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9 upcoming events in Boston
Join us for an author talk and signing with Peggy Levitt, Wellesley College professor and renowned sociologist. In her new book, Move Over, Mona Lisa , Peggy asks: If the public is loudly calling for a wider range of art, literature, and ideas in our museums, libraries, and classrooms, why are our cultural and educational institutions so slow in making the change? Her answer is what she calls the "inequality pipeline," the layers of obstacles that keep art and ideas from circulating freely across the globe. Drawing on conversations with artists, writers, and cultural professionals in Argentina, Lebanon, and South Korea, Peggy shows that many of them have stopped waiting for old gatekeepers to change and are instead building new, alternative hubs and pathways that let art and ideas travel from cities like "Buenos Aires to Mexico City without having to pass through Madrid." Peggy takes us from the studios and desks where art and ideas are first created, through the museums and institutions that circulate and exhibit them, to the classrooms where they're researched and taught. Along the way, she reveals how cities, museums, and libraries influence more about both what creatives do and what the public learns than we might generally assume. The result is a hopeful, sharply observed new theory of how global cultural and intellectual change really happens. Peggy Levitt is the Mildred Lane Kemper Chair of Sociology at Wellesley College. She is also a co-founder of the Global ( Listed from Boston Public Library's public calendar. Details and registration: https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/6a8f3f2a29a7dd0d6746dd89
Join our Chinese book discussion in October 2026 . Choose your preferred book in either English or Chinese. This event lets you join us online via Zoom. Register now and get the Zoom link closer to the event date! 欢迎来参加我们2026年十月的读书讨论会。你可以选择自己喜欢的英语版或者中文译版书籍. 您可以通过Zoom在线参加这个活动。请注册。Zoom链接会在活动发给你。 All events are accessible to people with disabilities. To request disability accommodation and/or language services, please contact chinatown@bpl.org. Please allow at least two weeks to arrange accommodation. Programming at the Boston Public Library is funded through private support. To learn more about supporting the Library, please visit the Boston Public Library Fund's website: https://bplfund.org/ Listed from Boston Public Library's public calendar. Details and registration: https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/6ad621c0de300e00451b5f06
Join us in person or online over Zoom Webinar to hear author Nicholas Boggs speak about his recent bestselling biography of James Baldwin, Baldwin: A Love Story , in celebration of LGBTQ+ History Month! Joining Nicolas in Conversation is author and professor, Jesse McCarthy . After the hour-long talk, Nicholas Boggs will sign copies of Baldwin during a signing facilitated by our local, independent bookseller, Trident Booksellers. Nicholas Boggs is the author of the New York Times bestselling biography, Baldwin: A Love Story (FSG, 2025), winner of the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, the Stonewall/Israel Fishman Nonfiction Award, and the Randy Shilts Nonfiction Award. It was named a Top Ten Book of 2025 by Time Magazine and The Atlantic , and a New York Times Notable Book of the year. In addition, it was recognized with an Audie Award for Best Audiobook in History/Biography. Also the co-editor of Baldwin's collaboration with French artist Yoran Cazac, Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood (2018), Boggs' research and writing have been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, the Gilder Lehrman Center and Beinecke Library at Yale, the Scholars-in-Residence Program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Leon Levy Center for Biography, as well as a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant. He was educated at Yale (BA), Listed from Boston Public Library's public calendar. Details and registration: https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/6a3c61b6c52cdc3600ecaceb
