Tag Archives: Author Reading

Word Up Recirculation: Joshua Jelly-Schapiro’s DAYLIGHT COME

Word Up welcomes Publisher’s Weekly Director of Publishing Joshua Jelly-Schapiro to discuss his new book Daylight Come: Harry Belafonte and the World He Made (Significations), a vibrant, revealing portrait of the “King of Calypso,” whose extraordinary performing career and activism helped remake America through the civil rights era and beyond.

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with a maximum of 100 attendees. Please register in advance.

ABOUT THE BOOK  Even three years after his death, Harry Belafonte is everywhere. You can’t go to a wedding, or to a sports arena, without hearing “Day-O,” “Jump in the Line,” or “Jamaica Farewell.” The Harlem-born son of Caribbean immigrants, Belafonte turned the folk music of the islands into American pop—and shaped the fantasy of Caribbean life that endures as an ideal and as a multibillion-dollar tourist industry. Belafonte released the first million-selling LP in history. He was America’s first Black movie star, the first Black person to produce a prime-time special on network TV, and the first to win an Emmy Award. He was once the highest-paid Black performer of all time, beloved by Black and white fans alike, even under segregation. His artistic career helped create the pop culture of the twentieth century—and his political activism reshaped the course of American history.

In this sparkling new biography, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro brings Belafonte’s personality and music vibrantly to life, following him from rags to riches and from Harlem to Jamaica to the March on Washington. Jelly-Schapiro takes us inside Belafonte’s lifelong brotherhood with Sidney Poitier, his friendship with Fidel Castro, his collaboration with Nelson Mandela, and the sometimes shocking therapeutic relationships his difficult upbringing necessitated. At the heart of the story is Belafonte’s bond with Martin Luther King Jr., whose cause Belafonte would champion for the rest of his life. That commitment to the greater good would sustain him and benefit untold numbers—and would come at a cost.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joshua Jelly-Schapiro is a geographer and writer whose books include Names of New York: Discovering the City’s Past, Present, and Future Through Its Place-Names; Island People: The Caribbean and the World; and, with Rebecca Solnit, Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas. His work appears regularly in publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The New York Review of Books. Jelly-Schapiro teaches journalism at New York University and is director of publishing at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, where he hosts the popular Author Talks series and is coeditor in chief of Pioneer Works Broadcast.

Word Up: Rising in the Heights with storyteller Rachael Harrington

Explore the Haitian folk tale ”The Magic Orange Tree” with storyteller Rachael Harrington and Leadlights Ensemble for an afternoon of music and stories on the sidewalk outside of Word Up Community Bookshop / Librería Comunitaria.

Free copies of the book will be available.

Rising in the Heights is a festival of free outdoor public arts performances curated by Leadlights Ensemble in partnership with Word Up Community Bookshop. The festival celebrates the rich artistic contributions of Latinx and Black cultures and promotes children’s literacy through music and bilingual storytelling. Free copies of the featured book will be available.

Rachael Harrington is an internationally recognized storyteller who performs in arts venues, schools, festivals, and as a guest lecturer at Rutgers University. Performance: Sugarhill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling, The Story Center at Mid-Continent Public Library. Presenter: The American Library Association, National Storytelling Network Summit. Publications: Storytelling Magazine, School LIbrary Connection, Voices Journal. Member: The National Storytelling Network, NJ Storytelling Network, North East Storytelling, Clutch Full Circle, StateraArts. www.rachaelharrington.com

Hispanic Society: Book Presentation with Jonathan Goldman

Book Presentation with Jonathan Goldman
Join us for a conversation with Jonathan Goldman on the Puerto Rican experience in 1920s New York.

Learn more about the book here:

In Hidden Histories of Jazz Age: New York: From the Suppressed to the Strange, Jonathan Goldman offers a fresh look at 1920s New York City, unearthing stories of everyday life and marginalized communities. In sections that intertwine entertainment, politics, art, technology, crime, shopping, eating, and recreation, the book portrays sweeping events such as the Harlem Renaissance, Prohibition, and immigration reform through anecdotes of individual experiences that counter the era’s popular conceptions of ballooning wealth and uproarious celebration. Jonathan Ezra Goldman’s whirlwind tour of early 1920s New York City visits an all-female police platoon, a Black amusement park shut down before it opened, an Arabic literary salon, socialist Puerto Rican cigar factories, Chinatown funerals, lesbian cafes, overcrowded jails, toxic dumps, and Ku Klux Klan recruitment offices. The grand narratives of the 1920s interweave with little-known anecdotes about well-known figures such as Marcus Garvey, Dorothy Parker, and Babe Ruth, serving as a backdrop to the everyday challenges and triumphs of a city beset by crowds, automobile traffic, and rapidly changing technology and urban infrastructure, as well as erased stories of injustices like Jim Crow practices, immigration anxieties, and the violent treatment of political dissent. These stories still resonate today, showing that this dizzying, exuberant ride through hidden history can help twenty-first readers see our own moment more clearly.

