Tipsy Bee Author Spelling Bee & Book Fair
About this Event
THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2026 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL BOOKEND EVENT
For the third year, the Tipsy Bee Author Spelling Bee & Book Fair returns to the Brooklyn Book Festival as an official Bookends event! Watch as your favorite authors try to spell words taken from their own books, reviews of their books, and from other literary and not so literary inspirations. The bee goes on until there is only one author still standing! Who will it be?
Participating authors include: Cat Fitzpatrick, Laura Venita Green, Tierney Oberhammer, Patrick O'Dowd, Radhika Singh, and Kat Tang. The Tipsy Bee Author Spelling Bee is hosted by Kerri Schlottman, Jeff Waxman, and Jules Wernersbach. Audience participation is most definitely encouraged!
Hive Mind Books will be on site with a pop-up book fair featuring the authors' books and much more. We can't wait to see you there!
Meet the Authors:
Cat Fitzpatrick
Cat Fitzpatrick's debut novel, The Call-Out (Seven Stories Press, 2022), was awarded the 2023 Lambda Award for Transgender Fiction. She is the author of the poetry collection Glamourpuss (Topside Press, 2016), and the co-editor of the anthology Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction & Fantasy from Transgender Writers, which won the ALA Stonewall Award for Literature. Fitzpatrick is the first trans woman Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies program at Rutgers University–Newark, and she also serves as the Editrix at LittlePuss Press. The Dinner Party (Seven Stories Press, 2026) is her second novel in verse.
Laura Venita Green
Laura Venita Green is a writer and translator with an MFA from Columbia University, where she currently teaches. Her first novel, Sister Creatures, was an Indie Next pick and one of Debutiful’s best debut books of 2025. She recently googled “How to win a spelling bee.”
Tierney Oberhammer
Tierney Oberhammer is a Black, mixed-race Millennial writer based in New York’s Hudson Valley. Her work has appeared in swamp pink, Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Callaloo, River Teeth, and elsewhere. Her debut book, FOREVER EGG, is forthcoming from Modern Artist Press in spring 2027. Across its twelve interconnected stories, FOREVER EGG follows characters navigating the tension between what they long for and what they believe they owe the people they love, in prose that is both wry and poignant.
Patrick O'Dowd
Patrick O'Dowd's debut novel, A Campus on Fire, follows student journalist Tess Azar as she investigates a death that exposes a prestigious writing program's cultish secrets. A 2025 American Fiction Award Finalist, praised by New York Public Library, San Francisco Book Review, and Library Journal, which called it a "stunner."
Radhika Singh
Radhika Singh lives, writes and teaches in Queens, New York. Her fiction speculates on the presence of magic in this world, the connection to spirit and consciousness, and the power of the people to organize for collective liberation. Her novel Earthly Playing Field connects ongoing People's movements against global imperialism through a queer, Sufi love story. Her novel Weirdly Tuned Antennae, winner of the 2025 Sukenick Prize for Innovative Fiction, is forthcoming from FC2 Press.
Kat Tang
Kat Tang’s debut novel, Five-Star Stranger—about a rentable man running away from his past—featured on NPR and People magazine. Her second novel, June and Yumi’s Disaster Utopia, is forthcoming in 2027. She once spelled “elasticity” wrong in front of her entire high school and has never forgotten it.
Meet the Hosts:
Kerri Schlottman
Kerri Schlottman is a writer of literary fiction novels, most recently Daytime Moon (Unnamed Press, May 2026), which was named a Most Anticipated Book by Popsugar Magazine and Parade. Her novels have won awards from Storytrade, PenCraft, and American Book Fest, and been named a Shelf Awareness Best Book This Week and a Finalist of the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, which recognizes significant feminist works.
Jules Wernersbach
Jules Wernersbach is a writer and bookseller in Brooklyn. They are the author of the novel, Work To Do, and two books of nonfiction about Texas. Their short fiction has been published in Bennington Review, Heavy Feather Review, and other journals. Jules is co-founder of Hive Mind Books, a queer independent bookstore and coffee shop in Bushwick, Brooklyn. They also run the Bureua, a queer bookstore in Manhattan. They have been a bookseller for a long time.
Jeff Waxman (he/him) has spent half his life working in bound and printed matter, helping publishers navigate the protean vicissitudes of the publishing ecosystem with conspicuous aplomb, synthesizing mercantile pragmatics and humanistic exegesis through philobiblic erudition, hermeneutic perspicacity, and syncretic intellectuality. He can spell most, but not all, of these words.
Agenda
🕑: 06:30 PM - 07:00 PM
Arrive, grab a drink, and check out the book fair!
🕑: 07:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Spelling Bee takes place!
🕑: 08:00 PM - 08:30 PM
Buy author books and get them signed!
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 0.00
