free things to do in New York City
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Free Events, Free Things to Do in New York City! Read More
Are you looking for literary events like book readings, book signings, poetry readings? Then you came to the right place. Start using these unique New York City opportunities today!
Are you looking for literary events like book readings, book signings, poetry readings? Then you came to the right place. Start using these unique New York City opportunities today!
Join the Club!
The quality and quantity of
free events,
free things to do
that happen in New York City
every day of the year
is truly amazing.
So don't miss the opportunities
that only New York provides:
stop wondering what to do;
start taking advantage of
free events to go to,
free things to do in NYC
today!
The quality and quantity of
free events,
free things to do
that happen in New York City
every day of the year
is truly amazing.
So don't miss the opportunities
that only New York provides:
stop wondering what to do;
start taking advantage of
free events to go to,
free things to do in NYC
today!
free poetry readings, book signings, author readings in New York City (NYC) Sat, 11/27/2021 - and on...
Not a day goes by in New York City (NYC) without a free poetry reading or a book signing or a book reading by a famous or not yet famous author. Don't miss the opportunities that only New York provides!
ONLINE EVENTS ARE MARKED AS SUCH.
Poetry Reading | The Math of Saint Felix: The Sum of a Life in Poems (online)
Diane Exavier to launch her first poetry collection. Her book-length lyric is an attempt to do the math of a woman, a family, a country, and a diaspora, plotting how the sum of one life reveals permutations of many-- daughters, sisters, lovers--and the uncountable cost of a single death. With the heart-stilling gravity of a weary prophet, Exavier--hailed as "a rising star in the next generation of Black poetics"--performs the work of generations.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Nov 29
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | To Make the Wounded Whole: The African-American Struggle Against HIV (online)
In the decades since it was identified in 1981, HIV/AIDS has devastated African American communities. Members of those communities mobilized to fight the epidemic and its consequences from the beginning of the AIDS activist movement. Dan Royles' (Assistant Professor of History, Florida International University) book offers the first history of African American AIDS activism introducing a diverse constellation of activists, including medical professionals, Black gay intellectuals, church pastors, Nation of Islam leaders, recovering drug users, and Black feminists who pursued a wide array of grassroots approaches to slow the epidemic's spread and address its impacts.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Dec 1
4:00 pm
Free
4:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | Grant's Tomb: The Epic Death of Ulysses S. Grant and the Making of an American Pantheon (online)
Author Louis L. Picone on the General's final years and the fascinating story of the creation of Grant's Tomb.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Dec 1
6:30 pm
Free
6:30 pm
Free
Poetry Reading | Towering Mind: Poetry (in-person and online)
Nine poets read from their work. See link for COVID protocols.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Dec 1
6:30 pm
Free
6:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | The Roman Republic of Letters: Scholarship, Philosophy, and Politics in the Age of Cicero and Caesar (in-person and online)
Katharina Volk explores a fascinating chapter of intellectual history, focusing on the literary senators of the mid-first century BCE who came to blows over the future of Rome even as they debated philosophy, history, political theory, linguistics, science, and religion. It was a period of intense cultural flourishing and extreme political unrest--and the agents of each were very often the same people. Members of the senatorial class, including Cicero, Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, Cato, Varro, and Nigidius Figulus, contributed greatly to the development of Roman scholarship and engaged in a lively and often polemical exchange with one another. These men were also crucially involved in the tumultuous events that brought about the collapse of the Republic, and they ended up on opposite sides in the civil war between Caesar and Pompey in the early 40s. Volk treats the intellectual and political activities of these "senator scholars" as two sides of the same coin, exploring how scholarship and statesmanship mutually informed one another.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Dec 2
6:15 pm
Free
6:15 pm
Free
Poetry Reading | The FSG Poetry Anthology: Past and Present Verse (online)