Jonathan Ezra Goldman is Professor in the Humanities Department at New York Institute of Technology. His previous books include Modernism Is the Literature of Celebrity and Joyce and the Law. He lives in New York City.

Word Up: Emerging Poet Voices – Identity, Memory, and Digital Life

Join poets Rayne Alarcio, AJ DiBetta, Leelah Holmes, Colleen Bąk, and spencer jude perez for an evening of contemporary poetry exploring identity, intimacy, memory, digital culture, and coming-of-age in the twenty-first century. Through lyric, narrative, and spoken word traditions, these emerging writers offer work that reflects on relationships, belonging, self-discovery, and the stories we tell about ourselves. The event will feature readings from each poet, followed by an audience Q&A and book signing.

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with a maximum of 30 attendees. Please register in advance.I

ABOUT THE POETS
Rayne Alarcio (they/he) is a Filipino American poet from Los Angeles. They are the author of the chapbook Starving the Wolf (Bottlecap Press), which is housed in the Poets House Permanent Collection. Their work appears or is forthcoming in Chicago Quarterly Review, Cimarron Review, failbetter, and elsewhere. They have served as a National Writing Juror for the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Learn more at open_in_newwww.raynealarcio.com.

AJ DiBetta is a trans and queer multi-disciplinary creative and graphic designer. They have their BA in Psychology with a minor in Community Engagement. They are a graduate of Shillington School of Graphic Design.

Leelah Holmes (he/they) lives and writes in Brooklyn, generally getting up to no good. You can find his poems in new words {press}, Chariot Press, The Dewdrop, Beyond Words, Touchstone and elsewhere.

Colleen Bąk is a neurodivergent poet and mom of three, who loves exploring the mysteries and magic of family stories, poetry and Houdini. She spent twenty years living in NYC; where after attending NYU for six years, she began attending births, throughout the city’s boroughs (as a doula and a midwife’s assistant) and tending to Houdini’s grave, as one does when they have loved him since childhood. Colleen’s poetry can be found in various anthologies and her previous chapbook breadcrumbs (2022, Bottlecap Press.)

spencer jude perez is an astrologer & poet from The Bronx. spencer jude has served as the president and literary editor on the student-run magazine Cabbages & Kings and has been published in No, Dear.

Word Up: Kiara Valdez’s STEPPING UP with Lethy Liriano

Word Up welcomes Kiara Valdez on her forthcoming graphic novel, STEPPING UP (on sale 8/4/26), a timely and vibrant teen graphic memoir about community, friendship, and self-discovery told through the eyes of a high school freshman Kiara, one of the few Black students at her predominantly white boarding school—perfect for fans of Almost American Girl and Brownstone!

In conversation with Kiara Valdez will be Lethy Liriano, executive director of the Bride’s March.

This event is in collaboration with Dominican Writers Association.

“Valdez’s graphic novel debut provides thoughtful glimpses into her attempts to settle into a new environment that wasn’t designed with her in mind. Readers will identify with the outsider perspective explored throughout the narrative.” – Kirkus Reviews

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with a maximum of 100 attendees. Please register in advance. 

In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees are encouraged to stay masked at all time.

Word Up Community Bookshop/Libreria Communitaria is located at 2113 Amsterdam Avenue (corner of 165th Street) in Manhattan. Subways: A, C or #1 train to 168th Street (walk south to 165th St, turn left, then walk east to Amsterdam Avenue).

ABOUT THE BOOK

Kiara is a long way from Washington Heights. She’s at Phillips Academy Andover—the prestigious school of her dreams. But her bulky financial aid laptop in a room full of brand-new Macs, her classmates’ endless chatter about overseas vacations, and everyone’s pristine North Face jackets have her feeling like she’ll never fit in.

Then she discovers the all-star step team, SLAM. Kiara will gladly endure long practices, sore muscles, and chafed palms to finally find her place on campus. That is, until tragedy strikes and those closest to her are hurt, and she realizes exactly what it means to be an Andover student.

Because at a school where her wealthy white classmates can get away with almost anything and students like her are made to feel lucky to even be at the academy to begin with, is belonging really what Kiara wants? And is she brave enough to step up—for herself and her friends?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kiara Valdez is an Afro-Dominican writer and graphic novel editor from New York City (shout out to Washington Heights). She graduated from Williams College with a double major in English Literature and Japanese, and spends her free time reading, writing, and enjoying a long list of other hobbies she can’t keep up with. She writes graphic novels, pictures books, and story books that include titles such as Dear Dad (with Jay Jay Patton and Markia Jenai), Marvel’s Little Groot, Big Feelings and We Are Groot (both with Wendy Tan), and Mami’s Magic Words (Richy Sánchez Ayala). Stepping Up is her debut original graphic novel.