Tag Archives: Word Up Community Bookshop

Word Up: Screening: EARTH SEED (People’s Kitchen Collective)

Sunday, October 19, 2025 – 1:00pm to 4:00pm
Word Up Community Bookshop / Librería Comunitaria
2113 Amsterdam Ave. & 165th St.
New York, NY 10032

REGISTER

Word Up presents a screening of EARTH SEED. Led by People’s Kitchen Collective, EARTH SEED centers a pilgrimage through California from present-day Los Angeles to Mendocino Woodlands that happened from March – June 2023, where they visited with people and places, discussing building models for survival and our collective future.

Rooted in Octavia Butler’s Parables series, the legacy of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, and the diaspora of the global south, EARTH SEED enacts radical hospitality as a survival practice.  It does so by deepening our relationships with BIPOC activists, artists, educators, farmers, youth, and elders.

More about the film and project: https://peopleskitchencollective.com/earth-seed

This screening is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 30 max attendees. Please register in advance.

In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees for this event must wear a mask inside.

Word Up Community Bookshop is located at 2113 Amsterdam Ave. (& 165th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 168th St and the A/C train to 163rd or 168th  St.

Word Up at Inwood Hill Park: Uptown Kid Lit

Uptown Kid Lit—Word Up’s book festival for kids—is back on Sunday, September 7, 2025 at Pat’s Lawn at Inwood Hill Park!

Join Word Up Community Bookshop in celebrating the magic of children’s literature and the back-to-school season at the premier Uptown children’s book festival. Young readers will have the opportunity to meet beloved local authors and illustrators as they present new books, lead story times and activities, readings and discussions, workshops, games, and more. Plus, FREE books and school supply giveaways to all registrants. Register today!

Featured authors & artists:
Selina Alko (C is for Camp)
Ethan T. Berlin (The Journal of Nonsense)
Hilda Eunice Burgos (Bodega Cats: Pawsome Pals)
Cynthia Carrión
CodeSpeak Labs
Rio Cortez (The Blue Velvet Chair)
Edwidge Danticat (Watch Out for Falling Iguanas)
tasha dougé
Olivier ThePlace (with Drag Artists For Expression NYC)
James Kwan (I Come from Another Galaxy: A Picture Book)
Allegra LeGrande
Jenan Matari (Everything Grows in Jiddo’s Garden)
Claribel Ortega (House of Elephants (Witchlings 3))
Jasminne Paulino (The Extraordinary Orbit of Alex Ramirez)
Alyssa Reynoso-Morris (Bold, Brilliant, and Latine: Meet 52 Latine and Hispanic Heroes from Past and Present)
Neela Vaswani (This Is My Eye: A New York Story)
Jamia Wilson (Make Good Trouble: Discover Movements That Sparked Change)
Tanya Wright (The Great Birthday Surprise! (Hairiette of Harlem))
Ibi Zoboi (First Day Around the World)

COMMUNITY RESOURCE TABLES
New York Restoration Project
The Cat Collective Team
Uptown Stories
HOPE
Literary Freedom Project / Sak Pasé
Drag Artists for Expression NYC
Family Connectors
FACE
Sugar Hill Children’s Museum
Dominican Writers Association/Lil Dominican Readers
Parents Supporting Parents
Dyckman Farmhouse
Friends of Inwood Hill Park
LINC

SCHEDULE UPDATES ON WordUpBooks.com/UKL

Word Up launched Uptown Kid Lit in 2019 as a one-day festival for our communities in Washington Heights, Inwood, Harlem, and the Bronx. After two years of virtual/hybrid programming in 2020 and 2021, UKL returned in person in 2022 with a focus on comics as part of the three-day Uptown Comics Fest. Each year has garnered a unique and vibrant group of local authors, illustrators, educators, publishers, editors, craftspeople, artists, and community organizations—all to support and celebrate our neighborhood’s youngest readers and families. We hope you’ll join us in 2025 at Inwood Hill Park!

We are committed to keeping admission to the festival free. Producing a multi-faceted outdoor festival requires a lot of resources. We are grateful for the grant funding we have received, which helps offset Uptown Kid Lit expenses, but this funding doesn’t cover all our costs, especially during this year of budget cuts across nonprofits. In order to keep Uptown Kid Lit a yearly neighborhood event, please consider registering at one of the ticket levels, ranging from $5 to $50.

LOCATION: Pat’s Lawn is located at the northwest corner of Inwood Hill Park off of Indian Road and 218th Street in Inwood, NYC. You can take the A to 207 St., the Bx7 to 218th St., or the M100 to Broadway and W 220 St.

ACCESSIBILITY: The closest entrance to the venue at 218th Street and Indian Road is wheelchair accessible. The event is on a grass lawn.

SPONSORSHIPS: If you would like to be a sponsor of this event, please email us at UptownReads@WordUpBooks.com. Sponsors will be featured in our promotional materials.

