New York Public Library - Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

Acclaimed musical artist and author Rita Indiana joins us to discuss her supernatural noir novel Asmodeus, newly translated by Achy Obejas. She will be in conversation with fellow writer and artist Gerardo Sámano Córdova, and also perform "Rimas de Asmodeo" from the book with special musical guest, Yasser Tejeda. ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS Rita Indiana is a Dominican-born writer, composer, and Global Distinguished Professor at New York University. She has written six novels including Tentacle, winner of the Grand Prize of the Association of Caribbean Writers. Her work has been translated into multiple languages. She is also a driving force in experimental Caribbean popular music. Her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, Granta, El País, and VICE. She lives in New York City. Gerardo Sámano Córdova is a writer and artist from Mexico City living in Brooklyn. He is the author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed novel, Monstrilio, and the forthcoming novel Imps! He is currently Writer in Residence at Fordham University. Gerardo has also been known to draw little creatures. With Special Musical Guest Yasser Tejeda, award-winning Dominican composer, guitarist, vocalist, actor, and producer, His debut album, Mesclanza, was dubbed one of the 100 essential recordings of Dominican music by the Dominican National Association of Art Writers (Acroarte). Since then, Yasser's music has captivated audiences globally.

Curious about publishing? Get the tools and insights you need to share your work with the world. Are you interested in publishing a book but don't know where to start? Looking for an agent but not sure how to write a query letter? Trying to self-publish your novel? Wanting to make connections with other writers? What You’ll See on the Live Stream: Keynote Presentations: Inspiring talks and high-level industry insights from featured publishing professionals. Expert Panel Discussions: Deep-dive conversations with authors, editors, and literary agents on querying, traditional vs. self-publishing, build-your-author-brand strategies, and navigating today’s literary landscape. Please note: This live stream covers main stage keynotes and panel discussions only. On-site breakout sessions, interactive workshops, and networking rooms are exclusive to in-person attendees at the Bronx Library Center.

A bodega is much more than a neighborhood grocery store—it's a lifeline to community and culture. In Amaris Castillo's brilliant debut book, Bodega Stories, she takes readers inside Orlando Latin Market, a bodega owned and operated by her parents in St. Petersburg, Florida, to reveal a thriving local hub that bridges generations, languages, and traditions. Meet the regulars: Castillo's glamorous Tía Margarita, who has worked part-time at the bodega for years; longtime cook Alberto, who arrives early to prepare the store's rice, beans, empanadas, and croquetas; Chico, the owner of the barbershop next door; and Esther, who visits after church every Sunday for her crispy chicharrones. Through captivating and charming true stories of visitors who come looking for products from Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Venezuela, Cuba, and many other countries, readers get a glimpse into the lives of employees and customers as they navigate matters of immigration, love, history, food, and identity. Interwoven are snapshots of daily life, like a bulletin board outside the store where local residents post apartments for rent, messages through the bodega's Facebook page asking for hard-to-find items, and photos from the past and present. Including Castillo's own family's story from the Dominican Republic to New York to Florida, Bodega Stories is a portrait of finding home—between the cultures we inherit and the ones we embrace.

Join The New York Public Library and Limelight Poetry at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (SNFL) for a World Poetry Salon event! Experience words and music from around the globe at the World Poetry Salon, a new series presented in partnership with Limelight Poetry, a local nonprofit dedicated to promoting world poetry. Each event features readings by a celebrated poet set to live music by a musician of the same cultural background. This salon will feature a reading by poet Forrest Gander accompanied by dancers Zelda and Georgia B. Smith. A printout will be available for attendees to follow along with Gander's poetry during the reading. Following the reading, Gander will be interviewed by event host Patricio Ferrari. Patricio Ferrari (polyglot poet, translator, editor) was born in Buenos Aires and left home at sixteen, when he began a lifelong journey across continents and languages. He has since shaped a multilingual poetics that explores belonging, displacement, and the in-between. In 2025, he was awarded the Fence Modern Poets Series Prize for Mud Songs, the first volume of Elsehere, a trilogy charting how each language molds and reveals a different facet of the self—what he calls heterophony, the process of self- othering through an adopted tongue. The author of twenty books of his own and as many books of translations, Forrest Gander was born in the Mojave Desert. He has degrees in geology and literature. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Best Translated Book Award, Gander has been a signal voice for environmental poetics. His latest books are Mojave Ghost and the translation, Even Time Bleeds: Selected Poems of Jeannette L. Clariond. A novel, The Weight of a Frozen Moment and a selected poems, Dune Lines, are forthcoming in April 2027. Georgia b. Smith is an interdisciplinary artist with a background in dance and architectural fabrication. She was a former member of the dance company Leimay, premiering "Borders" at Brooklyn Academy of Music. Georgia b.'s “Polite Structures,” a performance in which dancers are augmented with custom prosthetics, has been staged in Berlin, Prague, and Amsterdam. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan. Since then her work has been exhibited by the Flint Institute of Arts in Michigan, Gallery 495 in NYC, Under the Roof in London, Kentucky School of Art and Design, and the University of Tokyo in Japan among other places. In 2024 Georgia b. developed a collaborative body of kinetic light -works with designer Brecht Wright Gander exhibited at Design Miami. Georgia b. and Zelda Smith’s collaborative work won “Best in Show” at Artificial Horizons, a robotic-art show in Detroit. Georgia b Smith was a Visiting Artist at Lehigh University as well as SUNY Oneonta in 2025. There she began to develop her latest collaboration with Zelda Smith, Uncanny Bodies. Georgia b Smith was on the short list for the Creative Capital grant this past cycle. Raised in the rural northeast, Zelda Smith comes from long sweeping stretches of rich black farmland and bare uncovered earth. A place tied to the notion of turnover and cycles of resilience stemming from and yielding back into the soil. Perhaps it is not entirely unexpected, then, that the earth has come to be one of the signature materials of her work. She received my BFA in 2012 from Alfred University and my MFA in 2018 from the University of Colorado Boulder, where she concentrated in temporal sculpture. In the in-between, she spent three years at the Cal-Earth Institute, training to make sustainable housing and earth architecture. Most recently, she has been a visiting artist at Lehigh University with her collaborator, Georgia b Smith. Together, they co-taught and developed a soft robotics course: Introduction to Wearable Soft Robotics. They were both Artist is Residence at SUNY Oneonta and were on the creative capital short list.

Join us for a night of art, music, and inspiration, with curator of The Met's Musical Bodies exhibit, E. Bradley Strauchen-Scherer, in conversation with cultural critic Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim. Together, we will learn how music is intrinsic to the human experience, and share in our collective drive towards harmony. ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS Dr. Bradley Strauchen-Scherer is Curator in the Department of Musical Instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she led the recent renovation and reinterpretation of the five permanent music galleries. Her exhibition work, publications, and teaching explore the intersections between music, instruments, art, and society. Additional research interests include historical performance practice, history of collecting, and nineteenth-century concert life. Before moving to New York, Bradley was Deputy Keeper of Musical Instruments at the Horniman Museum in London and lecturer in history of performance practice at Goldsmith’s College, University of London. She received her PhD from the University of Oxford and is an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim is a cultural critic and audience whisperer dedicated to the art of listening. Her articles on music, books and poetry have appeared in publications including the Atlantic, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. In 2019 she founded Beginner’s Ear, a listening program exploring the intersection of mindfulness and sound. Over the following five years, she presented her unique brand of meditation concerts in spaces ranging from Lincoln Center to a nature preserve and a federal prison. In print and in person, she is passionate about demystifying art and unlocking the wisdom and beauty of music.