Events Calendar

We’re here to mend anything you need for the colder months, including clothing, coats, and any other fabric-related repairs, except for zippers. Sewers from the Sewing Machine Project will be available to mend your things for free every Thursday of the month.

READ and PLAY together!

Engaging with books, songs and child-led play all help children develop communication skills, patience, empathy, and pre-reading skills​ and helps to build a lifelong love of reading. After about 20-30 minutes of stories and songs, we'll end with a time for child-led play together in our children's area. You are welcome to stay as long as you like!

Library programs are always free. Siblings, friends and childcare groups are welcome.

READ and PLAY together with children ages 5 and under! Engaging with books, songs and playful experiences all help children develop communication skills, patience, empathy, and pre-reading skills. It also helps to build a lifelong love of reading. Library programs are always free. Siblings and childcare groups are welcome.

In partnership with the City of Madison and Madison Public Library, the African Center for Community Development provides in-person assistance* to help offset housing costs by assisting residents with applications for services, jobs, and other financial benefits.

We provide help for people navigating application processes and filling out forms required for housing, immigration, food, health, and other community support services. For questions about the program, please call African Center at (608) 957-5623 or (608) 294-0066.

*Neither The African Center for Community Development nor Madison Public Library can provide legal assistance or advice.  We are not able to fill out applications on your behalf, or assess program eligibility. 

Come play in the children's area while local musician, Rin, plays a variety of songs on her fiddle and mandolin. This is informal music, meant to be enjoyed while playing, drawing, or reading in the children's area! ​For families/all ages.

The Disappearance of Mrs. Wu

Directed by Anna Chi.  Performances by Lisa Lu, Michelle Krusiec, Rochelle Ying, Tiffany Wu, Joely Fisher.  Freestyle Releasing, 2021.  Unrated.  128 min.  Comedy / Drama.

To fulfill her Grandmother’s final wish, a teenager and her best friend break her out of her nursing home and take a wild road trip up the California coast during witch long-hidden family secrets are revealed.

Color Play: Making the world a little more rainbow

bernie & zuzu's residence term at Pinney Library Studio: February 2023 - October 2023

bernie & zuzu's in-Studio work time: Thursdays from 12-2 pm

bernie & zuzu's drop-in open Studio time: Thursdays from 2-4 pm at Pinney Library

bernie & zuzu wants you to come make the world a little more rainbow! Bernie invites the Madison community to explore color at weekly open studios and drop-in art making sessions that focus on color, shape, and mark-making in abstraction through the mediums of drawing, collage, block printing, stenciling, screen printing and painting. Throughout the residency, Bernie will invite the community to assist her with making the art studio into an installation and exhibition space that explodes with color: a rainbow room! Come play and be part of the fun!

bernie & zuzu is named for Bernie Witzack (she/her, a human) who is the creative force behind bernie & zuzu, and the extraordinary zuzu (a cat) who takes care of the business side of things. At bernie & zuzu, we create handmade, hand-painted, and screen-printed goods in small batches. We specialize in unique, one-of-a-kind art, home goods, accessories and prints with an emphasis on bright, bold color and playful shapes. bernie & zuzu is run out of a studio in the Madison Enterprise Center and we screen print at Polka Press, Madison’s local printmaking collective. We hope our artwork and goods inspire tiny moments of beauty, wonder and joy. 

Bernie studied Studio Art at Beloit College and has been making and exhibiting her art ever since. She earned an MFA in Fine Art & Design from the University of Michigan in 2013, focusing on improvisational drawing and painting. She then went on to study graphic design at Madison College, falling in love with screen printing along the way. She was working full time as a graphic designer and pursuing her art on the side when the pandemic hit in spring 2020. She left the design field in spring 2021 to focus on her art full time, launching bernie & zuzu in fall of 2021.

You can find bernie & zuzu’s goods at the Dane County Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings from April-October, at Little Luxuries, Hatch Art House, and Communication Madison. They also vend at local art markets such as The Eastside Winter Market, Femmestival, The Crafty Fair and the Madison Maker Markets. bernie & zuzu have an online shop at www.bernieandzuzu.com

Play Minecraft in both creative and survival worlds!

The Madison Writing Assistance (MWA) program offers free, one-to-one writing support for community members at library branches throughout the city. Our friendly, experienced writing coaches are happy to help with writing projects across a wide range of genres, including resumes, cover letters, application essays, grant proposals, fiction writing, memoirs, and more.

Schedule an appointment online with the link below, by phone, or in person.