President of FSG Jonathan Galassi and poetry editor-at-large Robyn Creswell have a discussion about their new book. The event will feature readings from poets Maureen McLane, Ishion Hutchinson and Carl Phillips. To honor FSG's 75th anniversary, here is a unique anthology celebrating the riches and variety of its poetry list--past, present, and future.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Dec 2
7:00 pm
Free
7:00 pm
Free
Reading | Soul Sister Revue Reading (online)
Soul Sister Revue asks the question “What does Soul mean to you?” Readers include Willie Perdomo (Smoking Lovely: The Remix), Tina Chang (Hybrida), Kai Coggin (Mining for Stardust), Aurielle Marie (Gumbo Ya Ya) and Ananda Lima (Mother/land)
New York City, NY; NYC
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Fri, Dec 3
7:00 pm
Free
7:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | Clayton: Godfather of Lower East Side Documentary, A Graphic Novel
For the first time ever, legendary photographer and videographer Clayton Patterson—who Anthony Bourdain described as the “archivist of all things Lower East Side”—is the subject of a biographical graphic novel anthology. Like no other, Clayton has documented the often-overlooked people and cultural contributions of New York’s Lower East Side—sometimes finding himself in perilous situations as a result. Clayton Patterson will discuss the graphic novel with author Julian Voloj. There will also be opportunity for book signing.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Sat, Dec 4
3:30 pm
Free
3:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century (online)
In Fiona Hill's book, a celebrated foreign policy expert and key impeachment witness, reveals how declining opportunity has set America on the grim path of modern Russia—and draws on her personal journey out of poverty, as well as her unique perspectives as an historian and policy maker, to show how we can return hope to our forgotten places.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Dec 6
12:00 pm
Free
12:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | The Case for Rage: Why Anger Is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle (online)
In her new book, philosopher Myisha Cherry turns popular prejudices about anger on their head and argues for anger’s utility—and importance—in the fight against injustice. Anger has a bad reputation. As a “negative emotion”, it’s seen by many as counterproductive, distracting, and destructive, and coming from people of color, the signs of anger can take on even more sinister connotations, stirring up stereotypes, hatred, or violence in turn. But Cherry argues that in fact the transformative and liberatory power of anger—what she terms “Lordean rage”—is crucial to the anti-racist struggle and challenging the status quo.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Dec 6
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | Beasts of a Little Land: A Novel of Korean Independence (online)
An epic story of love, war, and redemption set against the backdrop of the Korean independence movement, the novel follows the intertwined fates of a young girl sold to a courtesan school and the penniless son of a hunter. From the perfumed chambers of a courtesan school in Pyongyang to the glamorous cafes of a modernizing Seoul and the boreal forests of Manchuria, where battles rage, Juhea Kim’s unforgettable characters forge their own destinies as they wager their nation’s. Immersive and elegant, the book unveils a world where friends become enemies, enemies become saviors, heroes are persecuted, and beasts take many shapes.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Dec 7
6:00 pm
Free
6:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | The Architectural Models of Theodore Conrad: Innovative Work (online)
In her new book, historian and curator Teresa Fankhänel offers an alternative history of American modern architecture, highlighting the often-overlooked influence of architectural models and their makers. Fankhänel focuses on the work of Theodore Conrad (1910-1994), the most prominent and prolific American architectural model-maker of the 20th century, whose innovative work was instrumental in the design and realization of many icons of American Modernism, from the Rockefeller Center to Lever House and the Seagram Building. Conrad revolutionized the production of architectural models and became an entrepreneur. Fankhänel's research is based on the recent discovery of his fully-preserved private archive-models, photos, letters, business files, and drawings.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Dec 7
6:00 pm
Free
6:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | The New York Subway Map Debate: The Untold Story of a Legendary Moment in Design History (online)
