Performances from BMCC's music, speech, communication, and theater arts departments

Book reading and signing by Ian Chorao, author of When We Talk to the Dead.

After losing their high-profile publishing jobs, Laura Brown and Kristina O’Neill wrestled with the professional and personal challenges that come after job loss. Now, with All the Cool Girls Get […]

From Alexandria to Wakanda, Danai Gurira has played larger than life heroes in some of this generation’s most seminal pop culture works. But her work beyond the screen—lifting unheard voices and fighting to end poverty and HIV/AIDS—is her most heroic work. She shares that journey and reveals how we can all be heroic in our […]

I Seek A Kind Person is a gripping family memoir of grief, courage, and hope that tells the hidden stories of children who escaped the Holocaust, building connections across generations and continents. In 1938, Jewish families are scrambling to flee Vienna. Desperate, they take out advertisements offering their children into the safe keeping of readers […]

Americans have profoundly different ideas about what is real, ideas that sometimes verge on the irreconcilable. These notions depend on walls of the mind: stubborn boundaries that work to enforce particular points of view, as if each of us was stranded on some other island of idiosyncratic thought. Such divides may seem fleeting and intangible, […]

China Institute and Asia Art Archive in America bring together Asian and Asian Diasporic artists Bing Lee, Jean Shin, Saya Woolfalk, and Parker Fay (who will represent Ming Fay) to share the stories behind their own subway commission projects while addressing questions around the possibilities, promise, and practicalities of public art. The conversation will be […]

The Tourist’s Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City offers a new look at over a century of New York’s history of Yiddish popular culture. Henry H. Sapoznik – a Peabody Award-winning co-producer of NPR’s Yiddish Radio Project – tells the story in over a baker’s dozen chapters on theater, music, architecture, crime, Black Americans […]

Girls Write Now is a nationally award-winning nonprofit, media incubator, and multi-generational community.

Book reading and signing by Lev AC Rosen, author of Mirage City.

Nerdy Thursdays are the Black Gotham Experience take on the Harlem Renaissance salon. A familiar place to meet new ideas. Tonight's theme: Legacy.

With wit and compassion, author Kevin Moffett delivers a bracingly intimate account of fatherhood, and discovery, and the experiences of two men far from home.

The field of contemporary Holocaust studies is increasingly international in perspective. These approaches do not detach themselves from European history; rather, they incorporate perspectives and voices not always considered in more traditional Holocaust studies. The new book Global Approaches to the Holocaust asks: What happens when scholars shift their focus from an exclusively European perspective […]

Two insiders explain why the Israeli–Palestinian peace process failed, and anticipate what lies ahead.

This lecture from artist and writer Richard McBee will explore of the work of eleven contemporary Jewish artists.

Book reading and signing by Andrew Klavan, author of After That, the Dark.

Dr. Camilla Townsend discusses the book On the Turtle’s Back: Stories the Lenape Told Their Grandchildren she co-authored with Nicky Kay Michael. The Lenape tribe, also known as the Delaware Nation, inhabited the region now comprising eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and parts of New York, Connecticut, and Maryland for centuries. However, America’s independence from […]

Book reading and signing by Alissa Lee, author of With Friends Like These.

Author Cynthia Zarin presents her novel Estate, in conversation with Jonathan Galassi.

President & CEO of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, Andrew Kimball, for a live recording of Person Place Thing with Emmy Award winner, Randy Cohen. Person Place Thing is an interview show based on the idea that people are especially engaging when they speak, not directly about themselves, but about something they care […]

Nerdy Thursdays are the Black Gotham Experience take on the Harlem Renaissance salon. A familiar place to meet new ideas. Tonight's theme: War.

Third meeting of the Infinite Jest Monthly Read-Along Bash group. Read pages 199-299 (plus relevant endnotes) for this month's gathering.

Poetry reading and exhibit launch featuring contributors to the new anthology The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders. The exhibit of poetry and images at Poets House explores how nature shapes our lives, and how we can shape nature’s future.

