Played a Good Book Lately? (In Person)
We all remember Choose Your Own Adventures, but interactive stories have come a long way since the days of page-jumping pulp. What does it mean for a game to be literary in today’s media-saturated landscape? Join game designer and author Sharang Biswas, game editor and narrative designer Jess Haskins, Naomi Clark and game designer and […]
Creatures
What does the natural world reveal about the human one? Join Sabrina Imbler (How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures), astrobiologist Aomawa Shields (Life on Other Planets: A Memoir of Finding My Place in the Universe), and Ed Yong (An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us) […]
Laughing Through Life: Humor, Heart, and Honest Reflections
Get ready for a side-splitting and thought-provoking panel featuring authors and essayists Samantha Irby and Aparna Nancherla. In Quietly Hostile, Samantha Irby leads us through personal essays tackling life’s absurdities with a witty and candid perspective. Aparna Nancherla’s Unreliable Narrator weaves comedy and introspection into a unique experience of imposter syndrome. Led by Brian Vines, […]
Lifestyles in the Library
A library of food? about toys? Join Liz Williams, founder of the Southern Food & Beverage Museum and of the National Food & Beverage Foundation, Leslie Sam, Chief Librarian, Nunez Community College Library and Christopher Bensch, Vice President for Collections at The Strong National Museum of Play, in a discussion about developing and curating unique […]
Books Unbanned: Protecting the Freedom to Learn presented by the African American Policy Forum (AAPF)
The surprising rise of censorship in this country is a mounting threat to our democracy. Books by people of color and about racial justice have been among the most often banned titles in the last few years. To commemorate the first day of Banned Book Week, AAPF’s “Books UnbannedTM” tour, in partnership with The New Republic’s “Banned in […]
PEN Presents: Free the Books
In facing the rising threats to the freedoms to read and imagine, PEN America convenes a dialogue with beloved writers on the recent and dramatic rise in the efforts to censor and silence Black and LGBTQ+ perspectives. New York Times bestselling author Casey McQuiston and independent publisher and children’s author Cheryl Willis Hudson, will be […]
Cooking Across Borders
Across the African diaspora today, the word “foodways” conjures movement that is both multidirectional and multidimensional. Maria Bradford (Sweet Salone: Recipes from the Heart of Sierra Leone), Kenny Gilbert (Southern Cooking, Global Flavors), and Pierre Thiam (Simply West African: Easy, Joyful Recipes for Every Kitchen) embody personal and professional geographies that span the U.S., West […]
Can the Future Be Saved? A Conversation Between Astra Taylor and Anand Giridharadas
Astra Taylor’s The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart diagnoses a society constructed against its own advancement, wracked by crisis and division. In The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy, Anand Giridharadas profiles organizers, politicians, and ordinary citizens who live there without losing an unyielding […]
On the Cancel Culture Spectrum
We all have been disappointed, dismayed or angry with creators, leaders and celebrities whose work we admire, but whose personal actions are inappropriate, reprehensible, or worse. But, as individuals, we are responsible to activate the cancel culture spectrum from punishment to redemption and need to consider ramifications. Is accountability the middle ground? Ernest Owens, The […]
Reclaiming Power Through Collective Resistance and Law presented by the Brooklyn Law School
How do ordinary people claim democratic power in a world of increased inequality and loss? Join us for a conversation about power, democracy, race, and the law as three leading thinkers discuss their new books. Jocelyn Simonson (Radical Acts of Justice: How Ordinary People are Dismantling Mass Incarceration) explores how groups of people are engaging […]
From Mississippi to Minneapolis: A Continuum of White Violence
In their 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning His Name Is George Floyd, Washington Post journalists Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa contextualize Floyd’s life and death, looking at the story of the man—whose 2020 killing sparked the largest protests ever against racial injustice—through the critical lens of white supremacy past and present. Now, in this wide-ranging discussion led […]
Drag, Ballroom, and Cultural Consciousness
Drag and ballroom have long been fierce art forms, vehicles of self-expression, rebellion, celebration, and love. On this panel, authors Charles Busch (Leading Lady: A Memoir of a Most Unusual Boy), Elyssa Goodman (Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag in New York City), and Ricky Tucker (And the Category Is: Inside New York’s […]
American Slavery, Today
Slavery’s centrality to American history has gained wide acceptance but few people understand how it continues to reach through the past and shape the experience of our country today. Join Rachel Swarns (The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church), Kidada E. Williams (I Saw Death Coming: A […]
Embrace the Unconventional: Reclaiming Your Freedom
This panel brings together the imaginative minds of Jenny Odell and Jessica Elefante as they challenge the norms of this disjointed era. Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell is a daring inspection of liberation from the clock’s constraints, while Jessica Elefante’s Raising Hell, Living Well: Freedom from Influence in a […]
Artificial Intelligence: Will AI Need Us?
