New Orleans’ home for the country’s best author talks and speaking events.
Baldwin & Co. is a bookstore, coffee shop, and gathering place in New Orleans where writers, readers and people from all over the world come to hear ideas out loud.
Upcoming Events
Event inquiries →-
Nov10
Blair LM Kelley
Author TalkAn evening on Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class, Kelley’s history of Black workers and their families — the laundresses, Pullman porters, and domestic and factory workers whose labor built communities and powered movements for dignity and civil rights. Expect a talk that weaves her own family’s story through a century of work, struggle, and organizing, followed by audience Q&A and a book signing.
About the speakerBlair LM Kelley is a historian and the Joel R. Williamson Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she directs the Center for the Study of the American South. She is also the author of Right to Ride, on streetcar resistance in the Jim Crow South.
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Nov12
Craig Young
Author TalkCraig Young presents Growing Up Young: One Family’s Faith Journey to the NFL — the story of raising a young athlete without losing the family in the process. Drawing on his own family’s road to the NFL, Young takes up performance pressure, setbacks, recruiting, and keeping faith, character, and your relationship with your child ahead of the scoreboard. The evening is presented with Black Sports Moms and their “A Father’s POV: On Raising a Champion” series — expect a candid conversation, audience Q&A, and a book signing.
About the speakerCraig Young is a marriage and family therapist with more than 25 years in mental health and family systems, and a coach, consultant, and speaker on healthy relationships and resilience. He is also the father of Carolina Panthers quarterback Bryce Young, the 2021 Heisman Trophy winner, who wrote the book’s foreword. Growing Up Young, published by Game Changer Publishing, became an Amazon bestseller after its release.
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Nov14
Children’s Storytime — “You Can Be a Good Friend”
Children & FamilyOur second-Saturday storytime reads “You Can Be a Good Friend” — a picture book about kindness, sharing, listening, and looking out for one another. Little readers will hear the story read aloud, talk together about what makes a good friend, and join in simple activities built around the book. Best for young children and their grown-ups; no registration needed.
Who leads itStorytime is led by the Baldwin & Co. team as part of the Baldwin & Co. Foundation’s children’s literacy work. The twice-monthly tradition draws about 25 kids each session and is designed to build early reading comprehension and a love of books.
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Nov19
Karl Kani
Author TalkKarl Kani presents his memoir Karl Kani: A Life by Design (Simon & Schuster, publishing Nov 17, 2026) — the story of how a young designer working between Brooklyn and Los Angeles made clothes for a generation the market had yet to see, and built one of the defining brands of hip-hop’s golden era. In the tradition of Shoe Dog and Dapper Dan’s Made in Harlem, the memoir traces the setbacks, negotiations, and near losses behind the brand, and the fight to keep ownership of his own name. Expect a conversation on design, ownership, and creative independence, audience Q&A, and a signing.
About the speakerKarl Kani, born Carl Williams, is the founder and CEO of the Karl Kani brand and is widely known as the godfather of urban streetwear — a designer and hip-hop cultural icon whose clothes were worn by everyone from Michael Jackson and Tupac Shakur to Aaliyah, The Notorious B.I.G., Nas, and Jay-Z.
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Nov19
Cinema & Page
CommunityA film, a conversation, and a bookstore in the room. Cinema & Page screens something worth arguing about, then opens it up for discussion, with books that sit alongside the film on sale in the room to take home. The night is part of New Orleans Black Education History Week (Nov 15–20, 2026), the first year of a citywide commemoration adopted by the Orleans Parish School Board. $15 suggested.
Who leads itCinema & Page is presented with Baldwin & Co. New Orleans Black Education History Week is brought to you by BE NOLA (Black Education for New Orleans), with significant support from the Institute of Mental Hygiene. The film selection and featured guests will be announced by the organizers.
