Celebrate Earth Day with Hila the Earth! Join us for an interactive performance and hands-on workshop where kids can sing, move, and explore their connection to nature through music and play. Perfect for young learners and families alike!
đź“…Â Saturday, April 25
đź•ž 3:30 PM
đź“Ť Anne Loftus Playground
Reading keeps us connected. Join us for a neighborhood book club at the Fort Washington Branch!
The New York Public Library and WNYC—two indispensable New York institutions—are partnering to host a book club that brings New Yorkers together and fosters community. This book club will take place IN PERSON at the Fort Washington Branch.
The April title is Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s Lake Effect – a wry and tender portrait of two families forever changed by one lovestruck decision that will reverberate for decades.
It’s 1977 and an air of restlessness has settled on the residents of Cambridge Road in Rochester, New York, a place long fueled by the booming fortunes of Kodak and Xerox and, for some, the mores of the Catholic church. When Nina Larkin is given a copy of The Joy of Sex by her newly divorced friend, she can no longer dismiss the nearly nonexistent intimacy of her marriage. Just as her oldest child, Clara, is falling in love for the first time, Nina finds herself longing for the forbidden: a midlife awakening. An intoxicating fling with a prominent neighbor brings Nina a freedom she never thought possible—but also risks the reputations of both families and unravels Clara’s world, just as she stands on the threshold of adulthood.
Years later, Clara, now a successful food stylist in New York City, has never been able to move past the long-ago scandal. Drawn back home by the pull of a family wedding and wrestling with her own demons, she makes a pivotal decision that turns her life upside down. Written with Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s signature humor and insight, Lake Effect is a wise and probing look at love and desire, mothers and daughters, loss and grief, and what we owe the people we love most.
An Interactive Poetics Writing Workshop with Noel Quiñones
This workshop will invite participants to create a dynamic poetic form that requires the reader to participate in the poem.
Inspired by my Noel’s debut poetry collection, Orange (CavanKerry Press, 2026), and background in spoken word, this workshop will invite participants to create a dynamic form that requires the reader to participate in the poem. Together we will read examples of interactive poetry, brainstorm new poetic forms, and write our own poems that require a dynamic exchange between writer and reader.
Noel Quiñones is an Emmy award-winning writer of all genres. Noel is the author of the interactive poetry collection Orange (CavanKerry Press, May 2026) and has been published in Poetry, Boston Review, Poem-a-day, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT anthology, as well as the Michigan Quarterly Review, for which they won the 2025 Jesmyn Ward Fiction Prize. Noel’s short story “This Time and the Next” will be included in The Best Short Stories 2026: The O. Henry Prize Winners. Noel has also written for, narrated, and acted in several films, including the Emmy nominated documentary Takeover, recounting the Young Lords’ 1970 takeover of Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx to fight for better healthcare. A graduate of the University of Mississippi’s MFA program and founder of Project X, a Bronx-based spoken word poetry organization, Noel is currently a Justice for My Sister BIPOC Sci-Fi Screenwriting Lab Fellow working on their first TV show, The Telescope. Follow Noel at www.noelpquinones.com.
Preorder Orange or get a copy at the event.
Word Up celebrates the gallery opening of visual artist Elizaveta Kozlova’s show ANTE PERPETUUM. Join us for drinks, snacks, and a discussion with the artist.
The show will be up for the month of May at Recirculation, a project of Word Up.
Ante Perpetuum (Before Forever) is a series of images created by Elizaveta Kozlova in July 2022. The monochrome photographs decontextualize fragments of driftwood. Discovering the extensive amount of driftwood on the banks of the Hudson River inspired Elizaveta to capture the striking expressivity of its shape and texture that will soon be destroyed by time, wind and water.​​
Elizaveta Kozlova is a NYC-based art and portrait photographer whose work has been presented at the Louvre Fifth Annual Exposure Award in 2015. She has been employed nationally and internationally as a fashion and portrait photographer. She has worked for such organizations as The Metropolitan Opera and The New School in New York, Branksome Hall School and Aprilage Inc. in Toronto. Her art photography work involves an exploration of nature through the prism of chiaroscuro technique as seen in the open_in_newANTE PERPETUUM series.
This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 80 max attendees. Please register in advance.
Get LIT! Teacher Appreciation Cardmaking
It’s Teacher Appreciation Week ! Show some teacher love by creating a card. Use quotes and images inspired by your favorite books. Do it by hand or on a computer and let us print it out for you.
Audience: Teens/Young Adults (13-18 years)
