Xochitl Gonzalez Discusses Last Night in Brooklyn, with Bevy Smith, Marcy Blum, Djali Brown-Cepeda, and Lee Quiñones

BPL Presents welcomes Xochitl Gonzalez who will discuss her new novel, Last Night in Brooklyn. SPRING, 2007: At twenty-six, Alicia Canales Forten feels smothered by her future. She’s in a long-distance relationship, living at home with her mother’s beliefs, saving up for her wedding to a future doctor. But after Alicia ventures out one night in the neighborhood of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, she finds herself lured by the siren song of youth and possibility that the striving crowd of creatives holds, and moves in.

No one embodies this milieu more than La Garza, a larger-than-life, up-and-coming fashion designer whose epic house parties fuel neighborhood lore. La Garza’s life, observed by Alicia from her apartment across the street, seems to hold the allure and fearlessness Alicia has never dared to imagine for herself.

But when Alicia’s wealthy banker cousin moves to the neighborhood, she finds herself increasingly drawn into both his and La Garza’s precarious lives.

Against the backdrop of a potentially life-changing presidential election and a looming once-in-a-generation fiscal crisis, Last Night in Brooklyn explores the dark compromise of the American Dream for people of color living, unknowingly, in the twilight of a cultural moment. It is a story about everything money can buy—and the destruction of what it can’t.

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PARTICIPANTS

Xochitl Gonzalez is the New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning novel Olga Dies Dreaming, the Reese’s Book Club Pick Anita de Monte Laughs Last, and the highly anticipated Last Night in Brooklyn (out 4-21-26). She is a contributor to The Atlantic, where she was recognized as a 2023 Pulitzer Prize finalist in Commentary. A native Brooklynite and proud public school graduate, Gonzalez holds a BA from Brown University and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is a trustee of the corporation of Brown University and the Brooklyn Public Library. Photo credit Allan Zepeda

 

 

Bevy Smith is a media personality, entrepreneur, and cultural commentator redefining what it means to be “in the middle.”

A Gracie Award-winning host of SiriusXM’s Bevelations, former luxury fashion publishing executive, and author of Bevelations: Lessons from a Mutha, Auntie, Bestie, Bevy has built a dynamic career at the intersection of media, culture, and storytelling.

Her signature philosophy, “It Gets Greater Later”®, catapulted her into the global conversation with a top-ranked TED Talk that has garnered millions of views, inspiring audiences to embrace growth, reinvention, and possibility at every stage of life.

She is the creator and host of In Bed With Bevy, a bold, intimate talk series exploring ambition, reinvention, and the realities of navigating life beyond the beginning but before the peak.

Through her expanding platform—including Life With Vision and Dinner With Bevy—Bevy empowers high-achieving audiences to activate their next level with clarity, confidence, and purpose.

A lifelong New Yorker and dedicated community advocate, Bevy continues to merge culture, conversation, and impact—reminding us all that no matter where you are in your journey, It Gets Greater Later®.

Marcy Blum has spent more than 38 years creating celebrations that people never forget. She is the founder of Marcy Blum Associates and is known around the world for planning weddings, parties, and events that are stylish, joyful, and always original. Her events are beautiful, of course, but as she likes to say, that’s just the beginning.

Marcy studied at The Culinary Institute of America and the High School of the Performing Arts, a background that shaped her signature mix of food, theater, and design. In recognition of her lifelong contributions to the hospitality and events industry, she was honored with the CIA’s prestigious Augie Award. That blend of experience and perspective allows her to create gatherings that feel effortless while also being deeply thoughtful, especially when it comes to food and drink.

Her client list includes Savannah and LeBron James, Jennifer Gates and Nayel Nassar, Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, Kevin Love and Kate Bock, and the Soros and Rockefeller families. She has also designed milestone parties, launches, and galas for Comedy Central, Billy Joel, and many others.

Named one of the top planners in the world by VOGUE and Harper’s BAZAAR, Marcy has been featured in The New York Times, PEOPLE, Vanity Fair, Food & Wine, and many more. She has appeared on Oprah, The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Rachael Ray Show, and even Japanese television, where she smiled her way through despite not understanding a word.

At the heart of it all, Marcy believes that while the host’s vision is paramount, it's her attention to the guest experience that makes all the difference.

Djali Brown-Cepeda (Jah-Lee) is a Capricornian cultural preservationist and visual storyteller. Rooted in the tenets of reclamation and rematriation, her work as a film and television producer centers oral tradition and lived experiences as a tool of cultural restoration. An archivist, she is a book worm and self-taught public historian, with a penchant for all things red, black, and green.

She is the founder of NuevaYorkinos, a counter-archive digital project dedicated to documenting and preserving New York City’s Latino and Caribbean culture and history through family photographs, videos, and stories, and co-founder of Thicker Than Water Polymedia, a creative third space rooted in Black Memory work and Black history continuum, past, present, future.

Through NuevaYorkinos, she has amassed over 1,500 stories and 3,000 visual media since its inception in 2019, have exhibited in countless spaces, from El Museo del Barrio to MoMA PS1. Her work has been featured in publications like The New Yorker, Dazed Digital, The New York Times, Latina Magazine, and has led her to speak at various institutions, including Columbia University, the MET, and TIME Magazine.

An Olorisha Yemayá, memory worker, alchemist. A steward of remembrance. A Mother to a Sun. A vinyl collector of Caribbean, Afro Native, and Southern heritage. Fifth generation Gullah Geechee from unceded Wecquaesgeek territory in Lenapehoking (Upper Manhattan, New York City). She enjoys tending to her altars and conspiring with the Universe for all good things. You can find her annotating her books while, too, sipping on wine she usually can't afford, and any pilsner or lager. Prefers a cup of dark roast coffee, speaking to spirit, and being barefoot on the grass.

Wherever she goes, so do her ancestors.

Lee Quiñones is considered the single most influential artist to emerge from the New York subway art movement. Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico in 1960, and raised in the Lower East Side, Lee started painting trains in 1974, painted over 120 whole subways cars, and then shifted to a studio-based practice. Lee was instrumental in moving street art above the ground when he created the first handball court mural in 1978. He has had numerous solo shows, first at Galleria Medusa in Rome, Italy in 1979. In 1980, Lee had his first New York show at White Columns, ushering in an important era as the medium of spray paint expanded from public spaces to stationary canvas works. His work was included in “Times Square Show” (1980); “Graffiti Art Success for America at Fashion Moda” (1980); the “New York/New Wave” show (1981) at PS1; and, in “Documenta #7” in Kassel, Germany (1983). His drawings and paintings have been shown in recent years at the New Museum of Contemporary Art (2005), El Museo del Barrio (2010), the Museum of Modern Art (2011), the Museum of Contemporary Art Rome (2017), Seoul Museum of Art (2019), the Bronx Museum (2019), the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (2020) the Gropius Bau (2021) and the Leroy Neiman Center for Print Studies (2022). He has had solo shows at MoMA PS1, Contemporary Art Center of Cincinnati, Fun Gallery, Barbara Gladstone, Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Lisson Gallery, Barbara Farber, Nicole Klagsbrun, Charlie James, and James Fuentes. He starred in Charlie Ahearn’s 1983 film, “Wild Style,” a blueprint for the burgeoning hip hop movement. He appears in Blondie’s “Rapture” video and the film “Downtown 81.” Quiñones’ paintings are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of the City of New York, Perez Art Museum Miami, Groninger Museum, Blanton Museum of Art, and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Photo credit Stanley Lumax