Author and educator James Kimmel, Jr. discusses his 2025 nonfiction book, The Science of Revenge: Understanding the World's Deadliest Addiction—and How to Overcome It , as part of the City-Wide Friends of the Boston Public Library's Talks for Better Living series. There is a hidden addiction plaguing humanity right now: revenge. Researchers have identified retaliation in response to real and imagined grievances as the root cause of most forms of human aggression and violence. From vicious tweets to road rage, murder-suicide, and armed insurrection, perpetrators almost always see themselves as victims seeking justice. Chillingly, recent behavioral and neuroimaging studies of the human brain show that harboring a personal grievance triggers revenge desires and activates the neural pleasure and reward circuitry of addiction. Although this behavior is ancient and seems inevitable, by understanding retaliation and violence as an addictive brain-biological process, we can control deadly revenge cravings and save lives. In The Science of Revenge: Understanding the World's Deadliest Addiction—and How to Overcome It , Dr. Kimmel uncovers the truth behind why we want to hurt the people who hurt us, what happens when it gets out of hand, and how to stop it. He shines an unsparing light on humanity’s pathological obsession with revenge throughout history; America’s growing addiction to revenge as a special brand of justice; his own struggle with revenge addiction that almost led to a m Listed from Boston Public Library's public calendar. Details and registration: https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/6ad7ca2f11bbf300684cb786
Join author Linford Fisher in a discussion of his book, Stealing America, where he shows that although the first enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown in 1619, European slavery in America began more than a century before. The enslavement of Indigenous people began in the years just after 1492, ensnaring an estimated three to six million Natives throughout the Americas. Although largely erased from the public consciousness, Native enslavement continued for centuries to become a colossal phenomenon that affected nearly 600,000 Native Americans in North America alone, revealing the shocking truth that American colonizers enslaved Natives in roughly the same numbers as they imported enslaved Africans. From Virginia to California, from New England to Barbados, Stealing America traces the history of Indigenous enslavement and land dispossession, detailing how colonizers captured Natives and often deliberately mislabeled them as Black slaves to avoid detection. While the American Revolution pealed the bells of freedom for colonists, it paved a larcenous trail of westward expansion that subsequently plundered Indigenous land and stole the labor of Natives from nations like the Cherokee, Navajo, Nisean, and many others. “This double theft,” Fisher writes, “was central to the origins, growth, and eventual success of the English colonies and the United States—not just initially but throughout all of American history.” Fisher will weave together accounts of major episodes in Ameri Listed from Boston Public Library's public calendar. Details and registration: https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/6a5e8c9ef213992f00c5b6a6
The Fall 2026 Author Talk Series, presented by the Friends of the South End Library, will continue with Laura Zigman sharing about her latest novel, The Author Weekend . Please join us on Wednesday, November 11 starting at 6:30 pm at Union Church (Connection Room, 485 Columbus Ave.) for a fun and lively conversation in this author talk series! About The Author Weekend: Everything needs to be just right for bestselling mystery writer Faye Wader's first ever fan weekend. Her sales might be slipping––only a little!––but her readers still love her enough to pony up for three days and two nights on Great Misery Island. The retreat is precisely planned, from the small batch artisanal donuts to the perimenopausal Mermaid Meditation, by Faye and her beleaguered assistant Jade––an aspiring author who can't seem to finish her own novel. Faye's long-time agent and editor will be there, as well as Faye's number one fan, Peggy Mercer, who has been first in line at every one of Faye's events. When news comes that the weekend will be crashed by glamorous, charismatic, rival novelist Abby Schuss, Faye thinks things can't get worse ... until one of the attendees is found dead in her room, setting off an unexpectedly murderous chain of events that make pre-pub anxiety seem like a day at the beach. How far is Faye willing to go to get exactly what she wants from her author weekend? The Author Weekend is a thrilling and hilarious dive into the dark heart of envy, and a glorious exploration Listed from Boston Public Library's public calendar. Details and registration: https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/6aaac10e86d845003116902a