This is a roundtable conversation about the new book from Gary Hustwit which documents a pivotal event in design history: the 1978 debate at The Cooper Union between designer Massimo Vignelli and cartographer John Tauranac over the future of the NYC Subway Map. An audio recording of the event from the upcoming digital Cooper Union archive Voices from the Great Hall has shed light on this legendary confrontation. For over two hours, to the cheers and boos of a raucous audience of designers, transit officials and disgruntled subway riders, Vignelli, Tauranac, and a panel of eight other experts argued. It was abstraction versus realism, simplicity versus complexity. The new book offers a hyper-specific window into the event, encompassing the worlds of graphic design, wayfinding, transit, data visualization and the eternal battle between form and content.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Dec 7
6:30 pm
Free
6:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | Jane Jacobs’s First City: Learning from Scranton, Pennsylvania (online)
In her classic book, The Life and Death of American Cities, Jacobs wrote, “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”. Through historic newspapers, directories, records and interviews with contemporary Scranton residents, author Glenna Lang reconstructs the origins of one of New York City’s most ardent advocates through her first city; Scranton, Pennsylvania. Growing up in the 1920s and 1930s, Scranton was a place of diversity and inclusivity, public education was celebrated and those with opposing politics worked together for the public good. For Jacobs, an astute observer, the experience was indelible as a foundation on which all cities should and could thrive.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Dec 7
7:00 pm
Free
7:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | Pilot Impostor: Con Men, Identity Politics, and More (online)
On a flight from Cape Verde to Lisbon in early 2017, Bronx-born, Brooklyn-based artist and writer James Hannaham had ideas about unfitness for service and failures of leadership heavy on his mind. Hannaham takes up the complex, contradictory mantle of the Portuguese experimentalist, correlating his work in prose and images to the history of air disasters to investigate con men, identity politics, failures of leadership, the privilege of ineptitude, the slave trade, and the nature of consciousness.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Dec 7
7:00 pm
Free
7:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | Sophie Halaby in Jerusalem: An Artist’s Life (online)
This talk will focus on the life and art of the little-known Jerusalem artist Sophie Halaby. The discussion will consider how researching Sophie Halaby helped Professor Laura Schor reframe her understanding of Jerusalem. The talk will also include details of the many adventures Schor underwent while working on the book, and will include slides of some of Halaby's wonderful art.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Dec 8
1:00 pm
Free
1:00 pm
Free
Book Signing | Artist Signs Copies of Her Book Hello Future
Dividing her time between Brooklyn and Dubai, artist Farah Al Qasimi’s is a bright and rising multidisciplinary work that examines postcolonial structures of power, gender and aesthetic in the Persian Gulf states and global cultural confluence and migration at-large. The book is a culmination of Al Qasimi’s photographic, performance and film practice, unified within her keen focus on surface and texture, and the revealing visual influences of the splashy and florid.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Dec 8
4:00 pm
Free
4:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel (online)
As German Chancellor Angela Merkel steps down as head of state, a new biography details the unlikely rise and political brilliance of the most powerful woman in the world. Acclaimed biographer Kati Marton tells the intimate story of an outsider—a chemist and pastor’s daughter raised in East Germany—who ascended to become the unofficial leader of the West.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Dec 8
6:00 pm
Free
6:00 pm
Free
Poetry Reading | Towering Mind: Poetry (in-person and online)
Five poets read from their work. See link for COVID protocols.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Dec 8
6:30 pm
Free
6:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | Coco at the Ritz: A Novel About the Godmother of Modern Fashion (online)
Acclaimed biographer and novelist Gioia Diliberto delves into an underexamined and politically charged moment in the life of the eternally enigmatic godmother of modern fashion, Coco Chanel, who was arrested on charges of treason to France in the wake of her wartime romance with a Nazi spy. Homing in on Chanel’s life at the Ritz Hotel in Paris in the aftermath of World War II, and the unknown details of her interrogation at the hands of the French authorities, the novel tells the story of one woman’s choices amidst the highest of stakes.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Dec 8
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Poetry Reading | Air Raid: Describing What Cannot Be Told (online)
