The Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize Winners Reading & Panel

Join us for our annual BPL Book Prize Winners Reading & Panel, featuring the 2025 BPL Book Prize winners in conversation with Ken Chen at the Brooklyn Book Festival.

Each fall, BPL honors outstanding works of nonfiction and fiction/poetry. Selected by librarians and staff, who draw on their broad knowledge of literature and the many populations they serve, the BPL Book Prize recognizes writing that captures the spirit of Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize was established in 2015 by the Brooklyn Eagles, young, engaged Brooklynites who are passionate about the library and work to engage new patrons.

This conversation will feature the 2025 BPL Book Prize winners with one another. Past winners include Kaveh Akbar, Blair L.M. Kelley, Catherine Lacey, Lamya H, Xochitl Gonzalez, and Threa Almontaser.

This is an official 2025 Brooklyn Book festival Bookend event.

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PARTICIPANTS

Ken Chen is an Assistant Professor and the Associate Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College of Columbia University. His next book, tentatively titled Death Star, is forthcoming and follows his journey to the underworld to rescue his father and his encounters there with those destroyed by colonialism. His poetry collection, Juvenilia, was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets by Louise Glück, who wrote, “Like only the best poets, Ken Chen makes with his voice a new category.”