Brooklyn Book Fest Bookend Event:
Tipsy Bee Adult Spelling Bee & Book Fair
A grown-up spelling bee with a twist! Join us at Francis Kite Club for this fun and official Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event where you can root on your new favorite authors as they try to spell literary-inspired words, and even give spelling a go yourself. As the featured authors (inevitably) lose, we’ll call up audience members to beat those still standing for the chance to win the Grand Prize! Hive Mind Books, a traveling indie bookstore, will be there with a curated selection of excellent new and secondhand reads as well as the featured authors' books. Free to attend!
THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2024 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL BOOKEND EVENT
Featured Authors
Lisa Ko is the author of Memory Piece and the nationally bestselling novel The Leavers, which was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and winner of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. Ko’s short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories and her essays and nonfiction have been published in The New York Times and The Believer.
Hyeseung Song is a first-generation Korean American painter and the author of Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl (Simon & Schuster). She lives in Brooklyn and upstate New York. Learn more about her at hyeseungsong.com.
Amelia Possanza (she/her) is the debut author of Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives, which was named a Best Book of 2023 by NPR, Shelf Awareness, and Publishers Weekly, and received the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, LitHub, Electric Literature, The Millions, and NPR’s Invisibilia. Possanza is also a book publicist and teaches creative writing to high schoolers through Lambda Literary’s Writers in School program.
Aaron Jacobs is the author of the novels Time Will Break the World and The Abundant Life. His short stories and essays have appeared in Tin House, Alaska Quarterly Review, Crime Reads, Necessary Fiction, Litt, and elsewhere. His website is aaronjacobswrites.com and he's on social media at @itsaaronjacobs. He lives mostly in the Catskills with his wife and dog.
Isle McElroy is the author ofThe Atmospherians, which was named a New York Times Editors' Choice. Their second novel, People Collide, was a New York Times Critics' Pick. McElroy's other writing appears in The New York Times, New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The Cut, Vulture, GQ, Vogue, The Atlantic, Tin House, and elsewhere.
Kosoko Jackson was born and raised in the DC Metro Area, and has worked in digital communications for the past five years. He is a USA TODAY bestselling author and Lambda Award winning author of horror and adult romance. He lives in the NYC area with his dog Artemis.
Event Hosts
Kerri Schlottman is a writer of literary fiction novels, most recently Tell Me One Thing, which was a 2024 PenCraft Fiction Award Winner, a 2023 American Book Fest Best Literary Fiction Book Finalist, and a Shelf Awareness Best Book This Week.
Julie Wernersbach is a writer and bookseller living in Brooklyn. She is the owner and co-founder of Hive Mind Books, a traveling independent bookstore that hosts pop-up book and author events in Brooklyn and Jersey City.
Jeff Waxman (he/him) has spent half his life working in books and magazines in Chicago and New York. Now he organizes Philadelphia's mutual aid communities to expand access to food and harm reduction. And books.