Today, the once bustling, fragrant fish market in lower Manhattan's South Street Seaport is a rebuilt retail destination with a new kind of marketing – but from its founding in 1822, through its move to the Bronx in 2005, the Fulton Fish Market was an iconic New York institution. At first a neighborhood market for […]

Launch of a new editor and author conversation series with Stephen Markley, the bestselling author of Ohio, to celebrate the launch of his new book, a masterful American epic charting a near future approaching collapse and a nascent but strengthening solidarity.

When Nazi plans were learned and promptly ignored by local and federal authorities in Los Angeles, a number of Jews working in Hollywood secretly funded a spy ring that operated from August 1933 until the end of WWII. These spies uncovered a series of plots aimed at attracting international attention to the Nazi cause and […]

Nathanael O’Reilly, Caitlin McDonnell, Rio Cortez, Catherine Woodard and JP Howard! read from their work during this month's virtual salon.

History was made on Oct. 24, 2022 when for the first time the image of an Asian American appeared on United States currency. This distinct honor goes to Anna May Wong (黄柳霜), a groundbreaking actress in the 20th century during the rise of the film industry and a champion for Asian American representation in film. […]

Budapest, 1944: Vice Consul Carl Lutz and the Swiss Legation of Budapest started the largest diplomatic operation to rescue Jews during WWII. Thanks to an ingenious system of safe-conduct papers and residential buildings put under consular protection, Carl Lutz, who had acted as a protective power representing interests of the U.S. and UK in Hungary, […]

During Deeper Lectures Sahar Damoni shares the context and journey that has shaped her life and work as a Palestinian artist in Israel/Palestine, sharing key, life-changing moments that led her to choose dance and choreography as tools of expression.

Two multi-hyphenate artists share excerpts from their new book projects—Daniel Alexander Jones’ Love as Light and jaamil olawale kosoko’s Black Body Amnesia–discussing the process for creating as a source of healing self and community. Their “duet” conversation will also address themes of friendship, grace, and loving as a gesture of self-sovereignty.

The Neiger family was living a peaceful life in the Jewish community of Krakow when the arrival of World War II changed their lives forever. When Nazis forced the family into harsh Ghetto life, they made a vow to escape as a family. But when circumstances forced the family to separate from older brother Ben, […]

Annelies and Marianne Bernstein were among the 1,700 German Jews in Berlin who survived the Holocaust by posing as non-Jews. Known as “U-boats” in the slang of their time, the sisters hid in plain sight with the help of ingenuity, grit, and luck. Join us to find out how “the Steins” used their new names […]

A revolutionary new theory and call to action on animal rights, ethics, and law from the renowned philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum. Animals are in trouble all over the world. Whether through the cruelties of the factory meat industry, poaching and game hunting, habitat destruction, or neglect of the companion animals that people purport to love, […]

Reading. A sweeping, unique graphic memoir about an artist’s year abroad in Paris and how it gave way to an all-encompassing love affair and crushing heartbreak as he wrestled with trauma, masculinity, and the real possibility of hope.

Sarah Morgenthau interviews Andrew Meier about his book, Morgenthau: Power, Privilege, and the Rise of an American Dynasty, a New York Times Editors’ Choice which follows the epic and intimate portrait of four generations of the Morgenthau family, a dynasty of power brokers and public officials with an outsize—and previously unmapped—influence shaping the American Century […]

New conversation series between fiction and non-fiction writers, in which writers discuss the ways in which they grapple with similar subject matter through different lenses, and with different perspectives. The stories and essays in this volume—a follow-up to his debut in English, Rock, Paper, Scissors—tackle major questions of modern life in and beyond Russia with […]

Examine the work of photographers who are lending their voices to defining what it means to be Indigenous today. Photojournalists Donovan Quintero (Navajo), Tailyr Irvine (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes), and Russel Albert Daniels (Diné descent and Ho-Chunk descent)—whose works are featured in the museum’s Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field exhibition in New […]

Black History Month lecture.

A witty, provocative look inside the tumultuous marriages of five writers, illuminating the creative process as well as the role of money, power, and fame in these complex and fascinating relationships. RSVP required.

Encanto tells the tale of an extraordinary family, the Madrigals, who live hidden in the mountains of Colombia in a magical house, in a vibrant town, in a wondrous, charmed place called an Encanto. The magic of the Encanto has blessed every child in the family with a unique gift—from super strength to the power […]

Black History Month lecture.

