“I grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a solid 40-minute train ride from Brooklyn,” says born-and-bred New Yorker Emma Straub. “But starting in ninth grade, in 1994, that’s just what I did—took the subway back and forth to Brooklyn Heights.” The author’s sixth novel, American Fantasy (Riverhead), does not take place there—nor on land in general—but on a 1990s-boy-band cruise ship. (Brooklyn serves as a backdrop in her books Modern Lovers and This Time Tomorrow.)

Since then, the only times she’s left the borough were for college and graduate school. “My husband and I rented our first apartment in Brooklyn on Smith Street in Carroll Gardens, just two blocks from where we would eventually open our bookstore, Books Are Magic,” she tells Vogue. “We walk everywhere, to work and to our children’s school, so I feel like I live in a tiny little village. Sometimes I forget that the city—I still think of Manhattan that way, The City—is just across the water.”

Here, her tiny-little-village recs:

Best time to visit, weather-wise: This is not unique to Brooklyn, but the best time to visit any part of New York City is fall or spring, depending on one’s allergies. My birthday is in late April, and so perhaps I am biased, but I think autumn or springtime in New York is ideal. Just ask Ella Fitzgerald! (She and I actually have the same birthday, so I know she’d agree.)

Best restaurant: The restaurant that most feels like an extension of my kitchen, were I a better cook, is Popina. An Italian gem hidden on an otherwise unremarkable stretch of Columbia Street, Popina is always delicious, and the people who run it are so kind to my children, who would eat at Popina every day if we let them.

For breakfast: My husband and I have very little quiet alone time, so we often end up at Montague Diner after school drop-off, before we go to the store, or before I go home to write. It is perfect, every time, and we always run into a half-dozen people we know. Eggs, oatmeal, pancakes—they do it right.