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Nov28
Book Club — Every Story Is a Love Story by Imbolo Mbue
Book ClubThis month the club reads Imbolo Mbue’s Every Story Is a Love Story — a novel of love in its many forms, and of the people whose lives are remade by longing, ambition, and devotion. Come ready to talk characters, choices, and the love story underneath every story. New members are welcome; reading the book ahead is encouraged but not required.
About the authorImbolo Mbue is the New York Times bestselling author of Behold the Dreamers, an Oprah’s Book Club pick and winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and of How Beautiful We Were. The discussion is led by the Baldwin & Co. book club.
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Dec3
Donna Hill — History, Romance, and Resistance
Author TalkDonna Hill presents her new novel Nola and Baldwin (Amistad, publishing Nov 10, 2026) — a sweeping historical romance inspired by Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. After her father’s tragic death and her mother’s descent into mental illness, Nola Denny sets out to find her own voice, and on the road to New York meets Baldwin Carter, a proud, hardworking Pullman porter with a painful past of his own. Set at the end of the Great Depression, their love story crisscrosses a country divided by racism and hardship — a story of love as a way of enduring history, not escaping it. Expect a talk, audience Q&A, and a book signing.
About the speakerDonna Hill began her career in 1987 and has more than 100 published titles to her credit since her first novel in 1990; she is considered one of the early pioneers of the African American romance genre, and three of her novels have been adapted for television. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, is an Assistant Professor of Professional Writing at Medgar Evers College, and has received the RT Career Achievement Award, the Trailblazer Award, the Zora Neale Hurston Literary Award, and the Gold Pen Award. Her novels Confessions in B-Flat and I Am Ayah: The Way Home both received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly.
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Dec8
Bookstore Owner Panel
CommunityIndependent bookstore owners take the stage together for an inside conversation on the business of books — choosing what to stock, building a loyal community, hosting events, and keeping an independent store thriving. A candid, practical evening for readers, booksellers, and anyone dreaming of a store of their own, with audience Q&A.
About the panelA panel of independent bookstore owners, hosted by Baldwin & Co. Panelists and moderator to be announced here.
No events in this category in the current listing — see All for everything coming up.
Coming Soon
The Black Papers
by Dr. David Johns · Publishes Nov 13, 2026
The Black Papers: A Policy Agenda for Black Liberation in the 21st Century — the most comprehensive Black policy agenda produced in a generation. Born of the State of the People movement, its 26 rigorously researched briefs bring together more than 100 scholars, policymakers, and organizers with concrete federal, state, and local recommendations across economic justice, education, health equity, criminal justice, and more.
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Staff Pick
Giovanni’s Room
by James Baldwin · Vintage · $16.00 · In stock
Set in 1950s Paris, Baldwin’s groundbreaking novel follows David, a young American waiting for his fiancée to return from Spain, who falls into a passionate affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender — a searing story of desire, shame, and self-acceptance that was decades ahead of its time.
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Staff Pick
Parable of the Sower
by Octavia E. Butler · Grand Central Publishing · $19.99 · In stock
Butler’s dystopian classic: in a 2020s California ravaged by climate change and inequality, Lauren Olamina — a minister’s daughter who feels others’ pain as her own — loses her walled community to fire and heads north, gathering followers around a new faith she calls Earthseed, built on one truth: God is Change.
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Staff Pick
The Great Refusal
by Casey Gerald · Little, Brown and Company · $28.00 hardcover · Orderable — arrives in 7–10 days
The Great Refusal: A New Vision of Resistance — from the author of There Will Be No Miracles Here, a blend of memoir and political commentary calling for a new way to resist and endure, drawing on Black writers and activists and on Gerald’s own choice to walk away from success and rethink what his life is for.
Buy NowPre-Order
Pre-order on our Bookshop.org page →
Spring 2027
Wells Without Water
by Cebo Campbell · Simon & Schuster · Publishes February 9, 2027
The author of Sky Full of Elephants returns with a literary horror novel: a disillusioned preacher’s son comes home to Loblolly Grove, where a caretaker’s murder and a rising supernatural force have his community teetering between rot and revolution.