Thea Riofrancos presents Extraction, an in-depth investigation into the growing industry of green technologies and the environmental, social, and political consequences of the mining it requires. In conversation with David Wallace-Wells

Day-long event featuring talks, panels, and author signings, and themes of Jewish heritage, culture, and history, modern life and literature.

Historian of architecture, engineering, and the urban history of Chicago, Thomas Leslie, guest co-curator with Carol Willis for the Museum’s exhibition The Modern Concrete Skyscraper, will summarize the new avenues of research that grew from research on the exhibition. This in-person program traces the history of concrete skyscraper construction in Chicago, highlighting how the material […]

Daniel Wortel-London will discuss his new book, The Menace of Prosperity: Economic Development and its Discontents in New York City, 1870–1981, which explores how generations of New Yorkers have struggled with the promises and perils of economic development. Spanning New York City’s post–Civil War boom to the 1970s fiscal crisis, Wortel-London will reveal how NYC’s […]

Chicago’s tallest skyscraper when it opened in 1921, the Wrigley Building could be called the Midwest’s Woolworth Building. The gleaming white terra-cotta tower at the head of Michigan Avenue marked a move that opened the northward extension of the commercial concentration of the Loop. To celebrate the publication of the handsome new monograph The Wrigley […]

Book reading and signing by Jonathan Payne, author of Hotel Melikov.

Krithika Varagur, Rob Franklin, Sloane Crosley, and Zain Khalid in conversation about Solvej Balle's On the Calculation of Volume III. On the publication day of the highly-anticipated third installment of Solvej Balle's On the Calculation of Volume, four writers discuss their love for the Danish literary sensation and speculate on what might come next.

From underground soldiers to intrepid spies, Women of War unearths the hidden history of the brave women who risked their lives to overthrow the Nazi occupation and liberate Italy. Using primary sources and brand new scholarship, historian Suzanne Cope illuminates the roles played by women – working as couriers, taking up arms as combattants, helping […]

Global bestselling author Daniel Kehlmann’s new book The Director is “powerful and timely” (Jonathan Lemire for MSNBC’S Morning Joe) and “nothing short of brilliant” (Wall Street Journal). G.W. Pabst, one of cinema’s greatest directors of the 20th century, was filming in France when the Nazis seized power. To escape the horrors of the new and […]

Book reading and signing by Michael Mayo, author of The Spies in Jimmy's Place.

Experience performances featuring some of China’s most iconic instruments, try Chinese calligraphy guided by a master calligrapher (ink, paper, brushes are provided), and practice Mandarin with support from language instructors. Enjoy tea and light refreshments.

Author John Freeman presents California, in conversation with Jennifer Egan.

In 1936, the Photo League was founded in New York City by a group of young idealistic photographers, mostly Jewish and, typical of the time, many with liberal to left sympathies. Their work encompassed modernist photography, social documentary, the Harlem Document, race relations and street photography until suppressed by the House Unamerican Activities Committee in […]

Author Natan Last presents Across the Universe, in conversation with Doreen St. Félix. An entertaining and eye-opening look at the history of the crossword, who constructs them, and why crosswords matter as both a reflection of and influence on our culture.

Over his decades-long career as an artist, Arthur Szyk emerged as a powerful voice in the fight for freedom, justice, and democracy. As a Polish-born Jew and an immigrant to the United States, he advocated for European Jewry, calling the world to action during the Holocaust while his anti-Nazi illustrations rallied Americans to the war […]

In conversation with Wesley Morris, Janice Page presents Year of the Water Horse, a warm and witty memoir about the ever-changing relationships between mothers, mothers-in-law, and daughters that traverses two continents and multiple generations of two disparate yet connected families.

Book reading and signing by Charles Todd, author of A Christmas Witness.

Tarpley Hitt in conversation with Rebecca Panovka & Sophie Haigney. The explosive true story of Barbie and what Mattel has done to keep her on top.