Last spring, 2000 scientists signed a cautionary letter warning about the profound risks to humanity if artificial intelligence systems continue to develop unregulated. Benefits from mundane mapping to robot vacuuming, auto-completed texts and editing, as well as sophisticated manufacturing, medical, and military systems, are already in place. That AI will move on to develop into […]
Maggie Smith in conversation with Nicole Chung
We all have to learn how to live with loss—but the process of learning how to cope and move forward after losing a family member or loved one is hardly ever cut and dry. So much outside of an individual relationship can color the dynamics of choice, or the lack of choices, through death or […]
How Art and Storytelling Shape Human Identity: A Conversation with Oliver Jeffers and Roxane Gay
Renowned and bestselling authors Oliver Jeffers (Begin Again) and Roxane Gay (Opinions) discuss the roles art and storytelling play in shaping human identities and communities, how these stories have contributed to prejudices and global conflicts throughout history and today, and where we go from here.
Secrets of the Stacks 2023
The natural world, music and cultural heritage reside in the striking and unique library collections found in some of New York City’s top cultural institutions. Join Rhonda Evans, Director, Mertz Library at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, the largest botanical research library, in the U.S; Dr. John O’Neill, Curator of Rare Books […]
Reading Wars presented by The New York Review of Books
Reading and writing have rarely been as politicized in the US as they are today. While GOP governors and legislators enact bans on books and syllabuses they see as undermining core American values—targeting works that touch on race, gender, and sexuality—some on the Left have argued for purging syllabuses of once-canonical authors and even altering […]
Cookbook or Memoir: Genre-bending with Asian American Food Writers presented by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop
Join Asian American food writers Eric Kim (Korean American: Food That Tastes Like Home), Priya Krishna (Indian-Ish: Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family), Abi Balingit (Mayumu: Filipino American Desserts Remixed), and Betty Ann Quirino (Every Ounce of Courage: A Daughter’s Reflections On Her Mother’s Bravery) as they talk about what it means to […]
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror: Memoirs by Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Safiya Sinclair and Phillip Lopate.
Presented with Brooklyn Public Library’s BPL Presents, three authors discuss new memoirs. Interweaving family stories more enchanting than those in any novel, Ingrid Rojas Contreras writes, in The Man Who Could Move Clouds, a luminous testament to the power of storytelling as a healing art and an invitation to embrace the extraordinary. How to Say […]
A Half Century of Hip-Hop
This summer’s grand celebration of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary was beautiful and affirming for longtime fans and practitioners of this perennially maligned and underestimated genre/subculture. Now that the landmark events have passed, what do we make of not just the story of hip-hop but its evolving place in the public imagination? Jonathan Abrams (The Come Up: […]
Food, Community, and California
Food connects places, ingredients and, most importantly, people – a fact celebrated in new cookbooks from native or adoptive Californian authors Rahanna Bisseret Martinez (Flavor+Us: Cooking for Everyone), Tanya Holland (Tanya Holland’s California Soul), and Natasha Pickowicz (More Than Cake: 100 Recipes Built for Pleasure and Community). Connection, inspiration, reliance, and a spirit of service […]
The Miss Manhattan Non-Fiction Reading Series Presents: New York Stories (In Person)
Miss Manhattan is excited to join the Brooklyn Book Festival as an official Bookend event with Miss Manhattan Presents: New York Stories. Created to give non-fiction writers a louder voice in the New York literary scene, the Miss Manhattan Non-Fiction Reading Series is hosted and curated by Manhattan-based writer and photographer Elyssa Goodman. This reading […]
Lab[our] Issue Launch (In Person)
