Library Talks

The musician, performer, and host of "RuPaul's Drag Race" sashays onto our stage to celebrate the recent release of his seventh studio album, "Realness." In a wildly entertaining and thought-provoking conversation, the cultural icon talks to NYPL’s Paul Holdengräber about success, performance, all things drag and beyond.

Sasha Velour is an iconic queen. Turns out she’s also a historian! In this episode of Library Talks, Velour sits down with drag historian Joe E. Jeffreys to discuss her new book, The Big Reveal: An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag, a treasure trove of revelations about radical queer expressions throughout time.

The revered entertainer and winner of RuPaul's Drag Race weaves together gender theory, politics, and memoir to tell the story of drag. Velour redefines drag for a new generation while uncovering the history of queer life that made it all possible.

Josephine Quinn sits down with award-winning poet Ken Chen to discuss her book How the World Made the West. Quinn's book poses a bold challenge to “civilizational thinking” on the origins of Western culture—that is, the idea that civilizations arose separately and distinctly from one another. Rather, she locates the roots of the modern West in everything from the law codes of Babylon, Assyrian irrigation, and the Phoenician art of sail to Indian literature, Arabic scholarship, and the metalworking riders of the Steppe.

Author Richard Powers discusses his latest novel, Playground, which intertwines tales of technology, race, friendships, and the environment.

In this episode of Library Talks, C Pam Zhang sits down with Padma Lakshmi to discuss her latest novel Land of Milk and Honey, which tells the story of climate disaster and a young chef discovering pleasure at the end of the world.

Zhang is the winner of the Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award and the Asian/Pacific Award for Literature, a Booker Prize nominee, and a finalist for numerous other prizes, including the the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Zhang’s writing appears in Best American Short Stories, The Cut, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree and a New York Public Library Cullman Fellow.

Padma Lakshmi is an Emmy-nominated producer, television host, food expert, and a New York Times best-selling author and one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People (2023).