An Evening with A.S. Hamrah, in conversation with K. Austin Collinsin conversation with Jonathan Galassi. Algorithm of the Night assembles Hamrah's essays on films and filmmakers and his inimitable, aphoristic reviews--a body of work that, taken together, presents a powerful alternative to a culture mired in publicity and stale convention.

Book reading and signing by Ace Atkins, author of Everybody Wants to Rule th

Virtual interview conversation with John Ferling, author of Shots Heard Round the World: America, Britain, and Europe in the Revolutionary War. How can the American Revolution be understood as a global war? How were the war’s effects felt at home and abroad? We will discuss the subjects of Ferling’s most recent book and the broader […]

To celebrate the release of Better Do It Now Before You Die Later, the memoir of American saxophonist Sonny Simmons, Blank Forms presents a reading from the book, followed by a panel discussion between musicians Ras Burnett, Michael Marcus, and Juma Sultan, moderated by Brent Hayes Edwards.

With The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto: The True Story of Five Courageous Young Women Who Sparked an Uprising, Holocaust historian, archivist, and history blogger Elizabeth R. Hyman adds a new dimension to the story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II, shining a long overdue spotlight on five, young, Polish Jewish […]

For its 80th issue, the National Magazine Award–winning quarterly McSweeney's presents a three-ring oversized-school-binder-inspired volume. Clipped into the rings are seven individual book art objects, including: a grid-ruled sketchbook by Eisner winner Adrian Tomine; an accordion-shaped catalog of 12 flowers by Pulitzer Prize finalist Yiyun Li; a story in the form of an end-of-the-world Scantron […]

his new book, Men at Work: The Empire State Building and the Untold Story of the Craftsmen who Built It, Glenn Kurtz re-examines the familiar story of the Empire State’s amazing construction from a perspective that has stumped previous researchers: the lives of workers who labored daily on the site. Taking the iconic photographs of […]

Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, marks an important rupture in the lineage of survivor testimony. It presents a narrative of survivor testimony through the lens of an adult child of a survivor in a highly unorthodox medium, an early example of the graphic novel or commix format. In 1974, Mark Podwal — noted author, […]

Fourth meeting of the Infinite Jest Monthly Read-Along Bash group. Read pages 300-395 (plus relevant endnotes) for this month's gathering. Enjoy free drinks upstairs when you arrive.

Featuring the most comprehensive collection of new poetry available to the public, the Showcase is a literary exhibition and reading series dedicated to the art and joy of published poetry all in one room. Collecting every type of poetry from every type of publisher, from hand-threaded zines to books from large commercial houses, this winter’s […]

Performances from the college's music, speech, communication, and theater arts departments.

Poets Out Loud meets the third Saturday of every month to read, write, and celebrate queer poetry. We spend the first half of this meeting writing new work, and sharing our work in the second half. Bring your authentic selves, your best (or worst!) poems, and a love for the written word. Open to all […]

100 holiday books are being given away that the whole family can enjoy together. Plus, in anticipation of the upcoming Wicked: For Good movie, there will also be a few Wicked-themed stories to add extra enchantment.

Join us for a compelling online book talk with historian Scott D. Seligman, author of The Great Christmas Boycott of 1906, as he unpacks a dramatic and little known chapter in American Jewish history. Set in New York at the dawn of the twentieth century, this meticulously researched account begins in the winter of 1905-1906 […]

In 1943, the German SS officers in charge of Auschwitz-Birkenau ordered that an orchestra should be formed among the female prisoners. Forty-seven women and girls from eleven nations were drafted into a hurriedly assembled band that would play to other inmates as they left each morning and as they returned at the end of the […]

Do you find poetry intimidating? Do you race past the poems in The New Yorker on your way to the fiction or the cartoons? Have you persuaded yourself that you’ll […]

Though the 1800s are often portrayed in a sentimental way, they were actually so messy and contradictory that our modern world is still feeling the ripple effects. If, as the […]

Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York, Inc. and its Fraunces Tavern Museum are joining the New York City Bar Association Legal History Committee to commemorate the […]

Scholar Eve M. Kahn discusses her new book, Queen of Bohemia Predicts Own Death: Gilded Age Journalist Zoe Anderson Norris. Zoe Anderson Norris was a Kentucky belle turned restless Kansas […]

Book reading and signing by Daniella Bernett, author of Secrets Lie in Wait.

