QUILLBLOG

Brooklyn one step closer to becoming centre of the universe

Love it or hate it, Brooklyn has long been the stomping ground of young(ish), hip American writers. Now, it seems to be the preferred locale of indie publishers, too. According to New York Times reporter Rachel Donadio, Verso, the British indie, and Melville House, the literary publisher – as well as New Left Review and N+1, the literary quarterly – have all pulled up stakes in Manhattan and set up shop across the East River in Dumbo, “the gritty-chic Brooklyn neighborhood whose acronym means ‘down under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass,’ home of million-dollar condos, the York Street Projects, artists’ studios and high-end boutiques.” (The London Review of Books is also rumored to be scouting the location.) Reportedly, the companies were lured by the subsidized rents offered by maverick tycoon and developer David Walentas, the self-proclaimed “Pied Piper of Dumbo.”

Now, if only the publishing establishment would follow suit, Paul Auster, Jonathan Lethem, Jonathan Safran Foer, Myla Goldberg, and Nicole Krauss, to name a few Brooklyn authors, could permanently eschew the L train to Manhattan.