BPL Presents is BPL’s curated cultural program, with arts and culture offerings including author talks, live performances, music, film and visual art exhibitions that explore the critical issues of our time in Brooklyn and beyond.
Upcoming
Anna Shechtman on The Riddles of the Sphinx, in conversation with Kameron Austin Collins
author talks book discussion BPL Presents
Combining the soul-baring confessional of Brain on Fire and the addictive storytelling of The Queen’s Gambit, a renowned puzzle creator’s compulsively readable memoir and history of the crossword puzzle as an unexpected site of women’s work and feminist protest.
The indisputable “queen of…
Orchestra of St. Luke's Five Borough Tour: Valerie Coleman's Portraits of Josephine
BPL Presents classical interludes
Journey through the life of Josephine Baker with Valerie Coleman’s Portraits of Josephine, a wind quintet dedicated to the iconic entertainer and her legacy. Playwright and actor Kirya Traber joins Orchestra of St. Luke's for the performances, weaving her original…
National Black Writers Conference Poetry Cafe
As part of the National Black Writers Conference, the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College presents a poetry cafe featuring four amazing poets: Reginald Harris, Linda Susan Jackson and Anastacia-Renee.
Brad Gooch on Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring
Keith Haring was one of the most emblematic artists of the 1980s, a figure described by his contemporaries as “a prophet in his life, his person, and his work.” Part of an iconic cultural crowd that included Andy Warhol, Madonna, and Basquiat, Haring broke down the barriers between high art and…
An Evening with Rawlston Charles
Colloquy: Translators in Conversation with Raina, Rogers & Shyue
Please join World Poetry Books, Montez Press Radio and BPL Presents for the latest installment of Colloquy: Translators in Conversation, with readings and discussion from Kalpana Raina, Jacob Rogers and Jennifer Shyue on their recent translations for the independent, publisher of international…
ReelAbilities Film Festival: Left Alone Rhapsody - The Musical Memoir of Pianist John Bayless
Dir. Stewart M. Schulman
Documentary | English | US | 2023 | 100 min
At 25, Leonard Bernstein's protégé, John Bayless, debuted at Carnegie Hall, launching a 30-year-long recording career as a solo pianist, composer, and improviser. At 54, after a…
CBH Talk | Could It Happen Here? America's Illiberal History, Fascism, and the Thin Line Between Them
BPL Presents Center for Brooklyn History conversations
Throughout America’s history an illiberal strain of political thought has existed within our democratic society, argues Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Steven Hahn in his new book Illiberal America. We see it today in White Nationalism, “America First,'' demonization of immigrants and…
Just Conversations: Medical Racism, An Issue of Life and Death
Alice Randall on My Black Country with Charlamagne Tha God & Special Guest Rosanne Cash
BPL Presents is excited to welcome Alice Randall, award-winning professor, songwriter, and author, and country music legend Rosanne Cash, in a conversation moderated by Charlamagne tha God on Randall’s new book, My Black Country.
Country music had brought Randall and her activist…
Shubnum Khan Discusses The Djinn Waits A Hundred Years
Akbar Manzil was once a grand estate…
Inspired by Brooklyn | Music and a Movie
BPL Presents brooklyn history Brooklyn Is
Singer-songwriter Tsebiyah Mishael Derry performs, followed by a screening of the 1980 film Brighton Beach, introduced by filmmaker Susan Wittenberg.About "Inspired by Brooklyn"
The Brooklyn vibe is in the room at this cabaret-style series presented in connection with CBH’s…
Choice Words: Writers on Abortion
The debate about the morality, legality, and politics of abortion has reached a tragic impasse in the United States. What fresh perspectives, complex…
Celebrating Brooklyn Poets, Past and Present
BPL Presents brooklyn collection Center for Brooklyn History
Dip into the Center for Brooklyn History’s collection and you will find a vast range of poetry. There are works by household names like Walt Whitman, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Marianne Moore, as well as hundreds, perhaps thousands, of poems by writers whose works live in the nooks and…
CBH Talk | Exploring “The White Bonus” with Tracie McMillan and Darrick Hamilton
anti-racism author talks BPL Presents
White Bonus is the money white people receive or save when racism works in their favor. In her new book, The White Bonus: Five Families and the Cash Value of Racism in America, Tracie McMillan asks a pressing question: If racism denies people of color so much, just how much does it…
CBH Talk | Ari Berman and Chris Hayes Discuss “Minority Rule”
anti-racism author talks BPL Presents
As the United States moves steadily towards a majority-minority future, time and time again the white conservative minority has effectively pushed back representative democracy through voter suppression, election subversion, legislative power grabs, immigration restrictions,…
Viet Thanh Nguyen Discusses A Man of Two Faces
Join BPL Presents for a conversation with Viet Thanh Nguyen on his memoir, A Man of Two Faces. With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger…
Author Talk: Renée Watson on skin & bones, with Roxane Gay
From the acclaimed #1 New York Times bestselling author comes a soulful and lyrical novel exploring sisterhood, motherhood, faith, love, and ultimately what gets passed down from one generation to the next.
At 40, Lena Baker is at a steady and stable moment in life—between wine nights with…
CBH Talk | Blackface Minstrelsy and the Racial Foundation of American Musical Culture
anti-racism author talks BPL Presents
In his new book, Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States, musicologist Matthew Morrison unpacks the political legacy of blackface minstrelsy, showing not only how blackness was commodified by white people as popular entertainment during the nineteenth century,…
Frank Rich Delivers the 2024 Kahn Humanities Lecture
author talks BPL Presents lectures and discussions
BPL Presents invites you to the 2024 Kahn Humanities Lecture with Frank Rich—a journalist, author, and television producer.A writer-at-large for New York magazine, he was previously chief drama critic and an opinion columnist for The New York Times. In this unique talk, he…
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