Two former U.S. poets laureate and a Pulitzer Prize finalist are on the schedule at Brooklyn Public Library's Central Library at Grand Army Plaza this week, the anchor of a busy stretch for Prospect Heights from October 19 to 26. Both talks are part of the library's BPL Presents series in the Dweck Center, and both require advance registration through the library's event pages, which list no ticket price.

Here is what is happening at 10 Grand Army Plaza this week, and what to see while you are there.

Thursday, October 22: Ed Park and Sloane Crosley

Novelist Ed Park discusses Three Tenses: A Transmission From the Nineties, a memoir with an unusual backstory. Park wrote it in 1998, printed it out and then lost track of it for more than two decades, until he found the only surviving copy in a manila folder inside an unmarked box at his family's home in New York City. The book collects anecdotes, observations and fragments written in the small apartment he lived in during his twenties.

Park is the author of the novel Same Bed Different Dreams, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, along with the novel Personal Days and the story collection An Oral History of Atlantis. He is a founding editor of The Believer and teaches at Princeton University. He will be in conversation with Sloane Crosley, author of Grief Is for People, How Did You Get This Number and I Was Told There'd Be Cake.

  • When: Thursday, October 22, 7 to 8:30 pm
  • Where: Dweck Center, Central Library
  • How to attend: register on the event page; each registrant may add up to two guests

Monday, October 26: Joy Harjo and Tracy K. Smith

Joy Harjo, a writer and performer of the Muscogee Nation who served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States, discusses her new poetry collection, Cloud Runner. The book centers on the death of her daughter and on how grief connects across individual and public loss. Harjo received the Poetry Society of America's 2024 Frost Medal, the 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry and a National Humanities Medal.

She will be joined by Tracy K. Smith, who served as the 22nd Poet Laureate from 2017 to 2019 and won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for her collection Life on Mars. Smith's next poetry collection, The Forest, is due from Graywolf Press in March 2027.

  • When: Monday, October 26, 7 to 8:30 pm
  • Where: Dweck Center, Central Library
  • How to attend: register on the event page; each registrant may add up to two guests

All week: Christopher Myers: Unbound

Artist and children's book author Christopher Myers has new work installed across the library's facade, Grand Lobby, Youth Wing and second-floor balcony through January 15, 2027. The show includes two 40-foot tapestries built from characters and settings in frequently banned books, among them George Orwell's Animal Farm and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. It also includes stained-glass sculptures drawn from Myers' picture book Night Ride (Penguin Random House, September 2026), which follows a group of New York City kids biking across Brooklyn and the other boroughs at night.

The exhibition is on view during library hours. Myers was born in New York City in 1974.

For teens: the new Teen Center

Families with high schoolers may want to stop on the second floor. On September 10, the library opened a new Teen Center in the Eastern Parkway wing, designed by Toshiko Mori Architect. At 4,700 square feet, the library says it is the largest dedicated teen space in any of its 62 branches. It holds the young adult collection, a gaming area, listening and recording pods, and the Robin K. and Jay L. Lewis Teen Tech Center, a classroom and makerspace. The space is for teens only, and talking is allowed. A new art, music and sports collection with reading nooks, study booths and an art studio opened on the same floor at the same time.

Getting there and hours

Central Library is at 10 Grand Army Plaza in Prospect Heights. The library lists the 2, 3, B and Q subway lines and the B41, B45, B67 and B69 buses as the nearest transit. The building is fully accessible.

Library hours are 9 am to 8 pm Monday through Thursday, 9 am to 6 pm Friday and Saturday, and 1 to 5 pm Sunday. To attend either evening talk, register on the library's event pages before the date; each registration can include up to two additional guests.

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