BEM books & more

Home
United States
New York, NY
BEM books & more

BEM | books & more is a new literary destination at the intersection of food and Blackness

08/07/2026

If you’re looking for kitchen inspiration to round out the summer, join our event with beloved home cooking content creator and now-cookbook author Omi Hopper on Tuesday!

Omi’s talk with Michelle Disla celebrating Cooking con Omi is officially sold out, but book signing tickets are still available. Join us beginning at 8p on August 11 to meet Omi, have your copy signed, and celebrate the release of this beautiful new cookbook and love letter to Puerto Rican cuisine.

Can’t make it? Sign up for our mailing list to receive an exclusive Q&A with Omi, where she shares even more stories and inspiration from the making of Cooking con Omi. Nos vemos el martes 🌊

08/03/2026

On Saturday, join us for your favorite BEM café fare including patties from Bon Pâtés, squash and cheddar biscuits from Nicole Taylor’s Watermelon & Red Birds, and specials, PLUS botanical watercolors with Anonymous Rose from 2-4p and activities for all ages.

We’re open 11am-6pm and would love to see you before we pivot from in-person bookselling & café hours to programming in our space, online bookselling, rentals, catering, and more! We’re excited to continue serving as your home for Black food books in new ways, so stay tuned for more updates to come 📚

To support Black food & literary events in Bed-Stuy, join bemculturalfoundation as an inaugural member today. Link is in our bio and we’ll see you on Saturday!

07/30/2026

An update on what’s next for BEM at 373 Lewis ➡️

07/01/2026

BEM family, we’re taking a mid-summer break starting this Friday but will be back with books, bites, and programs on July 11! Since we’re closed this Friday:

🤱🏽 There will be no First Food Fridays this month

🥬 BSA will be back onsite July 17 and 31 with beautiful summer produce

In the meanwhile, support us by shopping on our site or on (for your audiobooks) and we’ll see you back at the shop on Saturday, July 11. That day, we’re delighted to host who’s joining us for one of her summer tour stops. Don’t miss it!

06/17/2026

Starting TOMORROW, we’re doing another fabulous Biscuit Box, this one inspired by Nicole A. Taylor’s Watermelon and Red Birds: A Cookbook for Juneteenth and Black Celebrations. In the book, includes a menu for a Shoebox Lunch, paying homage to the portable meals Black folks would bring with them on long road trips littered with racist restaurants who wouldn’t serve them during Jim Crow.

We’re remixing it and honoring our ancestors with a lovely summer lunch, crafted by on our team in collaboration with Nicole:

✴️ Yellow Squash and Cheddar Biscuits
✴️ Country Ham
✴️ Black Eyed Peas, Green Beans & Corn Salad
✴️ Chow Chow
✴️ Strawberry Hand Pie

There will be a vegetarian option available, just request it at the counter! Be sure to get a sorrel red drink to round out your Juneteenth meal too. This Biscuit Box will be in the shop this weekend & next — if you missed our Edna Lewis box, don’t sleep on this one!

We’re also delighted to be back at Weeksville for the Juneteenth Food Festival from 12-8pm. Nicole will join us from 2-3pm for a signing and meet & greet, so come ask all your summer cooking questions and learn about Juneteenth food traditions from the woman who literally wrote the book on them!

At the shop on Friday, we’ll welcome any final crawlers participating in the Juneteenth Bookstore Crawl and will be selling produce & groceries from growers in the region from 1-5pm. We can’t wait to celebrate with you all! See you this weekend 🍓

06/13/2026

You know when the only way to put yourself back together is to take to your kitchen and make something? In Cooking From Scratch: A Careful Selection of Useful Recipes, beloved New Orleans-based chef Toya Boudy shares recipes and remedies that remind us of the breadth of nourishment cooking from scratch can offer.

Heavily influenced by Malinda Russell’s A Domestic Cook Book, the first cookbook published by a Black woman in the U.S., Cooking From Scratch is split in two parts: one for foods and the other to “cure what ails you,” including recipes for homemade medicine, cleaning solutions, and general housekeeping guides that used to be standard fare in cookbooks.