Fifth meeting of the Infinite Jest Monthly Read-Along Bash group. Read pages 396-508 (plus relevant endnotes) for this month's gathering. Enjoy free drinks upstairs when you arrive.

A night of readings features four visionary collections of 2024 and 2025. Ching-In Chen reads from Shiny City (Airlie Press, 2025), jason b. crawford reads from YEET! (Omnidawn, 2025), charles […]

A 2025 National Jewish Book Award Finalist that judges described as “reads like a thriller” and winner of Zibby Awards for Best Family Drama & Best Story of Overcoming, Irena’s […]

Ross Perlin, author of Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York, examines the past, present, and future of the world’s most linguistically diverse city, New […]

Patrice Nganang, the acclaimed author of Dog Days, Mount Pleasant, and, most recently, A Trail of Crab Tracks, which was a 2022 New Yorker Book of the Year, writes about […]

Writer, art historian, and Holocaust survivor Suzanne Loebl, whose life paralleled much of the events revisited in Plunder and Survival, takes a new look at the Nazis ruthless attack on […]

Book reading and signing by Alyssa Sheinmel, author of Such Sheltered Lives

Evening dedicated to poetry that addresses and responds to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Ahmad Almallah, Mandy Shunnarah, Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s work bears witness, speaks truth, […]

In The Flower Bearers, Rachel Eliza Griffiths inscribes the trajectories of two transformational relationships with grace and honesty, chronicling the beauty and pain that comes with opening oneself fully to […]

Nazism has always faced resistance – from the German artists who risked their lives by drawing caricatures of the Nazis in the 1920s, or the man who infiltrated the SS […]

Tricia Romano, the author of The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper that Changed American Culture, will discuss the symbiotic relationship […]

Book reading and signing by May Cobb, author of All the Little Houses.

The apartment buildings and hotels designed by Emery Roth in the 1920s and 1930s – blue chip buildings such as Park Avenue's Ritz Tower and the Central Park West landmarks, […]

Book reading and signing by Maria Turead, author of This House Will Feed.

Join Aperture and McNally Jackson Books in a conversation between artist Hal Fischer and writer Jarrett Earnest, celebrating the launch of Hal Fischer’s latest monograph, Hal Fischer: Seminal Works (Aperture, […]

The latest book by acclaimed author and journalist Julian Sancton hits shelves on January 27, 2026—and you’re invited to its New York launch at the South Street Seaport Museum! Sancton’s […]

Farzad Mahootian will explore the imaginal space between four themes: alchemy, Jung, the history of science, and AI. He will consider chemists and historians of chemistry. Chemists have benefited greatly […]

Professional development program centered around the legacy of the Holocaust in the creation of the State of Israel. The first part is an hour-long virtual lecture given by NYU Professor […]

Book reading and signing by W.M. Akers, author of To Kill a Cook.

Book reading and signing by Malcolm Kempt, author of A Gift Before Dying.

From the inaugural winner of the Yale Nonfiction Book Prize, a riveting exploration of illness and medicine that imagines a more humane form of care. “What was wrong with them? […]

John Larkin - a fast-living, hard-playing, stuttering jazz pianist - overcame abuse, addiction, ageism, and obscurity to stage one of the most improbable debuts in pop music history by turning […]

Cameron Awkward-Rich, Jennifer Espinoza, Chet’la Sebree, and Annie Wenstrup’s newest collections explore rifts between personal and collective memory, penning moving poems on history and survival. Upon finding themselves in contended […]

This gathering brings together alumni of the “Chinese Bridge” Eastern U.S. Competitions and China Institute study abroad programs to share stories, reflections, and cultural experiences, as well as members of […]