Event Recordings
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Wednesday, June 14, 2017 - 6:30 PM | Special Event | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $15 per person | Advance registration required
In this unique event, two writers who are scientists - and whose scientific interests converge on olfaction - discuss their work, the process and joys of science writing, and, of course, smell.
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Thursday, June 1, 2017 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $15 per person | Advance registration requiredLong before archaeological excavations began to reveal the magnificence of the ruins at Persepolis, Ancient Iran was an object of enormous interest in the West. In connection with our exhibition Broken Beauty: Ruins of the Ancient World, one of New York's leading archaeology scholars introduces the tales, engravings, plays, and operas about Iran and its rules that circulated across Europe from the late 15th through the 18th centuries.
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Wednesday, May 24, 2017 - 6:00 PM | Lecture | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $15 per person | Advance registration requiredSpend an evening with beloved cartoonist Roz Chast, author of the multi-award-winning Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? This event is co-sponsored with Uptown at Night.
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Thursday, May 11, 2017 - 6:00 PM | Special Event | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $15 per person | Advance registration requiredDuring the past thirty years, the editors of the Hudson Review observed a trend among the best literary essayists and reviewers to couch their criticism in a highly personal manner as opposed to the theoretical, technocratic work being produced in other venues. The Hudson Review became a home for this kind of accessible, memoirist writing. This event celebrfates the publication of an anthology of such essay/memoirs, introduced by William H. Pritchard and with a panel including Susan Balée, Sir Andrew Motion, and Igor Webb. These diverse contributions unite in the joy of appreciation, the pleasures of engaging with literature. The Writing Life events in 2017 are generously underwritten by Jenny Lawrence.
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Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - 6:00 PM | Special Event | For members and guests | Members' Room | Free of charge; advance registration requiredThe New York Society Library’s New York City Book Awards, established in 1996, honor books of literary quality or historical importance that, in the opinion of the selection committee, evoke the spirit or enhance appreciation of New York City.
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Wednesday, April 26, 2017 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $15 per person | Advance registration requiredYou might not know Terry McDonell, but you certainly know his work: he has served as top editor for Outside, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated, among others. In this revealing memoir, McDonell talks about what really happens when editors and writers work with deadlines ticking (or drinks on the bar).
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Monday, April 17, 2017 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $15 per person | Advance registration requiredLibrary Conservator Christina Amato discusses the history, craft, and ongoing fascination of miniature books, from devotional items and titillation to children's tales and propaganda.
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Thursday, April 13, 2017 - 6:00 PM | The Writing Life | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $15 per person | Advance registration requiredJoin us for a special evening of refreshments, conversations, readings, video, and more in our annual evening showcasing great literary magazines.
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Monday, April 10, 2017 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $15 per person | advance registration requiredThis groundbreaking book from Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Frances FitzGerald is the first to tell the powerful, dramatic story of the evangelical movement in America—from the Puritan era to the 2016 presidential election.
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Wednesday, April 5, 2017 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $15 per person | Advance registration requiredThe former New Yorker staff writer brings us the rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, written from a woman’s perspective and informed by an acute understanding of the implications of this disease over a lifetime.
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Thursday, March 30, 2017 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $15 per person | Advance registration requiredThe author of Free Food for Millionaires writes the sweeping saga of an exceptional Korean family through the generations.
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Thursday, March 23, 2017 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $15 per person | Advance registration requiredThe first major book about the relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok, Eleanor and Hick offers a vivid portrait of love and a revealing look at how an unlikely romance influenced some of the consequential years in American history.
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Wednesday, March 15, 2017 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $15 per person | Advance registration requiredEcstatic love poems of Rumi, a poet and Sufi mystic born over eight centuries ago, are beloved by millions of readers around the world. In this breakthrough biography, Brad Gooch brilliantly brings to life the man and puts a face to the name Rumi, vividly coloring in his time and place.
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Monday, February 27, 2017 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $15 per person | Advance registration requiredToday, “Casanova” is a synonym for “great lover,” yet the real story of this remarkable figure is little known. This witty, roisterous biography exposes his astonishing life in rich, intimate detail. At the same time, it is a dazzling portrait of eighteenth-century Europe from serving girls to kings and courtiers. Esteemed biographer Laurence Bergreen brings a sensual world vividly alive in this irresistible book.
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Wednesday, February 22, 2017 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $15 per person | Advance registration requiredThe author of the century's first narrative of the entire Pacific War takes the reader into the war's heart, from mid-1942 to mid-1944, the largest, bloodiest, most costly, most technically innovative logistically complicated amphibious war in history.
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Thursday, February 16, 2017 - 6:00 PM | Special Event | Open to the Public | Members' Room | Free of charge | advance registration requiredThree acclaimed mystery writers - Lyndsay Faye, Stefanie Pintoff, and Radha Vatsal - discuss New York City as a setting for crime fiction, historical or present-day, with moderator Linda Landrigan, editor-in-chief of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. This event is co-sponsored with Mystery Writers of America New York.
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Monday, February 6, 2017 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $15 per person | Advance registration requiredMark Rothko, world-renowned icon of Abstract Expressionism, is rediscovered in this wholly original examination of his art and life written by his son.
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Thursday, February 2, 2017 - 6:30 PM | Special Event | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $15 per person | Advance registration requiredElliot Ackerman discusses with SPARTA author Roxana Robinson his new novel set on the Turkey-Syria border and exploring loss, second chances, and why we choose to believe.
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Tuesday, January 31, 2017 - 6:00 PM | Special Event | Open to the Public | Members' Room | Refreshments at 6:00 PM; presentation at 6:30 PM | $20 per person | Advance registration requiredThe storytelling and comedy scene in New York City is a source of endless creativity. Not quite under the radar, it’s bubbling up on small storytelling stages and in feisty comedy venues, primarily located in the far reaches of Manhattan and beyond. Join us as we bring to the Members’ Room a delightful roster of storytellers and comic actors with fresh, funny observations of our life and times, including Michael Arkin, Carmen Maria Machado, Nancy McCabe Kelly, Bruce Jarchow, Dorothea Benton Frank, Matthew Mercier, and Sarah Fearon.
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Thursday, January 26, 2017 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $15 per person | Advance registration requiredDonna Kaz, aka Aphra Behn, shares her experiences as the Guerrilla Girl Aphra Behn, who created comedic art and theater that blasted the blatant sexism of the theater world while proving feminists are funny at the same time - all from behind a gorilla mask.
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Monday, December 12, 2016 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $10 with advance registration/$15 at the door
Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, who launched the restoration of Central Park in the 1980s, now introduces seven remarkable green spaces in and around New York City, giving the history—both natural and human—of how they have been transformed o
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Wednesday, December 7, 2016 - 6:30 PM | Lecture | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $10 with advance registration/$15 at the door
From Delmonico’s to Sylvia’s to Chez Panisse, this is a daring and original history of dining out in America as told through ten legendary restaurants.
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Sunday, December 4, 2016 - 3:00 PM | Children | Open to the public | For Grade 4 and older | Members' Room | $5 per person, payable at the door
Join us for this exceptional event for young readers and writers. To begin, author Elizabeth Winthrop will share her creative process, including the secret of where she gets her ideas.
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Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 6:30 PM | Special Event | Open to the Public | Members' Room | $10 with advance registration/$15 at the door
A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent wom
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Thursday, October 13, 2016 - 6:30 PM | The Writing Life | Open to the Public | Members' Room | Free of charge; advance registration required
with Julia Claiborne Johnson, Imbolo Mbue, and Jonathan Putnam; moderated by Lauren Belfer
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