Community Calendar

The next Science on Tap is Wednesday, January 28, 2026 @ 7:00 pm.

Admission is free and all ages are welcome. Come early to get a bite to eat. The talk will start promptly at 7:00pm.

Speaker: Daniel Peterson

Title: Fake News on Social Media: Exploring Age Effects

https://sustainablesaratoga.org/event/science-on-tap-9/

THAT TIME OF YEAR, a quarterly-ish reading series at Spotty Dog Books

Saturday, January 31, 2026 at 7pm. FREE!

Featuring writers Davey Davis, Lauren Cook, Miriam Atkin, Stacy Szymaszek
at Spotty Dog Books, 440 Warren St, in Hudson, NY

THAT TIME OF YEAR is a quarterly-ish reading series featuring writers sharing work around a theme. January’s theme is “Shift.”

Davey Davis is the author of Casanova 20: Or, Hot World, X, and the earthquake room. They live in Brooklyn.

Lauren Cook is a naturalist and the author of I Love Shopping (Glo Worm Press, 2019;
Nightboat Books, 2025) and Sex Goblin (Nightboat Books, 2024). He is from upstate New York.

Miriam Atkin is a Catskills-based poet. She has written three chapbooks, most recently, Inclination Drawing (Beautiful Days Press, 2024). She is cofounder of Pinsapo, an international publishing collective, and Verbatim Text Sound Expo, an annual small press and record label fair in the mountains. Her podcast, Specific Objects: Talks on Art in the Catskills, airs quarterly on WGXC 90.7.

Stacy Szymaszek is the author of Journal of Ugly Sites and Other Journals (Fence Books), winner of the Ottoline Prize and a Lambda Literary Award finalist, The Pasolini Book (Golias Books), and Essay (Krupskaya Books, 2025). Starving Is the Energy (Antiphony) and About the House (Rescue Press) are forthcoming in 2026. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Anthrozoology with a focus on farmed animal welfare.

Organized and Hosted by Andrea Kleine
Visit us on Instagram at @thattimeofyearseries

The late 19th century was an era of intense change. To escape the whirlwinds of newly booming cities, many would take vacations into the bucolic Catskill Mountains to stay at grand hotels. Learn how these vacationers would get to their destinations, what clothes they would pack, and what activities awaited them. We will also explore attitudes toward vacation at the time, and the context of the era. Come take this fascinating journey into the Catskills of the past with Museum Educator Emma Foster.

Margaret Rhee is an award-winning poet who explores the subjects of robots, race, sexuality and the human body. Her debut collection, Love, Robot (2017), an experimental text about romantic relationships between humans and technology, was awarded the 2019 Best Book Award in Poetry by the Asian American Studies Association, the Elgin Award by the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and named the 2017 Best Book of Poetry by Entropy magazine.

4:30 p.m. Thursday, February 5
University at Albany
Multi-Purpose Room
Campus Center West Addition
1400 Washington Avenue
Albany NY 12222
Free and open to the public.
Books will be available for sale.
A signing will follow the conversation.

Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen said, “In a paradoxical and wonderful way, Margaret Rhee's robot love affairs make us rethink what it might mean to be human.”

Chair of Arts Writing at The New School in New York City, she is currently completing two books with Duke University Press: Machine Dreams: Race, Robots, and the Asian American Body, and Poetry Machines — essays on poetry and technology.

Do you ever wonder if there were actual pirates on the Hudson River? Come and learn about a wild chapter in Hudson River history when mercenary sloops prowled the waterway, raiding mansions and plundering merchant ships. Who were these river outlaws stirring up chaos…and how did local communities and the law fight back?

The evening will begin with a brief lecture on the real and sometimes legendary criminal activity along the Hudson in the 1860s and 1870s, followed by an immersive performance starring the era’s most infamous characters in the flesh, including the mysterious young woman rumored to have led a notorious Lower Manhattan gang. Watch as she is put on trial for her alleged crimes. Is she guilty? How does her story end? Who decides her fate?