Uptown Kid Lit 2025 is made possible in part with funds from UMEZ Arts Engagement, a regrant program supported by the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (UMEZ), and administered by LMCC. Uptown Kid Lit is also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and by NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Word Up Community Bookshop’s programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

ADDITIONAL THANKS TO:
Blick Art Materials
Penguin Random House
Simon & Schuster
Macmillan
Candlewick Press / Holiday House Publishing, Inc. / Peachtree Publishing, Inc.
Realengo Studios
Juan Pablo Duarte Foundation
Dominican Women’s Development Center

Word Up: Clarence A. Haynes’s THE GHOSTS OF GWENDOLYN MONTGOMERY with Saraciea J. Fennell

Wednesday, October 22, 2025 – 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Word Up Community Bookshop / Librería Comunitaria
2113 Amsterdam Ave. & 165th St.
New York, NY 10032

REGISTER

This spooky season, Word Up welcomes author Clarence A. Hayes to discuss his solo debut, The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery, a page-turning novel in which a high-powered publicist receives a threatening message and must confront her secret mystical past as ghosts prepare to invade our world. To discuss the scary side of the publishing world, we have writer and publisher Saraciea J. Fennell, editor of The Black Girl Survives in This One: Horror Stories.

“Haynes’s spellbinding solo debut… Dovetailing of external and internal stakes keeps the pages flying. The result is an accomplished urban fantasy that’s sure to win Haynes plenty of fans.”—Publishers Weekly

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

In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees for this event must wear a mask inside.

Word Up Community Bookshop is located at 2113 Amsterdam Ave. (& 165th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 168th St and the A/C train to 163rd or 168th  St.

ABOUT THE BOOK

To be a client of Gwendolyn Montgomery—New York’s most powerful publicist, at Sublime Creative—is to be infused with a certain oomph, a mysterious glamour. She seems to have created the ideal life with her handsome new boyfriend, the perfect match. But Gwendolyn has a legion of long-buried secrets that could unravel everything.

After a grisly, bizarre incident at the Brooklyn Museum, Gwendolyn begins to realize that something nefarious is happening tied directly to her past, right as Fonsi Harewood comes back into her world. Fonsi is a queer Latinx psychic from the South Bronx who’s caught up in a love triangle with a ghost and his mortal ex. He’s able to communicate with the dead, and he comes with a dire warning for Gwendolyn, that the barrier between humans and spirits is weakening.

Gwendolyn would prefer not to have anything to do with ghostly drama. Yet in order to get to the bottom of the spookiness derailing her life and threatening the world, she must face the demons she’d long left behind. The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery is a sensuous, funny, mystical adventure that will leave you spellbound as you keep the pages turning.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Clarence A. Haynes, a native Afro-Latinx New Yorker, is the coauthor of actor/producer Omar Epps’s lauded sci-fi/fantasy series Nubia: The Awakening and The Reckoning. He is also the author of the middle-grade nonfiction work The Legacy of Jim Crow. Haynes has penned articles for Newsday, Huffington Post, The Root, and The Grio, among other publications. He resides in Brooklyn, New York.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Saraciea J. Fennell is a Brooklyn born Black Honduran American writer from the Bronx. She is the founder of The Bronx is Reading, and creator of Honduran Garifuna Writers. She is also a book publicist who has worked with many award-winning and New York Times bestselling authors. Fennell board chair for Latinx in Publishing as well as on the Advisory Board of People of Color in Publishing. She lives in the Bronx with her husband, family and black poodle, Oreo. Her nonfiction anthology WILD TONGUES CAN’T BE TAMED is available wherever books are sold. Her horror anthology THE BLACK GIRL SURVIVES IN THIS ONE co-edited with Desiree S. Evans, is available now from Flatiron Books.

No Name Super Storyteller Party (September 2025)

No Name @ Word Up Super Story Party In Washington Heights On Tuesday, September 2 at  7pm
 
 
NEW YORK, NY – AUGUST 2025 — On Tuesday, September 2, 2025 No Name Comedy/Variety Show producer Eric Vetter and host Jeff Rose bring New York’s best established and emerging authors and storytellers including: Adrianne Frost to the Word Up Community Bookshop in Washington Heights @ 7pm. for its monthly series “No Name at Word Up Super Story Party. The show will also include a “Magic Hat Open-Mic” where audience members can signup for a chance at four minutes of stage time to share their own stories. Admission is FREE, donations welcomed. Masks and proof of vaccination may be required. 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). For additional information, go to [wordupbooks.com].

Rising in the Heights – Live Music with Carmen Cancél & Jainardo Batista

Puerto Rican musicians singer/ percussionist Jainardo Batista of “Buena Vista Social Club” and soprano Carmen Cancél join forces with Leadlights Ensemble for an unforgettable event of music and storytelling, featuring “One Sweet Song” by Jyoti Gapal, ill. by Sonia Sanchez.

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.

This project is made possible in part with funds from UMEZ Arts Engagement, supported by the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (UMEZ); and Creative Engagement, supported by The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) in partnership with the City Council and the Howard Gilman Foundation. UMEZ Arts Engagement and Creative Engagement are administered by LMCC.