BKBF Bookend Event 9/15: Franklin Park Lit Night!

Two popular series based at Crown Heights’s famed Franklin Park Bar and Beer Garden team up for a fun and enlightening evening! The Franklin Park Reading Series and World Trans Forum host Amie Barrodale (Trip, You Are Having a Good Time), Zefyr Lisowski (Uncanny Valley Girls, Girl Work), Chet’la Sebree (Blue Opening), and Emily Zhou (Girlfriends) for short readings of newly released poetry and prose and a panel discussion with World Trans co-hosts Jeanne Thornton and Anton Solomonik. Enjoy drink specials, mingling with fellow literary enthusiasts, and a free book raffle! Free Admission!

Bios:

Amie Barrodale’s stories and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s Magazine, and other publications. In 2012 she was awarded The Paris Review’s George Plimpton Prize for Fiction for her story “William Wei.” She is the author of the novel Trip and the short story collection You Are Having a Good Time.

Zefyr Lisowski is the author of the forthcoming Uncanny Valley Girls, an essay collection about horror movies, exes, and intimacy (Harper Perennial 2025). A 2023 NYFA/NYSCA Fellow in Nonfiction and 2023 Queer|Art Fellow, she’s also the author of two poetry collections, Girl Work (Noemi Press 2024) and Blood Box (Black Lawrence 2019). Raised in the Great Dismal Swamp, North Carolina, Zefyr lives in Brooklyn and has seen grave robbers twice.

Chet'la Sebree is the author most recently of the poetry collections Blue Opening, as well as Field Study, winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Mistress. Raised in the mid-Atlantic, she earned an MFA in creative writing from American University. Chet’la’s poetry and prose have appeared in Colorado Review, Kenyon Review, Lit Hub, Pleiades, Guernica, Poetry International, and The Yale Review. Chet’la is an assistant professor of English at George Washington University and teaches in Randolph College’s low-residency MFA program. Her debut essay collection is forthcoming from The Dial Press in 2026.

Emily Zhou is the author of Girlfriends, which won the Publishing Triangle’s Leslie Feinberg Award and was nominated for a Lambda. She edits books at LittlePuss Press and short fiction at Joyland Magazine.

Anton Solomonik is a writer and illustrator living in Brooklyn. His writing has appeared in Lit Hub, Epiphany, and Evergreen Review. His first book, Realistic Fiction, was published with LittlePuss Press in 2025. He’s the co-host of the World Trans Forum, a discussion panel and open mic series for trans artists. You can follow him on Bluesky or Instagram: @aaantons.

Jeanne Thornton is the author of Summer Fun, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender fiction, as well as the novels A/S/L and The Dream of Doctor Bantam. She is the current senior editor at Feminist Press, the co-publisher of Instar Books, and the co-host of the World Trans Forum open mic series in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in WIRED, Harper's Bazaar, n+1, WSQ, Evergreen Review, and other places. She lives and works in Brooklyn, and more information is available at jeannethornton.com.