Past Events
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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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Thursday, October 20, 2022 - 3:30 PM | The Writing Life | Zoom | for members and guests | free of charge | registration requiredThe Writing Life Daytime Talk Series resumes with Molly Peacock and Phillis Levin presenting Two Poets at the Table: A Dialogue Between Friends Sharing Poems & Food.
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Tuesday, October 18, 2022 - 6:00 PM | The Writing Life | Members’ Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredLibrary members read from their own short stories, novels, poetry, criticism, memoir, and plays.
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Thursday, October 13, 2022 - 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM | Special Event | Members' Room | free of charge | for members and guests | drop in
Our Happy Hour gatherings return with an informal evening of wine, light refreshments, and the classic table game Clue! Bring a friend and drop in.
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Thursday, October 13, 2022 - 2:00 PM | The Writing Life | on the Zoom Meetings platform | open to the public; free for members | separate sessions | registration requiredJoin poet and teacher Esther Cohen to write the poems we've always intended to write.
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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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Thursday, October 6, 2022 - 5:00 PM | Children | Whitridge Room | For Members and guests in grades 3-8 | $15 per person | Advance Registration Required
In this ongoing series, young writers are invited to join notable authors in exploring different genres.
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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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Wednesday, September 28, 2022 - 6:00 PM | The Writing Life | Members' Room | open to the public | free of charge | registration requiredJoin us for a lively conversation about short stories and flash fiction from the point of view of writers, agents, and editors, brought to you by the Authors Guild Ambassadors, Catherine Torigian, Ginger McKnight-Chavers, and Diana Altman. The panelists are Gessy Alvarez, Megan Cummins, Adam Dalva, Marya Spence, and Hilma Wolitzer, with Ms. Altman moderating.
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Wednesday, September 28, 2022 - 11:00 AM | Reading Group | Whitridge Room | for members only | $75 for the four sessions | registration requiredLiterary scholar F. O. Matthiessen created the term “ The Major Phase” to describe the last three major novels of Henry James, published from 1902-1904: The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl. This course will offer two sessions on each of those first two titles: The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove.
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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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Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Special Event | Members' Room | for members and guests | free of charge | registration requiredIn her forthcoming book Data Cartels, Sarah Lamdan, Professor of Law at CUNY School of Law, examines the ways privatization and tech exceptionalism have prevented us from creating effective legal regulation. She calls for treating information like a public good and creating digital infrastructure that supports our democratic ideals. She'll join us for a conversation about how we build this digital infrastructure, hosted by Emily Drabinski, President-Elect of the American Library Association, and accompanied by Brewster Kahle, Founder of the Internet Archive.
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Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - 11:00 AM | Reading Group | On the Zoom Meetings platform | for members only | $75 for the four sessions | registration requiredModern Turkish fiction faced the challenge of not just representing twentieth century life but in doing so in a new alphabet and a radically reformed language. These books offer an opportunity to see how a seemingly peripheral cultural area is in fact at the center of literary developments in the past hundred years.
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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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Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - 10:00 AM | Children | Whitridge Room | For Members | Ages 24 Months and Younger
Join us for songs, stories, and movement for babies and toddlers.
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Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Performance | Members' Room | open to the public | $15 per person | registration requiredM.R. James first wrote his ghost stories to perform to friends in Kings College Cambridge in the year leading up to World War One. Now, over a century after their first publication, Nunkie Theatre Company have brought two of the eeriest and most entertaining back to life in this gripping, candlelit one-man show. “Lloyd Parry’s mastery of the role is itself an act of possession.” - The New Yorker
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Wednesday, September 14, 2022 - 4:00 PM | Children | Whitridge Room | For Members | Kindergarten and up
Curious kids, climb aboard! Explore Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math at the Library.
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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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Thursday, July 28, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | On the Zoom Meetings platform | for members only | free of charge | registration requiredBooks Walter Bode edited have won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this seminar, he’ll help writers find the most effective words and make the best use of them – based on participants’ own writing samples.
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Thursday, July 14, 2022 - 11:00 AM | Online Event | On the Zoom Meetings platform | open to the public | free of charge | no registration requiredLibraries, Reading Communities and Cultural Formation in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic is a three-year project based in the History Department at the University of Liverpool, investigating the contribution of books to social, cultural, and political change in the eighteenth century. The project's online team, together with partner libraries, runs a Book of the Month Club, drawing attention to books that appealed to eighteenth-century library goers. For July’s ‘Book of the Month’ we mark Independence Day in the United States by considering Jonathan Carver’s Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America in the Years 1766, 1767, and 1768.
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Thursday, June 30, 2022 - 6:00 PM | Online Event | On the Zoom Meetings platform | for members only | free of charge | registration requiredBooks Walter Bode edited have won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this seminar, he’ll help writers find the most effective words and make the best use of them – based on participants’ own writing samples.
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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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Wednesday, June 22, 2022 - 4:00 PM | Children | Online (Zoom) | For all ages
Let's meet on Zoom for this face-to-face storytime. The Children's Library will share fun tales to spark your creativity and the
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Thursday, June 16, 2022 - 4:00 PM | Children | Online | For All Ages
Join us on YouTube at the time above for our virtual storytime for all ages!
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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.