Pre-Order Now
Spring 2027
Good, God
by Kiese Laymon · Scribner · Publishes April 6, 2027
A powerful, benedictive new memoir from the author of Heavy: on creating children, creating good friendship, creating good art, and creating good Gods while waiting to die in America.
Pre-Order Now
Spring 2027
Goliath
by Ronald Lee Robertson · Scribner · Publishes February 2, 2027
A multigenerational epic of the Great Migration era: at fourteen, David Jeremiah Lightfoot leaves Chicago to reclaim his father’s Mississippi farm, a cursed plot once known as Goliath, and confronts the giants, literal and figurative, tied to his family’s land and legacy.
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Spring 2027
Locals
by Jared Jackson · Viking · Publishes May 18, 2027
A debut collection of eight interlocking stories tracing young, working-class lives in Hartford, Connecticut: love, grief, survival, and what we owe each other as children, parents, lovers, and friends. Paul Beatty calls it “a triumph and a gift.”
Pre-Order NowAudiobooks
Our Libro.fm storefront →
No. 1 Bestseller
A Sunlit Weapon
by Jacqueline Winspear · Narrated by Orlagh Cassidy · $27.99
October 1942: a series of possible attacks on British pilots leads investigator Maisie Dobbs into a mystery involving First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt — the seventeenth Maisie Dobbs novel.
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No. 2 Bestseller
Dèy
by Edwidge Danticat · Narrated by Melinda Sewak · $24.00
A vivid, timely story moving from Haiti to Brooklyn to Miami: Magnolia, a Haitian American real estate agent in Miami, has her sense of self and family called into question when she is caught in a random act of violence one sunny Florida day. The title is the Haitian Kreyòl word for mourning.
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No. 3 Bestseller
Famous Men
by Julie Buntin · Narrated by Mara Wilson · $24.00
From the acclaimed author of Marlena, a novel about a young woman — Will Miles, trapped in Greening, Michigan — looking for a father and finding herself: a vivid, uncompromising exploration of sex, money, power, and art.
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No. 4 Bestseller
Japanese Gothic
by Kylie Lee Baker · Narrated by Natalie Naudus · $30.44
A lyrical, wildly inventive horror novel interwoven with Japanese mythology, following two people living centuries apart who discover a door between their worlds.
Buy NowShop Online
Can’t make it to Elysian Fields? The shelves are open online, too.
Our Online Storefront lets you browse and order books from Baldwin & Co. wherever you are. Order ahead and pick up in the store — pay in store is enabled for pickup orders.
How it works
- Browse & order — search the storefront and place your order online.
- Pick up in store — collect at 1030 Elysian Fields Ave and pay in store.
- Pre-order — reserve upcoming releases, including the Spring 2027 titles above, before publication day.
- Listen — audiobooks are on our Libro.fm storefront at libro.fm/baldwinandco.
Visit
Get directions →
Baldwin & Co. — Bookstore & Café
1030 Elysian Fields Ave, New Orleans, LA 70117Open daily · 7 AM–6 PM
Browse the shelves, stay for coffee, and settle in. Most author talks, storytimes, and book club meetings happen here.
NOLA Art Bar & Courtyard
2128 St. Claude Ave, New Orleans, LA 70117Cultural lounge · Private rentals
A cultural lounge for thoughtfully curated wines, cocktails, and mocktails, with an open-air courtyard — available for private events and hourly rentals.
About & Membership
A bookstore built for conversation — and for the people who keep showing up.
Baldwin & Co. brings nationally known authors and local voices to the same room, week after week. Membership keeps that room full: members gather for the monthly book club, families come back for children’s storytime every second Saturday, and every talk adds another voice to the conversation.
Ask in the store about joining the book club and membership — or write to us and we’ll walk you through it.
