Queens’ growing literary scene is starting to bear fruit, with a pair of high-profile page-turners set in the borough.
While Manhattan and Brooklyn have stolen the literary limelight historically, the city’s most diverse borough appears to be having its logocentric moment.
Queens-reared author Matthew Thomas’ debut novel “We Are Not Ourselves” will be number six on this weekend’s New York Times bestseller list.
It follows the coming-of-age storyline of Eileen Leary, the daughter of Irish immigrants, who grows up in Woodside in the 1950s and moves to Jackson Heights with a new husband aspiring for a more upper-class life.
She ultimately faces frustration in the changing city around her — and inescapable tragedies.
Writers say there are good reasons why Queens may be stealing some of the city’s bookish reputation.
“Queens is the working borough. It’s the place people go home to after a hard day’s work,” said Thomas, 39, who grew up in Jackson Heights until his family, like his novel’s characters, moved out of town when he was 15. “Other boroughs may be a little hipper maybe, but Queens has an authenticity that’s undeniable. “
Half of his 600-page tome, which was released Aug. 19, takes place in the borough, before Leary and her family decide to flee for the suburbs.
The work is the second recent debut to prominently feature Queens.
Scott Cheshire’s semi-autobiographical July release “High As the Horses’ Bridles” follows a former child preacher who returns to Queens to take care of his ailing father.
The borough’s literary scene has grown steadily as more writers and artists have been priced out of other boroughs.
“There’s an orphaned feeling that we all have in common,” said Cheshire, 41, of the camaraderie between Queens writers.
Two independent bookstores– firsts in the borough–opened in 2013, in addition to a new literary journal, Newtown Literary, in 2012.
“I used to have to cut school to go to a bookstore in Manhattan,” said Chesire who grew up in Richmond Hill and plans to set his next work in Queens. “Now people contact me to do readings in Queens.”
The borough is not without its own literary history.
One of America’s most treasured homegrown writers, Walt Whitman lived and taught in Jamaica in the 1840s and even wrote for newspapers in the borough, according Queens College. Beat writer Jack Kerouac penned his first book while living in an Ozone Park house from 1943 to 1949.
“People who know Queens have always known how extraordinary Queens is,” Thomas said.