In partnership with the Brooklyn Book Festival, Lampblack invites you to share in the launch of our third volume: Lab[our]. Merchandise and copies of the issue will be available for purchase, along with drinks at the Center for Fiction café. There will be live readings from the magazine, featuring t’ai freedom ford, James Stewart III, […]
Annual Brooklyn Indie Party! (In Person)
On Friday night, Greenlight is delighted to once again partner with Community of Literary Magazines & Presses (CLMP), as well as some of Brooklyn’s best independent book and magazine publishers, to throw a Brooklyn-sized party celebrating the spirit of literary independence in our borough. Partygoers are invited to mingle with Brooklyn authors and publishers, discover […]
The New Voices of Arab American Literature (In Person)
In the contentious battleground of political America, Arab American writers have strived to drown out the divisive rhetoric through compelling, evocative portraits of life in the Arab world, diasporic ache, and subversion of embedded stereotypes. We meet with five Arab American writers to learn the narratives that guide their work, how they write and recollect […]
Spirit and Flesh: Our Bodies, Our Blackness, Ourselves (In Person & Virtual)
In her stunning 2022 debut, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us, Cole Arthur Riley weaves three generations of family tales and contemplative reflections on belonging, dignity, and liberation. She joins Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts whose books Then They Came for Mine: Healing from the Trauma of Racial Violence and Black Joy: […]
The Shining by Dorothea Lasky (In Person)
Dorothea Lasky’s The Shining is an ekphrastic horror lyric that shapes an entirely unique feminist psychological landscape. In this collection, Lasky guides us through the familiar rooms of the Overlook Hotel, both realized and imagined, inhabiting characters and spaces that have been somewhat flattened in Stephen King’s text or Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptations. Dorothea Lasky […]
Let’s Get Mad: Celebrate a Mutha of a Decade (In Person)
It’s a rager: mother-writers and artists get real, down and dirty, furious and funny about the lives of mothers (and others). Readings at Books are Magic Montague by Minna Dubin (Mom Rage), Amanda Montei (Touched Out), cartoonist Lisa Lim (A Darker Shade of Noir), and Deesha Philyaw (The Secret Lives of Church Ladies). Celebrating 10 […]
Queens, NY: Fact and Fiction (In Person)
Join authors and historians Rob MacKay, Seth Bornstein, and Rafael Herrin-Ferri as they dive into Queens history. They will discuss the borough’s built environment and how diversity influences our residences, the people, and their connection to our borough. Kew & Willow Books, 81-63 Lefferts Blvd, Kew Gardens, NY 11415 https://www.kewandwillow.com/
The Rumpus Presents Sapphic Storytelling: Queer eQuinox (In Person)
The Rumpus presents Sapphic Storytelling: Queer eQuinox at McNally Jackson’s Seaport location. Featuring authors Hannah Beresford, Jaquira Díaz, CJ Hauser, Lars Horn, T Kira Madden, and Kelley Van Dilla. Moderated by Rumpus Editor, Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn. In this series, we present writers we adore and use the term “sapphic” as a tongue-in-cheek term to […]
No, YOU Tell It! “Fly By” True-Life Tales with a Twist (In Person)
No, YOU Tell It! storytellers work together to develop true tales on the page, then swap stories to embody their partner’s culture, identity, and life experience on stage. For this special show, four curated storytellers are trading tales inspired by Queens history from the archives of The Greater Astoria Historical Society (astorialic.org). Plus, story trivia […]
John Oliver Killens Literary Salon: A Celebration of Black Fire This Time (In Person)
The Center for Black Literature, in collaboration with MoCada, will present the Killens Literary Salon with contributors to Black Fire This Time: Keisha-Gaye Anderson (Gathering the Waters), James E. Cherry (Edge of the Wind), Judy Juanita (De Facto Feminism), Quincy Troupe (Duende: Poems), and moderator Heather Buchanan (Aquarius Press). Black Fire This Time by Kim […]
An Evening with The Keepthings Presented by Ditmas Lit (In Person)
