The Bell House is serving as the Brooklyn hub for this year’s The New Yorker Festival, which kicks off on Oct. 4, and thanks to a stellar list of programming happening right here in the borough, it’s possible to enjoy the literary festival without even crossing the East River–to be fair though, it’s worth the weekend subway commute into the city to hear talks with authors like Junot Diaz, Zadie Smith, Jennifer Egan and Jonathan Lethem if you didn’t catch them when they came through Brooklyn earlier this year. Getting things started in Gowanus on Friday are authors Edwidge Danticat and Nathan Englander at 7pm followed by a talk between Michael Shannon and Burkhard Bilger at 10pm. On Saturday, New Yorker writers Jon Lee Anderson and Dexter Filkins will share war stories as field reporters with senior editor Nick Trautwein, and on Sunday, Tavi Gevinson, feminist fashion writer, online editor (and 17-year-old wunderkind) will wrap up the festival with a talk about Rookie, her popular online magazine for teenage girls and what it’s like to be such a badass even while you’re still just figuring it all out.