Past Events
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Thursday, November 12, 2020 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | online | open to the public | $10 per person | registration requiredEnter the mind of French literary giant Honoré de Balzac through a study of nine of his greatest characters and the novels they inhabit. Balzac's Lives illuminates the writer's life, era, and work in a completely original way.
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Wednesday, November 11, 2020 - 6:00 PM | The Writing Life | online | for members only | by donation | registration requiredFeeling stuck in your writing? Uninspired? Overwhelmed? Break out your tarot deck and use the 78 archetypes to shake out of your writing rut and surprise even yourself.
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Tuesday, November 10, 2020 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | online | free for members of the New York Society Library and membership library members | registration required through the Athenaeum of PhiladelphiaThe Princeton University professor and author of BEGIN AGAIN: JAMES BALDWIN'S AMERICA AND ITS URGENT LESSONS FOR OUR OWN addresses the questions raised by Baldwin's 1962 essay "As Much Truth as One Can Bear."
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Sunday, November 8, 2020 - 2:00 PM | Lecture | online | open to the public | $10 per person | registration requiredMary Shelley, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner and Virginia Woolf: they all wrote dazzling books that forever changed the way we see history. Prodigy, visionary, 'outlaw,' orator and explorer. As society's outsiders, the exceptional subjects of this study inspired a new breed of women―and one another.
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Wednesday, November 4, 2020 - 2:00 PM | Special Event | YouTube | open to the public | free of charge | drop in2020 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of New York City diarist George Templeton Strong. Join Library staff Harriet Shapiro and Cathy McGowan for a visit to Strong's 19th-century world with historical narrative, images, dramatic readings, and music.
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Thursday, October 29, 2020 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | online | free for members of the New York Society Library and membership library members | registration required through the Athenaeum of PhiladelphiaThe acclaimed biographer recreates a celebrated eighteenth-century London club that included critic Samuel Johnson, biographer James Boswell, historian Edward Gibbon, political thinker Edmund Burke, economist Adam Smith, painter Joshua Reynolds, and actor David Garrick.
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Wednesday, October 28, 2020 - 12:00 PM | Children | Online | For All Ages
Join us on YouTube for our virtual storytime for all ages! Can't join us for the premiere?
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Monday, October 26, 2020 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | online | open to the public | $10 per person | registration requiredThe iconic author of the bestselling phenomenon CRAZY RICH ASIANS returns with the glittering tale of a young woman who finds herself torn between two men.
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Sunday, October 25, 2020 - 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM | Online Event | Zoom | open to the public | free of charge | drop inJoin Library staff and friends from two of New York City's great independent bookstores for an informal chat in honor of National Book Month.
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Thursday, October 22, 2020 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | online | open to the public | $10 per person | registration requiredA singular, beautifully written coming-of-age memoir of a Filipino boy with albinism whose story travels from an immigrant childhood to Harvard to a gender transition and illuminates the illusions of race, disability, and gender.
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Wednesday, October 21, 2020 - 12:00 PM | Children | Online | For All Ages
Join us on YouTube for our virtual storytime for all ages! Can't join us for the premiere?
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Thursday, October 15, 2020 - 6:00 PM | The Writing Life | online | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredLibrary members read from their own short stories, novels, poetry, criticism, memoir, and plays.
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Wednesday, October 14, 2020 - 4:00 PM | Children | Online (Zoom) | Recommended for children in Kindergarten and Up
Let's meet on Zoom at the time above for a face-to-face storytime.
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Thursday, October 8, 2020 - 4:00 PM | Children | Online (Zoom) | For all ages
Join us on Zoom for a virtual, face-to-face storytime.
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Wednesday, September 23, 2020 - 6:00 PM | Wednesday, October 7, 2020 - 6:00 PM | The Writing Life | online | for members only | by donation | registration requiredJoin master teacher Geraldine Woods to take apart classic sentences, see how they tick, and apply their secrets to your own writing.
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Thursday, October 1, 2020 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | open to the public | $10 per person | registration requiredThe foremost expert on the book art of Margaret Armstrong talks about her life and career, with stunning images from his own comprehensive collection of her bindings.
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Wednesday, September 30, 2020 - 12:00 PM | Children | Online | For All Ages
Join us on YouTube at the time above for our virtual storytime for all ages! Can't join us then?
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Wednesday, September 30, 2020 - 11:00 AM | Reading Group | online | for members only | $60 for the set of four sessions | registration requiredGabriel García Márquez was the most influential writer in the Spanish language since Cervantes. This seminar takes a deep look at his three major works One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and Love in the Time of Cholera.
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Tuesday, September 29, 2020 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | for members of the New York Society Library and membership library members | free of charge | registration required through the Athenaeum of PhiladelphiaIn the decades before the Civil War, African Americans in the North lived in an tenuous freedom, denied political rights and threatened with kidnapping and enslavement. In this presentation, REMAKING THE REPUBLIC author Christopher Bonner explores individual and collective strategies African Americans used to defend their freedom and secure rights.
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Thursday, September 24, 2020 - 11:00 AM | Reading Group | online | for members only | $60 for the set of four sessions | registration requiredWritten at the request of the Roman Emperor Augustus, this 1st century BCE epic is much more than a piece of propaganda. We’ll complete the story in Robert Fagles’ fine translation.
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Wednesday, September 23, 2020 - 6:00 PM | Wednesday, October 7, 2020 - 6:00 PM | The Writing Life | online | for members only | by donation | registration requiredJoin master teacher Geraldine Woods to take apart classic sentences, see how they tick, and apply their secrets to your own writing.
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Wednesday, September 23, 2020 - 12:00 PM | Children | Online | For All Ages
Join us on YouTube at the time above for our virtual storytime for all ages! Can't join us then?
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Tuesday, September 22, 2020 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | open to the public | by donation | registration requiredA husband, a father, a son, a business owner...And the best getaway driver east of the Mississippi. Like Ocean's Eleven meets Drive with a Southern noir twist, S. A. Cosby's Blacktop Wasteland is a searing, operatic story of a man pushed to his limits by poverty, race, and his own former life of crime. Lee Child calls it "sensationally good - new, fresh, real, authentic, twisty, with characters and dilemmas that will break your heart. More than recommended."
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Thursday, September 17, 2020 - 4:00 PM | Children | Online (Zoom) | For all ages
Join us on Zoom for a virtual, face-to-face storytime.
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Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | open to the public | $10 per person | registration requiredTwo acclaimed novelists discuss their research and writing about the experiences of women in the Second World War and its aftermath.
