I love to look at the book tables at the Brooklyn Book Festival and I'm going to stick with the non-ticketed events (since I don't have any tickets). This list may be a tad ambitious but I will definitely try to catch some of these. I know I won't want to miss the Poetry Society of America, Africa in the Age of Obama, Only the Dead and Lenore Skenazy in a panel called The Truth About Parenting (that's in one hour I better get showered and RUN).

Main Stage (Borough Hall Plaza)

11:00 a.m. Poetry Society of America Presents. A reading organized by PSA, the nation’s oldest poetry organization, featuring the country’s best bards: Anne Carson, Sonia Sanchez, Philip Schultz and Arthur Sze. Introduced by Alice Quinn.

1:00 p.m. Only the Dead. Readings of Brooklyn’s revered authors, from Walt Whitman to Frank McCourt, are performed by actors from Troupe.

2:00 p.m. Close to the Street. Three
writers on urban life—its housing, its mass transit, its vibe—discuss
how we make cities and how cities make us. Featuring Nelson George (City Kid), Alyssa Katz (Our Lot) and Tom Vanderbilt (Traffic). Moderated by Theodore Hamm, editor of The Brooklyn Rail.

International Stage (Borough Hall Plaza)

12:00 p.m. Mahmoud Darwish: A Conversation. Five distinguished authors, Russell Banks, Michael Palmer, Breyten Breytenbach, Sinan Antoon and Fady Joudah, remember and respond to the life and work of the celebrated Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008). Moderated by Breyten Breytenbach.
 
2:00 p.m. The Naked City: Urban Realism and the Global City in Fiction & Non-Fiction.
A discussion exploring the gritty urban realism of the contemporary
global city as seen through recent works of fiction and non-fiction
about Delhi, New York and Mexico City. Featuring David Lida (First Stop in the New World), Meera Nair (Video) and Hirsh Sawhney (editor, Delhi Noir). Moderated by Cheryl Harris Sharman (Nightshift NYC).

4:00 p.m. Africa in the Age of Obama. A conversation about the current spotlight on African writing and culture, with Binyavanga Wainaina (Kenyan author and Director of the Chinua Achebe Center), Mohammed Naseehu Ali (Ghanaian musician and author of The Prophet of Zongo Street) and Breyten Breytenbach (South African poet, painter, author). Moderated by Rob Spillman, editor of Gods and Soldiers: The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing.

North Stage (Borough Hall Plaza)

11:00 a.m. The Truth About Parenting. Featuring Yvonne Bynoe (Who’s Your Mama), Ben George (The Book of Dads) and Lenore Skenazy (Free-Range Kids). Moderated by Laura Sinagra.

1:00 p.m. Feeding Love in NYC. Giulia Melucci (I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti), Michelle Maisto (The Gastronomy of Marriage) and Annie Hauck-Lawson/Jonathan Deutsch (Gastropolis, Food & New York City) share culinary and romantic experiences.

2:00 p.m. Eye of the Book. Cynthia Maris Dantzic (100 New York Painters) and Jane Weissman (On the Wall: Four Decades of Community Murals in New York City) share their art books about NYC artists and murals.