"Now in its fifth year, the Brooklyn Book Festival is one of the top book festivals in the nation with a hip, huge and free all-star literary lineup!

Come see Salman Rushdie, Venus Williams, Sarah Silverman, Paul Krugman, Dennis Lehane, Paul Auster, Naomi Klein, Gary Shteyngart, Rosanne Cash, Jennifer Egan, John Ashbery, Nelson George, Mary Gaitskill, Colson Whitehead, Francine Prose, Esmeralda Santiago, Pete Hamill, Russell Banks, Michael Connelly, John Hodgman, Kristen Schaal, Sam Lipsyte, Sloane Crosley, Paul Harding and over 200 more! Plus children's and young adult lit stars like Rebecca Stead, Sara Shepard, Jacqueline Woodson, Jon Scieszka, Jenny Han, Tad Hills, and Francisco X. Stork! Click here for festival program schedule."

photos by Bao Nguyen

"We wanted to make some statement from New York City -- the center of the universe," said Lou Reed in a hallway press conference for Speak Up!, an anti-war benefit held last night (March 18) at intimate Brooklyn theater St. Ann's Warehouse. While the 65-year-old NYC icon isn't in any shape to be chaining himself to a recruiting station, he certainly can gather a who's who of the lefty art-rocker geekerati: David Byrne, Moby, Blonde Redhead, Scissor Sisters, Damien Rice, Norah Jones and co-organizers Laurie Anderson and Antony, who helped conceive the event in Anderson's living room. It was a night where every song felt like a protest anthem -- even when the Scissor Sisters sang "I ain't got nothing but your seed on my face/You'll put them babies to waste." That could be about sending kids to war, right? [Rolling Stone]

Reed, Anderson, Antony and Moby opened the show with a broken version of "The Star Spangled Banner." Lou's feedback never quite nailed the notes and he mangled the words a little bit ("home of the free and the home of the brave"), but it all made perfect sense. On the fifth anniversary of a war that has been pushed off the headlines in favor of an election, our national anthem was given an appropriate luster of unease and trepidation. Norah Jones performed slinky versions of her "My Dear Country" and Randy Newman's "I Think It's Going To Rain Today." David Byrne, armed with a four-person choir, led an art-gospel sermon full of huge choruses. Damien Rice was on hand to add harmonies (and the shittiest tambourine playing since Tracy Partridge), but Byrne's mesmerizing presence kept his pair of originals spiraling heavenward. The perenially chilly Laurie Anderson pulled out the snarky electrofunk of her recent "Only An Expert," vivisecting corporations and Oprah and weapons of mass destruction and global warming in that arch, scientific, matter-of-fact Laurie Anderson way. [Rolling Stone]

Continue reading "Lou Reed, Antony, David Byrne & other photos from the Speak Up! benefit @ St Ann's in Brooklyn"