The Keepthings publishes short essays about lost loved ones, inspired by the things they left behind. Co-hosted by Ditmas Lit, this event will feature Keepthings contributors Tara Lindis, Matthew Lansburgh, Rachel Cline, Claudia Zuluaga, and Anja Wood sharing their stories and the objects that inspired them in front of a live audience for an evening of […]
The Lost Sons of Omaha: An American Tragedy (In Person & Virtual)
On May 30, 2020, in Omaha, Nebraska, 38-year-old white bar owner and Marine veteran Jake Gardner fatally shot James Scurlock, a 22-year-old Black man protesting the murder of George Floyd. Following an indictment, Gardner took his own life. In The Lost Sons of Omaha: Two Young Men in an American Tragedy, Joe Sexton offers a […]
Radical Publishing in Political Headwinds (In Person)
Publishers from independent presses discuss the imperative of publishing books that uplift marginalized and insurgent voices, create and complicate representation, and spark and amplify movements. This is even more critical during challenging political times when marginalized communities are disempowered, scapegoated, and stripped of their rights. Margot Atwell (Feminist Press), Malav Kanuga (Common Notions Press), Ramsey […]
Easily Slip Into Another World: A Life in Music with Henry Threadgill (In Person)
Henry Threadgill is a towering figure of contemporary American music. His autobiography is a riveting account of the music scene in Chicago in the 1960s, his experiences as a Black soldier in Vietnam, and the ensembles he has led—and is a powerful meditation on history, race, capitalism, and art. Henry Threadgill is one of only […]
Powerful and Dangerous: the Legacy of Audre Lorde (Virtual)
The Alice Austen House, nationally designated site of LGBTQ+ history, will host a virtual reading celebrating the legacy of Audre Lorde’s teaching. Join us as former students Kathleen Walsh D’Arcy, Donna Masini, Melinda Goodman, and Rosette Capotorto read their poetry and share memories of their time in Lorde’s literature program. https://aliceausten.org
A Night of Ancient Mystery, Mozart, & Merriment (In Person)
Please join the Coffee House Club’s Urbane Conspirators and HIP Lit for an unforgettable night cloaked in Gothic suspense as mysteries abound in readings, conversation, and music. To be held at Salmagundi, a private arts club housed in a historic brownstone mansion in Greenwich Village. All in celebration of the paperback release of Joanna Margaret‘s […]
VOICE: A Lens to Black Experiences (Virtual)
Diversity is a call to arms, challenging society to be inclusive. The Black community is richly diverse, comprising many villages. We compare the teachings of forefathers from other places and grandmothers who’d migrated north or across oceans by choice. We are the ancestors in our lineage. We perceive the world differently and filter those experiences […]
What’s Community Got to Do with It? (In Person)
Join the Resort writing community as we revisit the old stomping grounds of the LIC Reading Series (2015-’20). Denne Michele Norris (writer & editor-in-chief, Electric Literature), Greg Mania (Born to Be Public), and Matt Ortile (The Groom Will Keep His Name) will be in conversation with Resort & LIC Reading Series founder Catherine LaSota about […]
Starting Out: The Editor-Writer Relationship (In Person)
What is an editor’s role? How can an author work with an editor to elevate their writing? Join Writing and Editorial Fellows from A Public Space for a conversation about the editor-writer relationship. They’ll discuss lessons learned and insights gained, formative experiences, and their questions for each other about the surprises they found on their […]
Transcending Geographical and Temporal Boundaries on the Page (In Person)
What’s it like to resurrect a past book and prepare it for a second life in translation? Whether it’s a debut translated into a new language or a special reissue of essays first conceived decades past. What social mores or cues have changed that could impact reception? How do language and geographic location influence the […]
The Role of the Artist in a Time of Crisis (In Person)
From Booker Prize-winning poet, novelist, essayist, short-story writer, anthologist, aphorist, and playwright Ben Okri & Africa Center CEO Uzodinma Iweala, comes a fascinating discussion on the role of the artist in a time of crisis. Whether it be climate change, the refugee crisis, racism, philosophy, the pandemic, or any number of varied topics he takes, […]
