Brooklyn Law School Hosts Events for Brooklyn Book Festival’s 20th Anniversary

09/16/2025

Brooklyn Law School is once again serving as a host venue for the Brooklyn Book Festival, New York City’s largest free literary festival, now celebrating its 20th year of bringing readers together with a dynamic mix of local, national and international authors and publishers all in downtown Brooklyn. The Law School has proudly hosted festival events for the past 14 years, welcoming thousands of visitors to its campus.  

The festival runs throughout the week with Bookend Events, leading up to the main day on Sunday, Sept. 21. Visitors are invited to join a wide range of conversations taking place on the Law School’s 250 Joralemon St. campus, including panels on democracy, technology, neuroscience, art, and politics.  

One highlight is earlier in the week is a Wednesday, Sept. 17 Bookend event moderated by Herman Badillo ’54 Professor of Law Jocelyn Simonson. She will lead a discussion of No Cop City, No Cop World: Lessons from the Movement, a collection of essays published in May 2025 by Haymarket Books. The conversation with panelists will focus on the movements for environmental justice, police abolition, and Indigenous sovereignty that were forged in Atlanta around a decentralized effort to stop the construction of a $120 million police training facility. Panelists include the book’s co-editors Kamau Franklin, Micah Herskind and Mariah Parker and a contributor, Priscilla Grim. (Details here.) 

There are 14 events scheduled to be held at 250 Joralemon St. on the main festival day, Sunday, Sept. 21. A few notable sessions include:  

  • At 11 a.m. in the Moot Court Room, the sturdiness of our democratic order or lack thereof will be discussed in a panel titled, “Warning, This is Not a Test,” featuring authors Clay Risen (Red Scare), Anne Applebaum (Autocracy, Inc.), and Elie Mystal (Bad Law), and moderated by New York Times op-ed columnist Michelle Goldberg.  
  • At 1 p.m., in the Moot Court Room, a panel titled “The Brain, the Mind, the Mystery,” will focus on the mysteries of the brain and features authors Pria Anand (The Mind Electric: Stories of the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains), Susannah Cahalan (The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary), and Olga Khazan (Me, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change). Andy Abrahams, freelance writer and editor moderates the panel. 
  • At 2 p.m. in the Moot Court Room, a panel titled, “Big Tech’s Big Heist – Cory Doctorow in Conversation with Adam Becker” discusses the so-called “gospel of technological salvation,” including what’s real and what’s hype. It features authors Cory Doctorow (Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It) Adam Becker (More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade To Control the Fate of Humanity) and is moderated by NPR’s TED Radio Hour Manoush Zomorodi. 
  • At 3 p.m. in the Student Lounge, “When Art Meets Politics” panelists discuss the impossibility of separating our personal narratives from the political contexts in which we exist. It features authors Frederick Joseph (This Thing of Ours), Libba Bray (Under the Same Stars), and Julia & Brad Riew (The Last Tiger), and is moderated by Kimm Topping (Generation Queer: Stories of Youth Organizers, Artists, and Educators). 

All events are free and open to the public. Join us on campus to celebrate 20 years of the Brooklyn Book Festival and discover some of today’s most compelling authors and ideas. The full list of events and details on the Brooklyn Book Festival can be found here.