On an August night in 1923, Zhu Ziqing and Yu Pingbo, two prominent Chinese writers, took a boat ride along the famed Qinhuai River in Nanjing and each wrote an essay under the same title of “Splashing Oars and Lantern Light on the Qinhuai River.” Both pieces subsequently becamme classics in the history of modern […]

David Wiener was born on May 30, 1926, in Lodz, Poland, one of Moshe Chaim and Hannah Sur Wiener’s nine children. When he was thirteen, David escaped alone from Lodz, which had been turned into a ghetto in February 1940. During the war, David survived slave labor camps, prison, and Auschwitz. His parents and all […]

Two of the greatest Jewish voices of the past half-century appear on stage together for the first time in what promises to be a significant public intellectual event. French philosopher, essayist, playwright, and filmmaker Bernard-Henri Lévy joins heroic former Soviet prisoner of conscience Natan Sharansky to address and debate the most urgent questions of our […]

Louis Greenstein, Sufija Abdur-Rahman, and Sara Lippman read from their work during this month's virtual salon.

An incisive, deeply resonant debut novel about a nonconsensual sexual encounter that propels one woman’s final semester at an elite New England college into controversy and chaos—and into an ill-advised affair with a married professor. RSVP required.

An intimate and empowering anthology of essays that explore the changing face of female desire in whip-smart, sensuous prose, with pieces by Tara Conklin, Camille Dungy, Melissa Febos, Lisa Taddeo, and others

Romance novels have historically been written by women, for women and about women. The genre has gone through many iterations over time, from the early romances of Jane Austen to the rise of the bodice-ripper to today’s increasingly diverse array of protagonists and plotlines. A panel of romance authors, editors and experts =will discuss the […]

Family lore had it that author Bonnie Siegler’s grandfather Jules crossed paths with Marilyn Monroe in Midtown Manhattan late one night in 1954, her white dress flying up around her as she filmed a scene for The Seven Year Itch. Siegler wasn’t sure she quite believed her grandfather’s story…until, cleaning out his apartment, she found […]

During Deeper Lectures Sahar Damoni shares the context and journey that has shaped her life and work as a Palestinian artist in Israel/Palestine, sharing key, life-changing moments that led her to choose dance and choreography as tools of expression.

Why are queer communities often found at geographic peripheries like the waterfront? What is the connection between drag and the seaport? Join the Seaport Museum for a conversation with drag legend, Linda Simpson, who will answer these questions while illuminating the “herstory” of drag and sharing her first-hand account of the rise and evolution of […]

Black History Month lecture.

Many in the second generation have chosen to write about their experiences as the children of Holocaust survivors. The products of these efforts take many different forms, from personal recollections to nonfiction and academic books. This program will explore the different processes 2G writers take to create their works. Dr. Irit Felsen, a clinical psychologist […]

In the new book Arthur Miller: American Witness from Yale’s Jewish Lives series, distinguished theater critic John Lahr brings a unique perspective to the life of Arthur Miller, the playwright who almost singlehandedly brought twentieth century American theater to a new level of cultural sophistication. Organized around the fault lines of Miller’s life and concentrating […]

In celebration of Black History Month, join Cornelius Eady, renowned poet, musician, co-founder of Cave Canem, and former Interim Director of Poets House for a reading and talk. Recently he launched Poets House’s Open House, a weekly radio program on WBAI, with co-host Patricia Spears Jones. He is the author of several celebrated collections of […]

Reading and discussion. The untold story of climate migration in the United States—the personal stories of those experiencing displacement, the portraits of communities being torn apart by disaster, and the implications for all of us as we confront a changing future.

Black History Month lecture.

The Rosenstrasse Protest of 1943 was held against the incarceration and potential deportation of roughly 2,000 people who were arrested by the Gestapo on February 27, 1943. With their loved ones held at Rosenstraße 2-4 in Berlin, family members, many of whom were women, kept their protest going for a week until Nazi leader Joseph […]

Innovations rarely come from “experts.” When it comes to improbable innovations, a legendary tech VC told Sebastian Mallaby, the future cannot be predicted, it can only be discovered. It is the nature of the venture-capital game that most attempts at discovery fail, but a very few succeed at such a scale that they more than […]

YA launch with Lizzy Mason. In a world that feels distorted by celebrity and the manipulations of social media and public opinion, Natalie and Carter need something real to hold onto. Remind Me to Hate You Later is a moving account of grief, depression, complex relationships, love, and the search for truth.

Join historian and author Claire Bellerjeau as she introduces Elizabeth, or Liss. Enslaved on Long Island, Liss showed great agency when she risked everything to escape with a British commander during the Revolutionary War. Despite her bravery, within weeks of her escape Liss was re-enslaved in British-held Manhattan, where she interacted with Washington’s lead spy, […]

Set in Civil Rights–era Harlem, this novel features shady cops and local gangsters in an entertaining and spellbinding way. Join NYPL staff for a moderated discussion.

