The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the nation’s founding. Join historian Robert Watson for this talk exploring some of the fun and intriguing stories behind the stories as well as common myths and misconceptions about both remarkable events.

Between 1986 and 1990, New York City seemed to be on the rebound from the fiscal collapse of the 1970s. But beneath the surface, the city was coming apart at the seams. Racial conflict, the AIDS epidemic, widening inequality, media sensationalism and political realignment were tearing at its civic fabric. Out of that turbulence, the […]

Andrew Martin presents his novel Down Time, in conversation with Halle Butler. A terribly funny and lovably louche novel about five friends growing older, if not always up, from the author of Early Work and Cool for America.

Book reading and signing by author Elizabeth Crowens.

Hooman Majd presents his memoir Minister Without Portfolio, in conversation with Ann Curry. The son of a high-ranking diplomat in pre-Revolutionary Iran, Hooman Majd grew up in the upper echelons of Iranian society and in cosmopolitan diplomatic enclaves in San Francisco, London, and Washington, DC. As a young man, after Ayatollah Khomeini's Revolution in 1979, […]

Book reading and signing by authors Susan Walter and Wendy Walker in conversation with Kristin Thorvaldsen.

From two-time National Magazine Award winner Tom Junod, a searching, brilliantly stylized memoir about a charismatic, philandering father who tried to mold his son in his image, the many secrets he hid, the son’s obsessive quest to uncover them, and ultimately, the true meaning of manhood

Writer and organizer Kay Gabriel focuses on the cult-favorite downtown poet Bernadette Mayer’s maximalism, frequently expressed in her compulsion to write “everything.”

McNally Editions presents An Awfully Big Adventure, featuring Yiyun Li and Iva Dixit. A blackly comic story of the secrets, sex, and violence behind the curtain of a repertory theater's postwar production of Peter Pan.

A psychosexual relationship between a rabbi and the man devoted to him goes off the rails in this explosive novel. Wayne Koestenbaum presents My Lover, the Rabbi, in conversation with Morgan Bassichis.

Book reading and signing by author Benjamin Stevenson.

Celebrate the launch of Dear Letters in the Red Box (Kelsay Books, 2026) by Sarah Stern. Stern describes her collection, saying: “Through recently discovered letters and writings, I explore my parents’ years in Paris between 1946 and 1951.

An astonishing account of life under a murderous regime amid a great city’s descent into utter annihilation. Ian Buruma presents Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939-1945, in conversation with Daniel Kehlmann.

A gifted yet financially disadvantaged artist falls victim to the manipulative control of his wealthy, enigmatic Harvard roommate in this incendiary novel from the author of Beautiful Country—a piercing exploration of class, ambition, identity, and the perilous cost of reinvention in the tradition of Patricia Highsmith and Donna Tartt. J.R. Thornton presents his novel Lucien, […]

Meeting of an LGBTQ+ writing group. Open to all.

Seventh meeting of the Infinite Jest Monthly Read-Along Bash group. Read pages 602-716 (plus relevant endnotes) for this month's gathering.

Book reading and signing by author Steve Cavanagh.

Book reading and signing by author Rob Osler.

Edward Hirsch, Carlie Hoffman, and Yerra Sugarman will present a lecture on Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger (1924–1942), a poet, translator, and librettist from Czernowitz (present-day Chernivtsi, Ukraine).

Keep the Winter Olympics spirit high in this afternoon of New York City’s most competitive secrets. Join the Seaport Museum and Double or Nothing Media to explore the grit and glory of the city’s athletic past, from high-stakes Winter traditions on the harbor to the local legends of the early Games.

Adrian Matejka presents Be Easy, in conversation with Terrance Hayes.

Poet and translator Ricardo Alberto Maldonado focuses on the poet César Vallejo’s maddeningly complex body of work, emphasizing its religious attention to suffering and grief—“Some blows in life, they’re so heavy . . . I don’t know. / Blows as if dealt by God’s own wrath”—alongside its defiant humor, mystery, and profound humanism.

