Occasionally overlooked in favor of some of the bigger names in attendance at the annual Brooklyn Book Festival are local writers from Brooklyn, especially those in emergence or independently published. Last Friday at East Williamsburg’s City Reliquary, Prospect Heights publisher Radix Media hosted an event called “Stories from Brooklyn,” which invited five local writers to a tree-shaded backyard to discuss the borough’s influence in their writing.

“The vibrant Caribbean community keeps me here,” Bernard Ferguson told onlookers. A Bahamian poet and essayist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, and New York Magazine, Ferguson added that “the intensity of inequality and gentrification” in Brooklyn complicates their relationship with the borough. 

“It’s not easy being a writer here,” they warned.