MWA services are made possible through generous donations from the Evjue Foundation and UW Anonymous Fund, along with administrative and program support from the UW-Madison English Department, the UW-Madison Writing Center, and our Library and neighborhood center partners.

This workshop walks attendees through evaluating their self-esteem and how they currently see themselves. Identifying self-love and knowing how to see one's authentic self are keys to seeing strengths, weaknesses, self-value and your purpose in life and creating self-support.

About the presenter

Nikyra McCann has been a mental health advocate for 9 years. She is now the owner of Still Standing Enterprise. Nikyra serves as the Board Vice President for NAMI Dane County. She serves as the Chair of the Advocacy Committee for NAMI Dane County. It is her passion to let her advocacy work pave the way so that others may not endure her previous hardships. Nikyra values respect and empathy towards others. 

The Madison Writing Assistance (MWA) program offers free, one-to-one writing support for community members at library branches throughout the city. Our friendly, experienced writing coaches are happy to help with writing projects across a wide range of genres, including resumes, cover letters, application essays, grant proposals, fiction writing, memoirs, and more.

Schedule an appointment online with the link below, by phone, or in person.

MWA services are made possible through generous donations from the Evjue Foundation and UW Anonymous Fund, along with administrative and program support from the UW-Madison English Department, the UW-Madison Writing Center, and our Library and neighborhood center partners.

All are welcome to join Maria and create a space for wishing within the Bubbler Room. Each week, Maria will be in the Bubbler Room on Thursday evenings, hosting sessions to create enchanting art together. We will explore the magic that exists in the natural world, our community, and in ourselves. We will focus on combining words and images using printmaking, collage, and sculpture. We’ll delve into questions such as:

What are we wishing for (something we’ve never had or something we’ve lost or…)? 
What does it take for our wishes to come true?
Who or what grants them?
What kind of collective magic can we summon?
What offerings do we leave in return as we make our wish?
What rituals do we create around making wishes? 

All ages and abilities are welcome! Drop in, no registration required. 

When we wish, we wish for something just out of our reach of what seems possible. What would it take to bring it to make them come true?
Read more about her residency here: https://www.madisonbubbler.org/residencies/central

Gathers most Thursday evenings! Middle and high school students can meet other aspiring authors, bounce ideas off one another, share their stories, and feel the creativity flow! Writing club is led by local author Carole Madrzak.

The Madison Writing Assistance (MWA) program offers free, one-to-one writing support for community members at library branches throughout the city. Our friendly, experienced writing coaches are happy to help with writing projects across a wide range of genres, including resumes, cover letters, application essays, grant proposals, fiction writing, memoirs, and more.

Schedule an appointment online with the link below, by phone, or in person.

MWA services are made possible through generous donations from the Evjue Foundation and UW Anonymous Fund, along with administrative and program support from the UW-Madison English Department, the UW-Madison Writing Center, and our Library and neighborhood center partners.

Zero-sum games are played for lethal stakes in these arresting stories by one of America’s most acclaimed writers, the award-winning, best-selling author of Blonde.

A brilliant young philosophy student bent on seducing her famous philosopher-mentor finds herself outmaneuvered; diabolically clever high school girls wreak a particularly apt sort of vengeance on sexual predators in their community; a woman stalked by a would-be killer may be confiding in the wrong former lover; a young woman is morbidly obsessed by her unfamiliar new role as “mother.” In the collection’s longest story, a much-praised cutting-edge writer cruelly experiments with “drafts” of his own suicide.

In these powerfully wrought stories that hold a mirror up to our time, Joyce Carol Oates has created a world of erotic obsession, thwarted idealism, and ever-shifting identities. Provocative and stunning, Zero-Sum reinforces Oates’s standing as a literary treasure and an artist of the mysterious interior life.

Copies of Zero-Sum will be distributed for free to all attendees courtesy of a gift from the Cheryl Rosen Weston Estate.

Join us for an evening discussion of this year's Go Big Read title, How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion, by David McRaney.

Bridging emergent research in psychology and neuroscience with conversations among political activists, cult members, and conspiracy theorists, How Minds Change interrogates the mechanisms that determine personal and collective opinion and belief. David McRaney condenses dense scientific research into useful, ethical techniques for anyone interested in not just how we come to form beliefs, but why we come to identify ourselves with particular schools of thought. How Minds Change suggests that transformation is not just possible, but necessary as we strive towards meaningful connection in divisive times.

Books should be available for checkout at the library 4 weeks prior to the discussions.