Join visualization historian Lauren Klein and designer Tanvi Sharma for a conversation about their new book Data by Design: Visualization and Power from Abolition to the Dawn of Data Science . The book returns to the history of data visualization to expose the power of charts and maps—and to show how they can be used for social change. Lauren and Tanvi will be in conversation with Arvind Satyanarayan , a professor of data visualization at MIT. Lauren Klein is Professor of Data & Decision Sciences and English at Emory University , where she also directs the Digital Humanities Lab and the Atlanta Interdisciplinary AI Network . Her research brings together computational and critical methods to explore questions of gender, race, and justice, both in early America and today. Klein is the author (with Catherine D’Ignazio) of the award-winning Data Feminism (MIT Press, 2020), and the editor (with Matthew K. Gold) of Debates in the Digital Humanities (Univ. of Minnesota Press), among other publications. Tanvi Sharma is a design technologist working at the intersection of data, aesthetics, and the humanities. She is currently an Art Director at Apple and co-author of Data by Design (MIT Press, 2026). She has previously worked at Pentagram, Public Policy Lab, and Spotify. She lives in Harlem, NY, with her two cats, Yuchi and Bubbles. More at tanvi.network . Arvind Satyanarayan is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at MIT EECS, and leads the Visualization Group at th Listed from Boston Public Library's public calendar. Details and registration: https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/6ab2828eda318a10e635d936
Join Boston College Professor Emeritus Paul Lewis in a discussion of his new book on Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem. In 1845, over 5,300 poems were published in American magazines. Most immediately began their deserved descent into oblivion. Poe's "Raven" stands as the most conspicuous exception to this. But why? What factors influenced the attention devoted to "The Raven" from the day when it was first published? Why was it widely reprinted, praised, criticized, and mocked during the next weeks and months? Why did it inspire parodies that replaced Poe's "saintly bird of yore" with a veritable menagerie of other animals—including an owl, gazelle, turkey, pig, dog, cats, rats, and (eek!) bedbugs? And how did Poe's reputation—as a literary brawler and harsh book reviewer and as a man who struggled with money and alcohol—play into the reception of "The Raven"? Signed copies of Paul Lewis' Quothing "The Raven" The First Responses to America's Most Famous Poem will be available at this book-launch event. Paul Lewis is a Professor Emeritus at Boston College, a past president of the Poe Studies Association, and the curator of exhibitions on literary Boston. As the Board of Directors chair of the Edgar Allan Poe Foundation of Boston, Inc., Lewis worked with others to celebrate Poe in the city of his birth by having a square at the intersection of Boylston Street and Charles Street South dedicated to Poe in 2010 and then installing a statue of Poe in it in 2014. Accessibility Not Listed from Boston Public Library's public calendar. Details and registration: https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/6a8f3fed29a7dd0d6746ddcb
The Fall 2026 Author Talk Series, presented by the Friends of the South End Library, will wrap up with Jason Allison sharing his debut novel, The Killing Yards . Please join us on Wednesday, December 9 starting at 6:30 pm at Union Church (Connection Room, 485 Columbus Ave.) for a fun and lively conversation in this author talk series! About The Killing Yards In 1993 New York, reformed drug-trafficker Jimmy Lettner runs Abattoir, Manhattan’s hottest nightspot. All he wants is a clean business, but a city rife with corruption makes that impossible. Unbeknownst to Jimmy, his right-hand man is running an ecstasy ring inside the club, drawing heat from ruthless rivals and the NYPD. Rookie cop Ben Hopkins goes undercover to make a name for himself, only to get swallowed whole by the gritty scene. As the body count rises and the mayor closes in, Jimmy must embrace his dark past to protect his surviving daughter and save his empire. About Jason Allison: Bronx-born and raised, Jason Allison spent twenty years with the NYPD, mostly as a homicide detective. His debut novel, The Killing Yards , will be published by Crooked Lane Books in the fall of 2026. His award-winning fiction has been featured in Fighting Words: Bruisers, Brawlers, and Bad Intentions, Rock and a Hard Place, and New England’s Best Crime Stories. Accessibility Notice : We strive to make our events accessible. To request a disability accommodation and/or language services, contact the department listed in t Listed from Boston Public Library's public calendar. Details and registration: https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/6aa9a8c9a5dbde002aa4cafc
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