The Brooklyn Book Festival is young.

This past Sunday marked its sixth anniversary. Though arguably the city’s best literary event, the Festival remains, on principle, a homage to Brooklyn. It’s no secret that the borough is home to an unusual number of great authors, past and present. To name some: Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss (also Foer’s wife), and Jhumpa Lahiri. Lahiri is this year’s BoBi winner, an awkward acronym that stands for “Best of Brooklyn.” We couldn’t figure out where the i came from, either.

When I arrived at the festival at 2:45, it was well underway. By some stroke of luck, Foer, Lahiri, and Oates were all signing at 3. I skipped one winding line and ran from one event to the other.

I found myself breathless in front of Lahiri, the very prim, beautiful, stoic Indian-American author I’d been reading for years. Signings at the Festival were spread out by distance as well as time, and this one was in the very grand and impressive St. Ann’s Church.

As I waited in line, I tried to combine everything I loved about the books into one sentence. This, which I was about to spill in one rush, was “It’s-so-sentimental-without-being-cliche.”

Before I could, Lahiri cut me off.

“Did you want your name?”

“Oh,” I said, still smiling dumbly. “Yeah.”

She handed me my book, now complete with her loopy signature. I decided to give it another shot.

“I’m a huge fan,” I said.

She didn’t look up. “Thank you.” She turned to the next reader, still unsmiling.

To be generous, maybe she took herself too seriously. That’s understandable; she did win a Pulitzer at age 32 for her debut short story collection. Regardless, I found the entire interaction unfriendly and disappointing.

I then ran from the church to Joyce Carol Oates’ and Foer’s signings. The two sat next to each other and fellow author Nina Revoyr. Knowing that Oates had served as Foer’s advisor for his college thesis (which became the beginnings of his first novel, Everything is Illuminated), it was something to see the two of them sitting as contemporaries. The mutual respect they had for each other was tangible.

I became introduced to Oates through her short story collections. Impressively, she has also written over fifty novels, which makes her a true literary BAMF. Upon returning home after the festival, I Googled the author for a good thirty minutes. I stumbled upon an interview in which she talked about the uselessness of “deliberately wasting time” and closed the five Facebook tabs I had up.

Despite its origins as a Brooklyn event, the Festival has become more international in the past few years. Downtown Brooklyn was dotted yesterday with hundreds of blue tents. One of these belonged to Europa Editions, an Italian-based company that brings translated works to the American public. Several foreign authors were present.

Fall came early this year. Sunday was cool and sunny in Brooklyn, and people strolled around in scarves and jackets. This weather, preferable to last year’s rainy day, seemed to make the event particularly literary.

(Photo By Olivia Loving)