A discussion with poet and scholar Polina Barskova about her new volume. The Siege of Leningrad began in 1941 and lasted 872 days, resulting in the most destructive blockade in history. Already shaken by Stalin’s purges of the ’30s, Leningrad withstood the siege at a great human cost. Air Raid takes us through the archives of memory and literature in this city of death. Polina Barskova’s polyphonic poems stretch the boundaries of poetic form—this is what we’re left with after poetry’s failure to save nations and people: post-death, post-Holocaust, post-Siege, post-revolution; post-marriage and post-literature. How does language react to such a catastrophe? How does a poet find language for what cannot be told? This new translation of a leading contemporary Russian poet confronts English excavating its muteness, stutter, and curse.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Dec 9
6:00 pm
Free
6:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | The Everybody Ensemble: Wildly Inventive Essays (online)
Amy Leach’s new book is filled with praise songs, poetry, ingenious critique, soul-lifting philosophy, music theory, and whimsical but scientific trips into nature, Leach sets off an irrepressible celebration of our oddball, interconnected world.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Dec 9
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | You Never Get It Back: Stories of New England (online)
Cara Blue Adams’s debut short story collection explores the life of a young woman from New England and her search for identity, complicated by distance, class, and ambition.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Dec 13
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust (online)
Writer, mother, storyteller, and multimedia producer Chloe Dulce Louvouezo share a stunning collection of essays and photographs featuring the voices of prominent Black women reflecting on self-love, healing, overcoming trials, and finding connection. A companion and culmination to Louvouezo’s podcast of the same name, the book and podcast center personal stories that offer universal insights into topics relevant to modern women’s lives, from identity and family to trauma and motherhood, told through the lens of Black women. Louvouezo is joined by contributors Eniafebiafe Isis Adewale, Nneka Julia, and Julee Wilson for a virtual celebration of their individual journeys and their shared triumph of a book.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Dec 14
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb (online)
Author Togzhan Kassenova's new book tells the untold true story of how the obscure country of Kazakhstan said no to the most powerful weapons in human history. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the marginalized Central Asian republic suddenly found itself with the world’s fourth largest nuclear arsenal on its territory. Would it give up these fire-ready weapons—or try to become a Central Asian North Korea? This book takes us inside Kazakhstan’s extraordinary and little-known nuclear history from the Soviet period to the present. For Soviet officials, Kazakhstan’s steppe was not an ecological marvel or beloved homeland, but an empty patch of dirt ideal for nuclear testing. Two-headed lambs were just the beginning of the resulting public health disaster for Kazakhstan—compounded, when the Soviet Union collapsed, by the daunting burden of becoming an overnight nuclear power.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Dec 15
12:00 pm
Free
12:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | Scientist: E. O. Wilson: A Life in Nature (online)
Few biologists in the long history of that science have been as productive, as groundbreaking, and as controversial as the Alabama-born Edward Osborne Wilson. At 91 years of age, he may be the most eminent American scientist in any field. Fascinated from an early age by the natural world in general and ants in particular, his field work on them and on all social insects has vastly expanded our knowledge of their many species and fascinating ways of being. This work led to his 1975 book Sociobiology, which created an intellectual firestorm from his contention that all animal behavior, including that of humans, is governed by the laws of evolution and genetics. Subsequently, Wilson has become a leading voice on the crucial importance to all life of biodiversity and has worked tirelessly to synthesize the fields of science and the humanities in a fruitful way. Author Richard Rhodes is himself a towering figure in the field of science writing, and he has had complete and unfettered access to Wilson, his associates, and his papers in writing this book. The result is one of the most accomplished and anticipated and urgently needed scientific biographies in years.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Dec 15
6:00 pm
Free
6:00 pm
Free
Poetry Reading | Poetry, Spoken-Word, Music and Art
Wwith Haleh Liza Gafori and Fatima Rahmati and the launch of a new graphic novel by Syd Fini -- Saah. Additional music performance by Shahzad Ismaily and Haleh Liza Gafori.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Dec 15
7:00 pm
Free
7:00 pm
Free
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