Event Recordings
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Wednesday, March 22, 2023 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | Whitridge Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredIn 1971, a white, Jewish, former ballerina chose to have a child with the famous Black jazz musician Roy Ayers, fully expecting and agreeing that he would not be involved in the child’s life. In this highly original memoir, their son, Nabil Ayers, recounts his journey to re-draw the lines that define family and race. In this special event, he converses with award-winning civil rights journalist, podcaster, legal analyst, and author Jami Floyd.
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Tuesday, March 7, 2023 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | Livestream | open to the public | $10 per person | registration requiredThe definitive history of World War II from the African American perspective, written by civil rights expert and Dartmouth history professor Matthew Delmont.
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Monday, February 27, 2023 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | Members' Room and livestream | open to the publicThis powerful portrait of schizophrenia, the most malignant and mysterious mental illness, by renowned psychiatrist Jeffrey Lieberman, interweaves cultural and scientific history with dramatic patient profiles and clinical experiences to impart a revolutionary message of hope. In this special event, Dr. Lieberman converses with Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon and Far from the Tree.
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Thursday, February 23, 2023 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | Members' Room | open to the publicAn extraordinary, untold story of the Second World War in the vein of Unbroken and The Boys in the Boat, from the author of Friday Night Lights and Three Nights in August.
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Thursday, February 16, 2023 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | Members' Room & Livestream | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredAn exquisitely rendered portrait of a unique father-daughter relationship and a moving memoir of family and identity.
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Tuesday, January 31, 2023 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | Livestream | open to the public | $10 per person | registration requiredA groundbreaking and enthralling biography of two pioneering geniuses in historical fiction - the most famous sister novelists before the Brontës, Jane and Anna Maria Porter.
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Monday, January 23, 2023 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | Members' Room & Livestream | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredA revelatory biography from a Pulitzer Prize-winner about the most essential Founding Father—the one who stood behind the change in thinking that produced the American Revolution.
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Tuesday, January 17, 2023 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | Members' Room & Livestream | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredThe Jays of New York were a preeminent founding family, and users of our Library. In Liberty's Chain, David N. Gellman shows how the family, abolitionists and slaveholders alike, embodied the contradictions of the revolutionary age.
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Thursday, December 1, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Special Event | Members' Room | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredRelive the Harlem Renaissance and Roaring Twenties at a festive tribute to Harlem literary artists and the work they created or inspired - hosted by the Library and the Harlem Writers Guild.
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Tuesday, November 22, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | Members' Room | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredOn the 150th anniversary of his birth, a definitive new biography of a pivotal figure in American literary history.
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Saturday, November 19, 2022 - 3:00 PM | Special Event | Members' RoomFor over a century, Marcel Proust has shown us how time can be converted into meaning. This special three-hour event brings together experts who have devoted their lives to Proust’s In Search of Lost Time to discuss key moments in the text and reflect on the impact of Proust’s great work on the world, with dramatic readings.
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Thursday, November 17, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Special Event | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredShirley Hazzard's authorized biographer tells the extraordinary story of the singular woman who created some of the 20th century's most enduring fiction, alongside other authors whose lives and works have been inspired and influenced by Hazzard.
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Monday, November 14, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredThe daughter of a famous journalist and his young British bride looks backward at her parents’ storied love affair in London during World War II, discovering that their wartime secret-keeping became a habit that undermined the peacetime marriage. In this special event, Alsop converses with Tim Gunn who, as the son of an FBI agent and a CIA librarian, grew up in the same strangely muted and ominous world that was cold war Washington.
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Thursday, November 3, 2022 - 2:00 PM | The Writing Life | Whitridge | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredIn this special event, bestselling biographer/memoirist Sallie Bingham discusses techniques, blessings, and pitfalls of writing about loss and grief, with a focus on her recent book Little Brother.
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Thursday, October 27, 2022 - 7:00 PM | Special Event | Members' Room | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredIn this special event, internationally praised vocalist Zachary James presents highlights from Kristin Hevner's opera The Raven, adapted from the beloved poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Mr. James and Ms. Hevner will also say a few words together about their collaboration on the piece and take questions about their work and the contemporary opera world.
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Wednesday, October 26, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | Livestream | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredDuring the first generations of European settlement in North America, a number of interconnected Northeastern families carved out private empires. In Bound by Bondage, Nicole Saffold Maskiell argues that slavery was a crucial component to the rise and enduring influence of this emergent aristocracy. Bound by Bondage is a new chapter in the history of early North America.
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Thursday, October 20, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | Livestream | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredAs part of our Fabulous Fashion exhibition season, the editor of the 2021 book Black Designers in American Fashion will explore how a selection of these designers fashioned their personas in the press as adeptly as the clothing they produced, helping to lay the foundation of how American designers are perceived today.
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Tuesday, October 11, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | Members' Room | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredJoin Barnard College's expert on Russia and international relations for an up-to-the-minute look at the war in Ukraine, Russia's policies, and the United States' response. Your questions welcome.
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Monday, October 3, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | Livestream | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredSet in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy.
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Thursday, September 22, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | Members' Room | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredThis singular history of a Greenwich Village prison, and the queer women and trans people held there, is a window into the policing of queerness and radical politics in the twentieth century.
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Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredSet in France and England at the end of the twelfth century, the moving story of a spirited, questing young woman, Isabelle, who defies convention to forge a remarkable life, one profoundly influenced by the fabled queen she idolizes and comes to know – Eleanor of Aquitaine.
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Thursday, September 8, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredThe eminent preservationist, author, and landscape historian Elizabeth Barlow Rogers is also a committed New Yorker. Writing the City reveals the many facets of her passion as a citizen of the great metropolis and her lifelong efforts to protect and improve it.
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Wednesday, June 22, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | On the Zoom Meetings platform | open to the public | free of chargeSix top romance-fiction writers - Ruby Barrett, Kate Bromley, Timothy Janovsky, Yamile Saied Méndez, Farrah Rochon, and Jamie Wesley - join host Marialuisa Monda to discuss their beloved genre: from their upcoming/newly published works and their favorite romantic tropes to their writing process and tips for future authors.
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Tuesday, June 14, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredA dazzling, debut novel-within-a-novel about a young author writing about the secret love affair between E.M. Forster and Mohammed el Adl—in which Mohammed’s story collides with his own, blending fact and fiction.
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Saturday, June 4, 2022 - 2:00 PM | Members’ Room Event | Members' Room | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredJoin the Founder & Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive, one of the largest libraries in the world, for a special two-part presentation and discussion on using this massive resource and on the societal and policy issues affecting access to knowledge.
