Brooklyn Book Festival: Best Of Brooklyn, Inc.

Brooklyn Dept: NEW YORK, N.Y. - The Brooklyn Book Festival, scheduled for Sept. 23 and now in its seventh year, has rapidly become one of the top events of its kind in the country, with 280 writers taking part, including A-listers like Mary Higgins Clark, and crowds expected to approach 40,000, according to Winnipeg Free Press. As it does every year, this year's schedule includes some writers with Brooklyn connections, like Colson Whitehead and Paul Auster, who live here; Pete Hamill, who was born in Brooklyn and is receiving an award at the event called "Best of Brooklyn, Inc."; and Edwidge Danticat, whose fiction about the Caribbean often portrays the immigrant community in Brooklyn and this Sept. 18, 2011 photo shows crowds at events during the 2011 Brooklyn Book Festival, in the Brooklyn borough of New York, which has quickly become one of the nation s top events of its kind since starting in 2006. This year s festival is scheduled for Sept. 23 in and around Brooklyn Borough Hall in downtown Brooklyn, with more than 280 writers participating and crowds expected to approach 40,000. AP Photo/Brooklyn Book Festival, Kathryn Kirk The festival's success has earned it comparisons with more established book fairs in places like Los Angeles, Miami, Washington D.C. and Austin, Texas, but its buzz is partly due to Brooklyn's latest incarnation as a trendy hotbed of hipsters and artists. The borough is home to many well-known contemporary writers like Martin Amis, Jhumpa Lahiri and Jonathan Safran Foer. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.