Reading. A Bustle, LitHub, Debutiful, and NYLON Most Anticipated Book of 2023. A magnetic and unforgettable story of desire and its complexities, and a powerful reckoning with memory, loss, and longing, Madelaine Lucas’s debut novel, Thirst for Salt, reveals with stunning, sensual immediacy the way the past can hold us in its thrall, shaping who […]

Géraldine Schwarz’s riveting account of her German and French grandparents’ lives during World War II is an urgent warning against forgetting the lessons of history in the dangerous rise of far-right nationalism in Europe, the UK, and the U.S. In her book, Those Who Forget: My Family’s Story in Nazi Europe, Schwarz weaves together the […]

In this special Saturday afternoon lecture, Julie Flavell will present her book The Howe Dynasty, the first biography of a British "First Family." The Howe family had as much at stake as the Washingtons and Adamses in the conflict that created the United States. Meet the men and women of the aristocratic Howe dynasty and […]

Women's History Month lecture.

Lecture.

Joint book launch. From Sophie Ward, the Booker Prize-longlisted author of Love and Other Thought Experiments, comes a masterful and gripping thriller about truth, silence, and the weight of the past. Meanwhile, Margot Douaihy presents her masterful debut, Scorched Grace in which Sister Holiday, a chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, queer nun, puts her amateur sleuthing skills […]

An American Renaissance: Beaux-Arts Architecture in New York City, written by Phillip James Dodd with photography by Jonathan Wallen, is a sumptuous book on an era – roughly from the 1870s to the 1930s – when New York acquired and displayed its wealth and sophistication with complete confidence. The titans of American finance and industry […]

For this month's Non-Fiction/Fiction conversation series Join Sarah Schulman and K.M. Soehnlein in commemorating the 30-year anniversary of ACT UP.

John Sibley Williams, Barbara Graham, and Sergio Troncoso read from their work during this month's virtual salon.

With its gleaming shopping centers and refurbished row houses, today’s Harlem bears little resemblance to the neighborhood of the midcentury urban crisis. In The Roots of Urban Renaissance: Gentrification and the Struggle over Harlem, first published in 2017 by Harvard University Press, Brian D. Goldstein traces Harlem’s Second Renaissance to a surprising source: the radical […]

In this lecture, Ken Scarlett will discuss the British Southern Strategy for conquering America and extinguishing the American Revolution. He will discuss the role of a quisling in the framing of their base strategy and how those plans were completely defeated culminating with the forced British evacuation from Charleston, South Carolina (Victory Day). Ken will […]

Brooklyn born novelist, poet, educator and international speaker, Ellease Ebele N. Oseye, whom Maya Angelou described as "a seer of the interior landscape," has been teaching literature of African peoples at Pace University for 48 years. She has also taught at Borough of Manhattan Community College for twenty years. Professor Oseye's novel, Let the Lion […]

In commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the American war in Iraq, join us for an informal and open discussion about the war through political cartoons. In addition, we can explore how concepts such as the "Turner's Frontier Thesis," "Entitlement to Greatness," "The End of History" help explain the American support for military interventionism and […]

In commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the American war in Iraq, join us for an informal and open discussion about the war through political cartoons. In addition, we can explore how concepts such as the "Turner's Frontier Thesis," "Entitlement to Greatness," "The End of History" help explain the American support for military interventionism and […]

Reading and discussion. A young woman finds herself in the crosshairs of powerful and very dangerous enemies when she travels to Cairo to uncover the truth about her brother’s mysterious death in this smart, atmospheric, and propulsive literary thriller from the acclaimed author of A Beautiful Crime and Orient

The Sassoons, known as “the Rothschilds of the East,” were one of the richest families in the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Baghdadi Jewish family built a vast financial and trade empire that spanned continents, became members of British Parliament, and owned some of Britain’s leading newspapers. In his new book The […]

In this program, poet David Mills will read from and reflect upon the research behind his poetry collection, Boneyarn, a book of poems about slavery in New York City. For this reading, Mr. Mills will focus on the poems about enslaved women in his collection. The collection also includes a suite of poems dedicated to […]

Dr. Gisella Perl was a Hungarian Jewish gynecologist who was imprisoned at Auschwitz. While there, she acted to address the terrors that were visited upon women by the Nazi regime, as happened in all concentration camps. If a woman was discovered to be pregnant, she was often beaten or killed; Dr. Perl vowed to help […]