Rachel Fershleiser, Nick Douglas and Molly McArdle. (Photo credit:Jesse Chan-Norris)

We have reached a stage in the life of New York or the life of literature (or both) where a glance at the bio of most contemporary authors inevitably ends with the words “lives in Brooklyn.” Not surprisingly, a literary festival exists to celebrate the borough’s bibliophiles. The Brooklyn Book Festival, which will take place this Sunday, means that many writers won’t even have to get on the subway in order to read aloud and sit on panels in front of enthusiastic readers.

To kick off the literary festivities prior to the literary Festival, Tumblr, Electric Literature, The New Inquiry and the Los Angeles Review of Books threw a party. (Book people love parties.) Shindigger, being notionally bookish ourselves, followed the parade of tote bags until we reached the Williamsburg event space Public Assembly. After getting a temporary tattoo stamped on our inner wrist, we entered the darkened hall.

The drinks were cheap, the music loud and the lights dim as publishing professionals, indie writers, indie booksellers and indie magazine editors shouted above the DJ to discuss Important Contemporary Fiction and trade industry gossip.

“Anything by Lorrie Moore speaks to a certain kind of person,” novelist Jami Attenberg said when we asked her what books she recommends. “Junot Díaz is a fucking genius—can I say that?” We were unsure if she meant the sentiment or the swear.

“The funny thing about book parties is that you take a bunch of introverts, put them in a room and get them drunk,” said Jason Oberholtzer. Mr. Olberholtzer is a Tumblr success story—his Tumblr, I Love Charts, was turned into a book of the same name.

Tumblr stickers and pins (the sort middle-schoolers affix to their jean jackets) were strewn around the tables. Greenpoint bookstore Word sold books by authors who are speaking at the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday, and the paperbacks went first and fast.

“This is my event—$3 gin and juice, what’s not to like?” Edith Zimmerman, editor of The Hairpin, told us when we asked her plans for the festival. Has she read anything exciting recently? “I just read the internet. It’s terrible.” She sipped on her gin and juice, and we suppose she looked laid back.

The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets author Kathleen Alcott looked more Madison Avenue than Bedford Avenue with her bright blond hair, pocketbook and well-cut pastel outfit. Although we thought she was too put-together to be at a party with $3 drink specials, as it turns out, Ms. Alcott does, in fact, live in Brooklyn.

“You must get this all the time, but what are you listening to  now?” we overheard someone ask New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones.

“I have a Google Doc,” replied Mr. Frere-Jones. We weren’t sure whether he was offering to share the document or not.

“I’m excited about my own book—am I allowed to say that?” asked Cole Stryker, author of Hacking the Future. We assured him he was.

“As far as lit parties, this one has the dimmest lighting. Usually, they have bright lighting,” Mr. Stryker explained. “There are a lot of nervous people here wondering if there’s going to be dancing.”

As we walked away from Mr. Stryker, we heard a cluster of young men in plaid debating the lack of a lifestyle magazine “for teenage guys.”

If, as Mr. Stryker suggested, people were wondering whether there was going to be dancing, they didn’t have to wonder for long.

“People are already dancing. Jesus,” someone said, near the vicinity of the dance floor. It was only 8:30.

Sean Howe, who has a book coming out on the history of Marvel Comics, told us that he was going to speak on a panel with legendary Nation editor Victor Navasky. Was he nervous?

“The last time I was on a panel, I got tunnel vision,” replied Mr. Howe. Why put himself through that again? He shrugged.

Matthew Specktor, the senior fiction editor of the LA Review of Books, a host of the event, represented the West Coast. The drink specials were $3 Brooklyn lager and $3 gin and juice, and the Facebook invitation suggested that the drinks were standing in for a proxy battle between coasts.

Well, who was winning?

“Everyone here is involved in literature, so we are all winning or losing together,” he said, adding, “There is more than enough literary seriousness in LA to power a small nation.”

Although Mr. Spector told us that the East Coast/West Coast divide is false, he did roll his eyes when mentioning Southern Californians’ penchant for yoga and juice cleanses. Since we walked by three yoga studios and one sterile-looking new juice cleanse bar just on the walk from Bedford to the party, we assured him that New York wasn’t that different.

Mr. Spector nodded, we think a bit sadly (although that may have been reflected glow from the disco ball).

“Incandescent joy, unbridled happiness, metaphysical ecstasy,” gushed Rachel Rosenfelt, the editor-in-chief and founder of lit mag The New Inquiry, when asked about her night.

“There are a lot of blazers in play, and the dancing is hilarious,” said Amy Rose Spiegel, a Rookie Mag writer. She had very long false eyelashes, which we found impressive. “I’m having a bawl,” she added, requesting that we spell it to reflect her Jersey pronunciation.

People did seem to be having a good time. Nevertheless, when we heard one partygoer say, “She’s, like, doing something about smells and cultural associations,” we decided it was time to leave.

