If Book Nerds and Sports Nerds Had a Baby, It Would Be the Other NBA
Don’t believe the eighties movie plot line: book nerds and sports nerds (also known colloquially as “jocks”) overlap more often than you think. They have in common, among other things, an acronym—when the National Book Awards roll around each November writers and publishing people again explain that when they’re dressing up for the NBAs, they aren’t going to a basketball game. But they share a lot more than that. Many book people genuinely enjoy watching—and sometimes even playing—basketball. This Wednesday, June 15, the National Book Foundation (which administers the book NBAs) is hosting a charity basketball game at St. Francis College in Brooklyn in a charming and goofy acknowledgement of the interest overlap and acronym confusion. They call it the Other NBA.
This year’s game supports BookUp, the National Book Foundation’s reading program for underserved youth, and will have available food from Shake Shack and drinks from New York lit party staples, Brooklyn Brewery and Archer Roose. The teams are divided between writers and publishers. (Last year, at the first Other NBA game, the writers kicked major butt.) But with authors like Mitchell S. Jackson, Jeffrey McDaniel, and Tea Obreht coming up against editors, librarians, and publicists like Jonny Diamond, Stephanie Anderson, Katie Freeman, and Chris Jackson, it’ll be hard figuring out who to root for.
Check out the full roster below and pick up your tickets through Eventbrite.
Writers team:
Reginald Dwayne Betts (Bastards of the Reagan Era)
Natalie Diaz (When My Brother Was an Aztec)
Alex Gilvarry (From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant)
Mitchell S. Jackson (The Residue Years)
Jeffrey McDaniel (Chapel of Inadvertent Joy)
Tea Obreht (The Tiger’s Wife)
Rowan Ricardo Phillips (Heaven)
Kristen Radtke (Imagine Wanting Only This)
Coach: Dan P Sheehan
Publishers team:
Stephanie Anderson (Darien Library)
Jonny Diamond (Literary Hub)
Katie Freeman (Riverhead)
Chris Jackson (One World)
Tina Jordan (Association of American Publishers)
Katie Kurtzman (Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures and Littsburgh)
Steph Opitz (Marie Claire)
Calvin Reid (Publishers Weekly)
Matt Ringler (Scholastic)
Jon Schulman (Word Bookstore)
Coach: Lisa Lucas
Announcers:
Jason Diamond (Men’s Journal)
Yahdon Israel (#LiterarySwag)
Lincoln Michel (Upright Beasts)
Kevin Minh-Huy Nguyen (Google Books)
Referees:
Dave Hatchett
Rob Spillman (All Tomorrow’s Parties)
Paul W. Morris (PEN)