Check Out The Best Locally Curated, Brooklyn-Centric Books

Finally, a summer reading list that revolves around ‘the most literary borough’, featuring books that are not only fun to read but can teach us more about the place we call home.

This week, the Brooklyn Public Library announced the fiction and nonfiction longlist nominees for the second annual Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize, an award bestowed on two Brooklyn authors who artfully portray the borough’s life and culture.

“The award celebrates the authors, booksellers, librarians and readers who have made Brooklyn the most literary borough in America’s most literary city,” said BPL President and CEO Linda E. Johnson.

Thanks to our favorite local bookstores for curating a fantastic selection of Brooklyn authors and nominating their favorite books for the Prize, including Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene and BookCourt in nearby Cobble Hill.

Each bookstore was allotted two submissions, one fiction and one nonfiction that added life and depth to the Brooklyn literary canon.

Greenlight Bookstore co-owners Rebecca Fitting and Jessica Stockton Bagnulo nominated Gowanus: Brooklyn’s Curious Canal by Joseph Alexiou, about the complex urban waterway. “We thought this book was important as it reveals that many of the issues around the Gowanus Canal predate not only the current trend of gentrification but America itself: they go back to the pre-Revolutionary Dutch era,” wrote Fitting. For more on this book, check out Donny Levit’s colorful feature on Park Slope Stoop, which showcases Alexiou’s talents as a historian, tour guide and author.

Greenlight also selected Flatbush-based Caribbean author Naomi Jackson‘s debut novel The Star Side of Bird Hill;. “Naomi’s debut is wonderfully written,” said Fitting. “Being partly set in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn and partly set in Barbados, I loved how it represented the Caribbean community, which is such a big part of Brooklyn’s culture.”

BookCourt nominated Emma Straub’s novel Modern Lovers, which is set in Ditmas Park and packed with colorful local references. Straub, a NY Times bestselling author, has a unique connection to the neighborhoods of Northern Brooklyn as a former employee at BookCourt.

“This book is special because it captures a moment of gentrification in Brooklyn, and not in Williamsburg or Cobble Hill that usually get featured,” Andrew Unger, manager of events and publicity, told FGF. “[Straub] paints a portrait that’s accurate and beautiful and funny. What I personally loved, as someone who lives in Crown Heights, is that I am reading about what’s happening right now in front of me.”

For its nonfiction pick, BookCourt nominated Sunny’s Nights by Tim Sultan, a deep dive into the legendary Sunny’s Bar in Red Hook. BookCourt used to run a monthly reading series at Sunny’s, and at that time Sultan was the bartender. The book is rich with details that feel so emblematic of Brooklyn, Unger said, like the owner Sunny Balzano meeting George Clinton (Balzano passed away in March).

The two winners, one fiction and one nonfiction, will be announced at the Brooklyn Eagles Fundraiser event in September, and awarded $2,500.

Check out the full list of nominees here, get to know last year’s winners here, and also visit any branch of the Brooklyn Public Library to literally check out all of the nominated titles for the 2016 Eagle Literary Award!