Conversation with Zhang Qin, author of A Solitary Traveler in the Long Night, an intimate portrait of Tong Jun, a pioneering architect and architectural educator whose work helped shape the intellectual foundations of modern Chinese architecture. Blending architectural history, personal reflection, and cultural analysis, the book reveals the inner world of a master architect whose […]

Book reading and signing by author Michelle Maryk.

Join Max Lawton, Grace Byron, and Francesco Pacifico in celebrating the publication of Antonio Moresco's The Beginnings, the highly anticipated first book in his monumentally disruptive Games of Eternity trilogy.

Enjoy bilingual, heartfelt and powerful spoken word performances by Nuyorican Poets Cafe poets! Hosted by Matthew Marroquín, The event will feature the poetry of Slam Winners Daniel Letona, Kaleo, and Ave Maria with themes that range from personal relationships to the political climate of America. Featured performances will be followed by an open mic for […]

A gripping chronicle of the rise and fall of a woman-led cult—and the enduring allure of extremism across America’s turbulent religious history.

What does poetry mean in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and surveillance capitalism? Join us for a special reading by poets confronting these issues—Charles Bernstein, William Lessard, Susan Lewis, Joseph Milazzo, Jerome Sala, and Sandra Simonds—along with a brief introduction by poet, fiction writer and critic, Michael Londra.

Book reading and signing by author Harold Goldberg.

Winner of the 2024 Novel Prize, Giada Scodellaro’s Ruins, Child is an irreducibly original debut hybrid novel—a startlingly beautiful and unclassifiable bookfeaturing Yiyun Li and Iva Dixit. A blackly comic story of the secrets, sex, and violence behind the curtain of a repertory theater's postwar production of Peter Pan.

In his new book, Garden Apartments: The History of a Low-Rent Utopia, Joshua B. Freeman explains how a form of multifamily housing with idealistic roots became a ubiquitous model dwelling, promoted by both public entities and private developers. Freeman rescues garden apartments—typically low-rise, multifamily residences that enclose or are surrounded by landscaped gardens—from their invisibility […]

Book reading and signing by author Deborah Levison.

Book reading and signing by author Corinne Sullivan.

A lyrical work of philosophy that draws from the work of Spinoza, George Eliot, biographers, memoirists, and more to examine how wisdom and goodness are transmitted by individual human lives.

Join the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island Foundation in celebrating the 22nd Annual NYC Immigrant Heritage Week. Stephen Lean, Director, American Family Immigration History Center at the Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island Foundation will present a lecture on the enduring legacies of Jewish immigrants in New York […]

Forty poets read to celebrate 40 years of Poets House, the library and literary center that invites all to step into the living tradition of poetry. Join the festivities and enjoy food, drinks, and birthday cake while celebrating 40 years of groundbreaking art in lower Manhattan. Featured readers include both established and emerging poets from […]

Book reading and signing by author Joseph Moldover.

Celebrate the launch of Winter Night Rabbit Worries (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2026) by Yoo Heekyung, translated from the Korean by Stine An. Structured as a series of stories, Yoo’s fifth poetry collection presents narrative and linguistic architectures that dissolve the opposition between those materials that construct the this and the that side of life—past and […]

Lila Raicek presents her novel The Plunge, in conversation with Griffin Dunne.

EIghth meeting of the Infinite Jest Monthly Read-Along Bash group. Read pages 717-808 (plus relevant endnotes) for this month's gathering.

Suzy Hansen presents From Life Itself, in conversation with Lydia Polgreen. From the author of the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize finalist Notes on a Foreign Country, From Life Itself is a story for a world out of joint. An absorbing account of one neighborhood in Istanbul that has seen profound change, it offers lessons for all […]

Roxanne Khamsi presents Beyond Inheritance, in conversation with Apoorva Mandavilli. A captivating exploration of the remarkable ways our DNA mutates over the course of our lives, with radical implications for the future of medicine.