New York's first citywide book club is wrapping up next Monday with a free night at Central Park's Delacorte Theater, where author N.K. Jemisin will read from and discuss her novel “The City We Became” alongside commissioned performances inspired by the book. The evening begins at 8pm on August 17 at the newly renovated home of Shakespeare in the Park, and admission is free to the public, though attendees will need to secure a ticket first.
The New York Public Library launched its inaugural Big Summer Book Club this year, inviting New Yorkers to spend the summer reading “The City We Became” before the finale, according to Time Out. NYPL selected Jemisin's 2020 fantasy novel, which depicts New York City's five boroughs embodied as human avatars defending the city from an otherworldly threat, for the citywide read. The library made the book widely accessible by offering all NYPL cardholders unlimited, wait-free e-book and audiobook downloads via the Libby app through Labor Day, according to the New York Public Library.
At the Delacorte, Jemisin will converse with WNYC host Alison Stewart as part of the finale, per the same Time Out account. Stewart has partnered with NYPL since May 2020 on “Get Lit with All Of It,” a monthly live-streamed and in-person book club whose top selections have drawn as many as 7,000 library checkouts a month. The finale itself will fold in readings alongside the commissioned performances tied to the novel.
Five Ways to Snag a Free Ticket
Getting into the free event takes some planning, since demand for the limited seating is expected to be high. TodayTix will keep a digital lottery open until noon on August 17, while the Public Theater will hold its own in-person ticket lottery at noon that day, per the same report. Public Theater members can also reserve seats in advance with a donation, with options starting at $75 and going up to $150.
Tickets will additionally be distributed outside the Delacorte in Central Park starting at noon on August 17, and two library branches will hand out vouchers on the same schedule: Clason's Point Library in the Bronx and the St. George Library Center on Staten Island. Depending on availability, the Delacorte may begin distributing remaining standby tickets as early as 6pm that evening, the outlet reported.
A Book Club That Reached Beyond the Central Branch
The Big Summer Book Club stretched well past digital downloads and the Delacorte finale. NYPL branches hosted local programming tied to the book throughout the summer, including flash-memoir workshops at Muhlenberg Library and creative writing sessions with Jemisin herself at the Bronx Library Center, according to the library.
Jemisin's literary credentials are considerable. She became the first writer to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel in three consecutive years, from 2016 to 2018, for her “Broken Earth” trilogy, and “The City We Became” went on to win the BSFA Award for Best Novel and the Audie Award for Fantasy, per Hachette Book Group. Though the novel was originally conceived as the first installment of a trilogy, Jemisin pivoted to conclude the story as a duology with her 2022 novel “The World We Make” after real-world political developments and the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped her perspective, according to Bookreporter.
The author's work has also become part of a bigger fight over artificial intelligence and copyright. In May, five major book publishers filed a federal class-action lawsuit in Manhattan against Meta alleging mass copyright infringement, specifically citing Jemisin's fantasy novels among the works allegedly used without permission to train Llama AI models, as Hoodline previously reported.
A Symbolic Return to a Newly Rebuilt Stage
Hosting the finale at the Delacorte carries some resonance beyond convenience. The 1,800-seat theater reopened in August 2025 following an $85 million, 18-month overhaul designed by Ennead Architects that doubled its ADA-accessible seating and modernized its stage technology, according to 6sqft. The renovated facade was built using reclaimed redwood harvested from decommissioned water towers across all five NYC boroughs, a detail that echoes the five-borough structure of Jemisin's novel, as Time Out noted in its coverage of the reopening.
Free public admission to the finale also lines up with a much older tradition at the venue. The Delacorte originally opened on June 18, 1962, following a civic battle between Public Theater founder Joseph Papp and NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses over whether outdoor theater in Central Park should remain completely free to the public, according to WNYC. Since then, the Public Theater's free Shakespeare in the Park series at the Delacorte has drawn more than five million audience members across over 150 productions, per Wikipedia. Hoodline covered the theater's reopening last August when the venue debuted its renovated stage with a production of “Twelfth Night.”