This special event weaves scholarship and storytelling, created and presented by HRMM’s Education Department in collaboration with Siren Theatre Company.

The critically acclaimed Drunk Black History show celebrates 100 years of Black History Month in Brooklyn!

Comedian Brandon Collins (New York Comedy Festival) hosts this event where you’ll hear from comedians, writers, and experts who are skunked out of their mind trying to recap the biography of a historical Black figure or event that hasn’t gotten the mainstream love they deserved. It's The Daily Show meets Drunk History with a live audience.

This upcoming show will include appearances from improv group UCBLK (New York Comedy Festival), Akilah Hughes (Crooked Media), Meka Mo (Don't Tell Comedy), Nikole Hannah-Jones (The 1619 Project), and more!

Friday, February 13th
The Bell House
149 7th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215

Doors open at 6:30pm
Show at 7:30pm

Advance tickets are available at https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/300063874C79BE67

★★★★ “One of our favorite comedy shows out there” —TimeOut NY
★★★★ “Drink some cocktails while you get an education... at this popular show!” —The Infatuation
★★★★ “Keeping our food and drinks down was hard because of all the laughing...” —1202 Magazine
★★★★ “A hilariously high history lesson!” —AMNY

Actually, it's not so secret! Animals communicate through a variety of sights, sounds and smells with all their neighbors. Aside from that, they leave unintentional signs of their presence everywhere you turn. Dan is a level 3 certified tracker who has spent over three decades learning to understand much of this hidden language. Come see what the tracker sees when walking through the woods. You'll be surprised how many "secrets" you can learn and take home with you on a simple 3 hour walk. And it's lots of fun too! Tracking is a slow moving activity. We will be stopping frequently to question and talk about what we are seeing. Dress in layers for a typical, 3 hour casual walk then add 2 layers. Hand and feet warmers are excellent to take the sting off of cold toes and finger tips.

Registration is required; event is capped at 15 people. Suggested donation for non-members $15 and $5 for members.

David Guterson’s 1994 novel Snow Falling on Cedars has sold nearly four million copies and was adapted into a 1999 film.

He makes his Writers Institute debut for a conversation about his new novel, Evelyn in Transit, the story of a free-spirited woman who hitchhikes across the American West taking odd jobs. Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Harding (Tinkers) called it, “an inspired portrait that is both cosmic and sacred.”

7:30 p.m. Thursday, February 19
Conversation / Q&A
Page Hall, UAlbany Downtown Campus
135 Western Avenue
Albany NY 12203

Free and open to the public.
Books will be available for sale.
A signing will follow the conversation.

https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org/davidguterson

Conversation with Jane Pek, whose novel, The Rivals, imagines AI’s dystopian impact on the world of online dating, and one of The Washington Post’s “10 Best Mystery Novels of 2024.”

The book’s protagonist, Claudia Lin — mystery novel superfan and, until recently, underemployed English major — has scored her dream job: co-running Veracity, a dating detective agency for chronically online New Yorkers who want to know if their prospective partners are telling the truth.

Unfortunately, along the way, she and her colleagues—tech savant Squirrel, and the elegant and intimidating Becks—have uncovered a far-reaching AI conspiracy. Pek’s first book in the new Claudia Lin series was The Verifiers (2022), also a Washington Post “Best Mystery” of the year.

4:30 p.m. Thursday, February 26
Conversation / Q&A
Campus Center Room 375
University at Albany
1400 Washington Avenue
Albany NY 12222

Free and open to the public.
Books will be available for sale.
A signing will follow the conversation.

More: https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org/janepek

Friday, March 6, 7pm, the fashion designer, actor, and judge on Project Runway: All Stars, Isaac Mizrahi, comes Spruce Peak Arts!
Isaac Mizrahi has worked extensively in the entertainment industry as an actor, host, writer, designer and producer for over 30 years.
Tickets price range: $57.97 to $85.25 and are available on sprucepeakarts.org