)
Amy Brill, author of The Movement of Stars (Community Bookstore)
Michael Buckley, author of the Sisters Grimm and N.E.R.D.S. series (Greenlight)
Mike Cavallaro, artist of Foiled, The Shield & Mega Man (Bergen Street)
Myke Cole, author of the Shadow Ops series (WORD Brooklyn)
Emily Jenkins, author of Water in the Park and Five Creatures (POWERHOUSE on 8th)
Jodi Kantor, author of The Obamas (POWERHOUSE on 8th)
Ayana Mathis, author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (Greenlight)
Sarah McCarry, author of All Our Pretty Songs (WORD Brooklyn)
Leigh Newman, author of Still Points North (The POWERHOUSE Arena)
Tim O’Mara, author of Crooked Numbers and Sacrifice Fly (WORD Brooklyn)
Yuko Ota, illustrator of Johnny Wander and Lucky Penny (Bergen Street)
Ananth Panagariya, writer of Johnny Wander and Lucky Penny (Bergen Street)
Matt de la Peña, author of The Living (Community Bookstore)
Jeffrey Rotter, author of The Unknown Knowns (Greenlight)
Jon Scieszka, author of Battle Bunny (Community Bookstore)
Amy Shearn, author of The Mermaid of Brooklyn (WORD Brooklyn)
Emma Straub, author of Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures (WORD Brooklyn)
Brendan Jay Sullivan, author of Rivington Was Ours (WORD Brooklyn)
Justin Torres, author of We The Animals (Greenlight)
Teddy Wayne, author of The Love Song of Jonny Valentine (The POWERHOUSE Arena)
Paul Zelinsky, author of Z is for Moose (Greenlight)

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