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Pat Parker/Vito Russo Library Re-Launch Event
October 13 @ 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Come celebrate the long-awaited re-opening of the Pat Parker/Vito Russo Library at The Center with a panel discussion, light refreshments, and some hidden gems from the library’s collection!
Panel discussion at 3pm with Emily Drabinski (immediate past-president of the American Library Association), Hal Schrieve (NYPL librarian, author, and activist), and Dr. Gabrielle Williams (New School Professor and author), and moderated by Mev Luna (PPVR Library steering committee member and Assistant Professor, Parsons School of Design).
The library, located on the 4th floor, room 410, will be open from 12-6 to explore and sign up to be a library member or volunteer!
About the Pat Parker/Vito Russo Library
Housed within the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Community Center of Manhattan (The Center), the Pat Parker/Vito Russo Library is the only LGBTQ+ dedicated, free, circulating library in New York. The PPVR Library is committed to acquiring, maintaining, and making accessible a collection of literary, artistic, and intellectual works by, for, and about LGBTQ+ people. The Library promotes research, exploration, and discovery.
Visit gaycenter.org/library to learn more, or to become involved email ppvrlib@gaycenter.org.
Library Steering Committee: Victor Collymore-Bey, Micah Farman, Mev Luna, James McNutt, and Liza Minno with support from UC Santa Cruz Transformative Futures Intern: Tere Sanchez de Tagle
Panelist Bios
Emily Drabinski is Associate Professor at the Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. She publishes and presents widely on topics related to knowledge organization, information literacy, and critical perspectives in librarianship. Drabinski edits Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies, a book series from Library Juice Press/Litwin Books. She is a contributing writer at Truthout. She is immediate past-president of the American Library Association.
Hal Schrieve is a children's librarian working in Manhattan who has written educator guides about LGBT picture books and middle grade novels. Hal also writes queer young adult novels, including Out of Salem (2019) and How To Get Over the End of the World (2024). Hal's website is halschrieve.com.
Dr. Gabrielle Williams is an Assistant Professor of Literature at Eugene Lang College (ELC), a Leadership Council Member for the Andrew W. Mellon Initiative for Faculty Excellence, a Provostial Faculty Fellow at The New School. She teaches undergraduate courses in African American, African Diaspora, and “classic” literatures with a focus on aesthetics, critical race theories, disability studies, food studies, discourses of blackness, poetics, performance studies, queer studies, and rhetoric.
Moderator Bio
Mev Luna is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art Practice and Theory at Parsons, The New School. They are a research-based artist whose practice spans performance, film, new media, and text. Through an autoethnographic/anti-ethnographic methodology, their work considers issues of institutional access, incarceration, and how images of marginalized groups are circulated and controlled.
Accessibility: To enter the building, the main door has two steps leading to the center of the lobby. Ramp access to the right of the main door provides entrance to the lobby near the cafe, Coffee Project. The panel discussion is located on the first floor and the library is located on the 4th floor. The fourth floor is accessible via the elevator behind the reception desk or Stairwell B next to the elevator. Additional accessibility information located here.
