All BPL Presents programs at the Dr. S. Stevan Dweck Cultural Center at Central Library are free of charge (unless otherwise noted) and reservations are required for most adult programs. Patrons with reservations will be seated on a first-come, first-served basis. Unclaimed reservations will be released fifteen minutes before the start of an event; we recommend arriving early. Patrons without reservations will be seated as capacity allows.
Reservations can be made 24 hrs. a day, 7 days a week on our website by visiting the program’s calendar entry at bklynlibrary.org/bplpresents or by phone at 718.230.2200 (please see our phone reservation policy for hours and additional details). Reservations can be made up to approximately one hour before the scheduled program start time. The maximum number of seats that can be reserved per event is 3.
The Dweck Center is an accessible venue. To request additional information regarding accessibility or accommodations at the event, please contact BPLPresents@bklynlibrary.org.
Reservations for adult programs can be made with a BPL representative Monday-Friday from 9:00 am – 4:00 pm. For weekend events, reservations must be made by 4 pm on the Friday before the event takes place. Any reservations received after 4pm will not be processed. If leaving a message, please slowly and clearly state your first and last name, your phone number, the name and date of the program you would like to attend, and the number of seats you are requesting (maximum of 3).
CBH Talk | Deborah Archer and James Forman Discuss “Dividing Lines”
In her new book, Dividing Lines: How Transportation Infrastructure Reinforces Racial Inequality, acclaimed scholar and ACLU President Deborah Archer shows how seemingly innocuous transit planning functions – the development of roads, sidewalks, dividers, and other infrastructures –…
Myth Weaving, Summer Dreaming: Solstice Storytelling Workshop
What are the new stories of collective celebration and tenderness that our world urgently needs? How can we dream up new relationships to the land and to one another? In this imaginative storytelling workshop, participants will dream up new myths for the summer solstice. Writer and storyteller…
Yrsa Daley-Ward Discusses The Catch with Zakiya Dalia Harris
BPL Presents welcomes Yrsa Daley-Ward who discusses The Catch—named one of the Most Anticipated Books of 2025 by TIME, Publishers Weekly, Lit Hub, We Are Bookish, and Book Riot—in conversation with Zakiya Dalia Harris.
Twin sisters Clara and Dempsey have always struggled to relate, their…
Children of the Movement: Growing up with Parents in the Black Panther Party
This program is offered in partnership with The Guardian.
In March, The Guardian published a landmark article and produced a short film spotlighting the self-described “Panther cubs”—offspring of members of the Black Panther Party. This project, two…
Elie Mystal Presents the 2025 Kahn Humanities Lecture
BPL Presents welcomes the 2025 Kahn Humanities Lecture with Elie Mystal—a legal scholar, author, and commentator—on why the courts won't save us.
A legal analyst for the storied Nation magazine, Mystal is a fellow at Type Media Center and a New York Times bestselling author of several…
Pirate Radio in New York City 1939-1998: From Booger Brothers Broadcasting to WBAD-Bad Radio
Pirate radio stations have been sneaking onto New York City’s radio dial since the 1930s, mixing up a sonic stew ranging from self-proclaimed, “buzzy sounding, lousy sounding, get-your-ego-off radio” to a profusion of…
Environmental Injustice: Race, Class, and Toxic Inequality | The Present Crisis
Join us for Part 2 of a three-part series exploring the intersection of racial inequality and the environment. This time we explore the situation today. Leaders from across the country share solutions to environmental crises within their communities and discuss a new urgent challenge…
Opening the Archives: Finding LGBTQ+ History in the CBH Collections
When author Hugh Ryan researched his 2019 book When Brooklyn Was Queer, he delved deep into the archives at the Center for Brooklyn History. Queer history is rarely neatly labeled in finding aids or research guides. And so Hugh brought a queer lens to an array of seemingly unrelated…
CBH Talk | Rules and Rutabagas: A Conversation about the Park Slope Food Coop with Joe Holtz, Sun Yu, and Alexandra Schwartz
In the early 1970s, a remarkable experiment in collective action took root in Park Slope: the Park Slope Food Coop (PSFC). Founded in 1973 as a members-only, collectively-run buying club, the Coop has grown over 52 years into the largest single store food cooperative in the United…
QVNYC Presents: "The Ball" a film by MALGORZATA SANIEWSKA
Join us on Monday, June 23rd at the Dweck Center of Brooklyn Public Library for a special screening of The Ball, hosted by Queer Voices NYC in celebration of Pride Month. Narrated by ballroom icon Jack Mizrahi Gucci, this powerful documentary offers an intimate look into the underground ballroom…
Just Conversations | The Welcome Myth: Immigration and America’s Contradictions
About Just ConversationsJust Conversations is a series co-presented by the Center for Brooklyn History and Brooklyn Org that brings into dialogue issues facing our borough, city, and society and gives voice to the change makers who move us towards a more equitable future.Special thanks to…
Nicola Kraus and Amy Shearn Discuss The Best We Could Hope For & Animal Instinct
Join us for a discussion with Nicola Kraus and Amy Shearn on their new books: The Best We Could Hope For and Animal Instinct.
In The Best We Could Hope For, when Bunny Linden abandons her three children with…
Environmental Injustice: Race, Class, and Toxic Inequality | The Way Forward
The final program in this three-part series on the intersection of racial inequality and the environment looks ahead. Join us in imagining a future free from the race and class based divides that determine who is — and isn’t — protected from toxins, pollutants, flooding, and the…
Tove Jansson & The Responsibility of Children’s Literature
Authors, illustrators and editors come together to unpack Tove Jansson's influential work and consider the field of children's literature more broadly as an invocation into citizenship. M.T. Anderson, Lauren LeBlanc, Dr. Raquel Ortiz and Tracy Hurren will raise important, even difficult…
Brooklyn Bee: A Spelling Competition
Think you know how to spell Brooklyn? Prove it one word at a time!Join us for the first ever Brooklyn-centric spelling bee, hosted by your resident experts at the Center for Brooklyn History. From historic names to iconic avenues, we are finding the most interesting and…
The Amazing Garden: A Film and Conversation on Community Gardening in NYC
Join us for an evening celebrating the legacy and future of New York City’s community gardens, inspired by the short film The Amazing Garden, produced and directed by Hiroko Tadano Neely and Deb Levine. The film tells the story of how, thirty years ago, a group of passionate neighbors…
Miriam Toews Discusses A Truce That is Not Peace
BPL Presents welcomes internationally bestselling author Miriam Toews, whose memoir of the will to write is a work of disobedient memory, humor, and exquisite craft set against a content-hungry, prose-stuffed society.
“Why do you write?” the organizer of a literary event in Mexico City…
Art Spiegelman Discusses MetaMaus
BPL Presents is delighted to welcome Pulitzer-Prize winner Art Spiegelman to discuss the MetaMaus paperback.
In the pages of MetaMaus, Spiegelman re-enters Maus, the the Pulitzer Prize–winning modern classic that has altered how we see literature, comics, and the Holocaust ever since…
Lance Richardson Discusses True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen
BPL Presents welcomes Lance Richardson and this first biography of Peter Matthiessen, the novelist, naturalist, and Zen roshi, whose trailblazing work championed Native American rights and helped usher in the modern environmental movement.
Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), a towering figure…
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