1. Téa Obreht, author of The Tiger’s Wife.

2. Siddhartha Deb, author of The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India.

3. Teju Cole, author of Open City.

4. Amitav Ghosh, author of Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke, chatting with Nuruddin Farah, author of Crossbones (the final novel in the Past Imperfect trilogy.)

5. Author Norton Juster and illustrator Jules Feiffer on the 50^th Anniversary of The Phantom Tollbooth.

6. Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina (One Day I Will Write About This Place), talking with Paula Fox (News From the World) and Phillip Lopate (At the End of the Day).

7. Pulitzer Prize-winners from Brooklyn, Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger, from ProPublica.

8. Evan Hughes sharing anecdotes from his book about the Brooklyn’s literati, Literary Brooklyn.

9. Jhumpa Lahiri, author of Unaccustomed Earth, Interpreter of Maladies (Pulitzer Prize 2000) and The Namesake, in conversation with Times book critic Liesl Schillinger.

10. Deborah Eisenberg, Fran Lebowitz, and Wallace Shawn who are supposedly answering the question “USA 2011: Where are we?”

11. Lucette Lagnado, Wall Street Journal reporter and author of the memoir The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, discussing its sequel, The Arrogant Years.

12. Larry McMurtry (do we need to say anything except for Lonesome Dove?) and Diana Ossana (who wrote the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain with him) talking about screenwriting.

13. The above t-shirts, from Novel-T, featuring Walt Whitman, Brooklyn literary hero.

"There's no question that those in their twenties and early thirties--I think, just from a quick look--seem to be a significant part of the turnout today, and last year too. So it shows that obviously something is happening."

I strolled around Borough Hall Park, pausing at vendors who had set up shop for the annual festival, which is in it's third year. Tables offered piles and piles of new and old tomes, everything from childhood to adult literature. A veritable congregation of Brooklyn's literary, artistic and community-oriented class surrounded me. There were lots of children, too.

Discussions throughout the day offered the likes of Joan Didion, Jonathan Lethem, Terry McMillan and Thurston Moore to name a few. I caught up with Thurston, who recently co-authored No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York 1976-1980, before he took the stage at St. Francis College with Ian Mackaye (of Minor Threat and Fugazi) to discuss the intersection of punk and publishing. I asked him his thoughts on what exactly is going on in literary Brooklyn these days.

"I think that every scene in Brooklyn has taken off, not just the literary scene," he said. "I think it's kind of correlative with the music scene and the art scene. I think it's because most writers don't have much money so it's affordable to live here, as it was 35 years ago in Manhattan. Manhattan is like Los Angeles now.

"As far as the literary scene taking off," Thurston continued, "if you have an independent publishing company it makes more sense to be here because of the economics. There's more characters here, and they're characters who are living creative lifestyles as opposed to the kind of yuppie liberal white stuff."

Brooklyn is definitely a treasure trove of inspiration and full of new characters at every turn. Though maybe some of that yuppie liberal white stuff, too. Ahem, Park Slope.

"Even Kate [Christensen], her book The Great Man, I remember reading it when I was in my store one day," said Christine Onorati, owner of Greenpoint book store Word. "And this woman walked in and in my head I was like, 'Oh, I wonder if that's this character' and realized, ‘Oh, my god, that's a novel!' You almost forget. Brooklyn's so big and so different from one end to the next there's so much going on here, there's tons of fodder."

"I'VE BEEN TALKING TO a lot of writers lately," said the author Ms. Christensen, whose et her tome in Greenpoint. "We all say, all of us, without any irony, that Brooklyn is the best place for a writer to live; and for a writer to say something un-ironically, that earnest, we must mean it."

The close quarters, an infinite variety of perspectives and a literary legacy give Brooklyn some of it's most unique characteristics, and young people are moving here in droves to enjoy it.

"I can't fully explain it, but there's a history there," said Johnny Temple, publisher of Akashic Books and an organizer of the book festival. "And I think that people do feel like when they move to Brooklyn they're part of a historical artistic continuum."

"I was talking to Ian Mackaye on the phone a couple of weeks ago in advance of him coming up here because I arranged his program and he was bitching at me a little bit about how many people from D.C. have moved up to New York and he was being light hearted about it but he was basically saying that New York has sucked some of the musical life out of D.C."

Maybe it's because they've read so many great books about the place.

Mr. MacKaye and Mr. Moore are scheduled for a conversation/Q&A starting at 3 p.m. to "discuss the parallel worlds of independent music and book publishing," according to the festival's Web site. How, you ask, did it come to be that these two super hip indie rockers will be rubbing elbows with some of the literary greats of our time? Well, one of the festival's organizers is Johnny Temple, who is also the chair of the Brooklyn Borough President's Literary Council and the head of the independent publishing house Akashic Books, and who also also happens to be the bass player of the seminal ‘90s indie rock band Girls Against Boys. Now it all makes sense!

So basically, back in high school our English teachers probably thought we were weird for being so into the all these strange bands with silly names instead of like, Dave Matthews, or whatever all the normal kids were listening to. But thanks to the Brooklyn Book Festival, we can proudly say that the joke's on them!

More coverage here and here.