Kalilah Moon, Executive Director of , will moderate this conversation about what inspired the book, how food can help us navigate life transitions, and more. And did we mention Toya’s bringing gumbo?!

Get your ticket today and we’ll see you on Tuesday 🥘

06/09/2026

An ice cream social at BEM! Join us this Sunday, June 14 at 3pm to celebrate Lokelani Alabanza’s new cookbook: Ice Cream Queen: Flavors From Black America’s Past, Present, and Future.

Lokelani, a trained pastry chef and founder of Nashville-based , will be at the shop to sign books (a few days before the book comes out!), answer your questions about making delicious frozen treats at home, and talk about the rich Black history of ice cream.

Thanks to .w.norton, we’re offering a free scoop of with each book purchase! Don’t miss this sweet and family-friendly event 🍦

Things to know:

- We highly encourage you to reserve your copy of the book in advance! RSVP link is in our bio
- The café and shop will be open for regular hours, 11am-6pm
- There will a non-dairy flavor from Sugar Hill Creamery
- Families up to 4 can enjoy complimentary scoops with the purchase of a copy of Ice Cream Queen

See you Sunday!

06/05/2026

We have more fabulous book launches for you this June plus another BISCUIT BOX coming soon — this time from Watermelon & Red Birds by for Juneteenth! Swipe through for:

🥂 6/9: Your Turn To Host by Amber Mayfield Hewett with a demo + cupcakes from

🍦 6/14: Ice Cream Queen by Lokelani Alabanza with complimentary ice cream treats from

🥘 6/16: Cooking From Scratch by Toya Boudy

🍹 6/23: Caribbean Cocktails by Nelson German with Andréa Lawson Gray

The link to purchase tickets is in our bio. Visit us June 12-19 for the , at for the beloved Juneteenth Food Festival on the 19th, and for BISCUIT BOXES and café fare June 18-28.

See yall soon!

05/23/2026

If you’re interested in land stewardship, if you garden, if you find yourself wanting to return to farming practices you’ve heard about in your family, if you’ve seen our new Edna Lewis Garden Bed and want to know more about growing food, this book is for you!

We’re delighted to host Michael Carter, an eleventh-generation farmer, advocate, and author on Sunday, May 31 to discuss his new book Africulture, which lifts up the essential contributions to U.S. agriculture that stem from the expertise and innovations of Black men and women. This book captures sankofa in process — stories of cooperative economics and Black land sovereignty that have been passed through generations of Michael’s family and other families who have stewarded land in Orange County, Virginia and across the country.

Fittingly, the book is modeled after the life cycle of a plant and takes you from seeds to fruit to understand how Black growers have defined the American landscape and food systems over centuries.

Join us for a conversation with Michael about the work and ideas that animate this indispensable new book! Tickets & more info are available at the link in our bio 🌱

05/21/2026

NEXT FRIDAY!

Calling all our nature walkers, grill masters, cookout hosts, campers, barbecue geniuses, and “touch grass” enthusiasts! We’re thrilled to welcome Rashad Frazier of .yoshi to BEM for a meet & greet and signing of his debut cookbook Cook Out, which invites us to all to revel in the joys of outdoor meal-making.

As a son of the Carolinas, a hospitality entrepreneur, and someone who’s created space for folks to engage with nature, Cook Out is at the center of Rashad’s expertise, complete with details on what to prep “at home” to make your “at camp” cooking even more delightful.

As he describes in the intro: “Eyes soaking up the surroundings. Noses picking up the smell of cooking over fire and desert air. Spork-tender lamb melting in our mouths. Ears pricked to the soundscape of the wilderness mingled with our own laughter. This might not look like any cookout you’ve ever been to, but we’re definitely cooking—food, yes, but also community, ritual, memories. And we’re definitely outside.”

On Friday, May 29, we’ll enjoy beverages from the book, the cafe will be open for snacks, and you can ask Rashad all your questions for beautiful meals out in nature. Published by our friends at , Cook Out will become a favorite no matter where you find yourself eating this summer.

Reserve your spot today! Tickets are at the link in our bio.

Address

New York, NY

Website

http://www.bembrooklyn.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when BEM books & more posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to BEM books & more:

Want your business to be the top-listed Shop in New York?