Library Talks

The Booker Prize–winning novelist discusses his twelfth, and most recent, novel, The Golden House.

The National Book Award–winning author spoke at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture about her most recent novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing. She was joined by Lisa Lucas, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation.

Two writers, two beautiful books, both on the subject of death. Atul Gawande's Being Mortal examines the lengths modern medicine must go to better humanize the final stages of our lives. Elizabeth Alexander's The Light of the World is the memoir of her husband Ficre's sudden and unexpected death, and Alexander's process of grieving and rebuilding that followed it.

The host and co-creator of Studio 360 discusses his new book, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, a 500-Year History. He spoke with NYU professor Kwame Anthony Appiah. Andersen argues that the roots of our post-truth, alternative facts present can be discovered in America's "promiscuous devotion to the untrue" and its instinct to believe in make believe, evident across four centuries of magical thinkers and true believers, hucksters and suckers, who have embedded an appetite for believe-whatever-you-want fantasy into our national DNA.

The filmmaker speaks about his groundbreaking documentary I Am Not Your Negro at the Schomburg Center with the Schomburg's Director, Kevin Young and LIVE from the NYPl's Paul Holdengräber.  

The Nigerian writer discusses her debut novel, Stay With Me, the haunting tale of a young couple whose childless marriage threatens to tear them apart. It was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and hailed by Michiko Kakutani as "powerfully magnetic and heartbreaking."  

Kendi discussed his National Book Award–winning work on the history of racist ideas in America with Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the Director Emeritus of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.  

MIT linguist, philosopher, and political theorist Noam Chomsky, in conversation with actor Wallace Shawn.

Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, and best-selling author Judy Collins came to the Library  back in February, to celebrate the publication of her most recent book, Cravings. “As an active, working alcoholic with an eating disorder,” she writes, “I yearned for serenity and was tormented for much of my life by longings, addictions, and painful crises over food: bingeing, bulimia, weight loss and gain.” Collins spoke with William Kelly, who is NYPL’s Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Research Libraries. Learn more at nypl.org/podcasts. 

The Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright was joined in May by members of the Broadway cast of Sweat to talk about the play and the issues behind it at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.