Central Park West is predictably serene for a Thursday evening, with the main spectacle coming from the gowned and tuxedoed guests ascending the stairs of the American Museum of Natural History. They’re a stylish bunch, but the predominant air is a cerebral one, and for a good reason. Inside, the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda begins to fill with writers, patrons, and celebrities for the 16th annual PEN America Literary Gala, with an after party co-hosted by Dream Baby Press.

PEN America is a 104-year-old non-profit dedicated to celebrating creative expression and championing the freedom to write, read, and speak, both in the U.S. and globally. They also offer an array of prizes and grants to support projects across an array of genres. Their Literary Gala honors outstanding people and organizations who have taken risks to protect these rights. The 2026 awardees include bestselling and prize-winning author and Nashville bookseller Ann Patchett, Oscar-nominated film producer Jason Blum, the Rutherford County Library Alliance for their defense against book bans, and Iranian writers Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee and Ali Asadollahi currently incarcerated for their work. 

As a partner for this year’s Gala afterparty, PEN has brought on New York City-based independent book publisher Dream Baby Press, a cult favorite in the downtown literary world known for their eclectic and provocative events. PEN’s collaboration with Dream Baby, whose mission is to make reading and writing more fun, exciting, and accessible, seems both mutually beneficial and novel for the two organizations: PEN reaches a younger, edgier set of writers who may be unfamiliar with PEN’s work, and Dream Baby Press solidifies its presence in the legacy literary sphere. Plus, a party in the museum is right on brand for Dream Baby, who have hosted readings all over the city in iconic locations, including Tannen’s Magic Shop, the old Sbarro in Penn Station, and Peter Pan Donuts. 

There’s a slight but distinct undercurrent of intrigue surrounding the after party during cocktail hour chatter. A couple people in the crowd are Dream Baby regulars (myself included), some have never heard of it, but the majority are mostly curious about the press and its founder, Matt Starr. Before the event even starts, PEN’s Senior Manager of Literary Programs Sabrina Adams tells me that the after party has historically been a pretty big deal. “There was an after party a few years ago that people still talk about. I was on the dance floor with writers, awardees, everyone.”

The seated dinner and award presentations are held beneath the museum’s breathtaking blue whale, which casts an added grandeur over the evening. B.J. Novak kicks things off as the grinning Master of Ceremonies, slinging jokes about A.I. panic, calling Ann Patchett a “smoke show” (she is), and declaring “literary glamor” a vital asset for inspiration rather than a superficial fringe benefit. “Kids need to have something to look up to. It might as well be this,” he argues. Across the room, Candace Bushnell glides by; talk about literary glamor. 

As is custom, each table is anchored by one of the evening’s literary hosts, who this year are a mix of bestselling literary and genre fiction authors, political correspondents, Pulitzer-winning investigative journalists, and actors and playwrights. There’s a collective excitement about spotting Rachel Reid, author of the novel Heated Rivalry which was then adapted into a TV series (maybe you’ve heard of it). Actor and singer-songwriter Maya Hawke presents her godfather Jason Blum with the Business Visionary Award, thanking him for coping with her “horror” teenage self. Ann Patchett accepts the PEN/Audible Literary Service Award with a speech so ethereal it knocks the wind out of the room. “If you think these are the darkest times, take a walk around this museum. The darkness and the light cycle though every day,” she reminds us.

The after party is held back in the rotunda under the dinosaurs, which tonight glow pink and orange from below. When we head upstairs, the energy is decidedly friskier, with more than half of the dinner attendees swiftly swapped out for under-thirty-fives in rakish interpretations of the “loosened black tie” dress code. I spot at least three digicam photoshoots happening simultaneously in front of the towering Barosaurus. Unlike earlier, few of the guests work directly in the publishing industry; instead, my headcount includes a professional magician, a documentary filmmaker, a sound designer, and an educator at the Met museum. I ask artist Hannah Hightman what brings her to the event, and she replies that she saw Dream Baby’s announcement and thought, “I want to party in a museum!”

The driving force behind the after party concept is really the members of the PEN Young Patrons board, who discovered and reached out to Dream Baby Press initially via cold Instagram DM. Marissa Heringer, the Young Patron whose idea it was to bring on Dream Baby, tells me that the collaboration felt easy because of how aligned their missions are. She explains, “What sold me about Matt was that he’s the real deal. When we got on a Zoom, he was like, ‘What we’re doing, it’s not ironic. We don’t do things ironically. We’re doing it because it’s an experience.’”

And it’s true that PEN and Dream Baby Press have parallel missions of expanding community and access for young writers, even if on paper the organizations look quite different—Starr admits that one of his goals in founding Dream Baby was to “create the thing I wish I had when I was a lot younger, so I could have been inspired at an earlier age.” Another Young Patron, Olivia Leong Sulkowicz, says that she thinks the pairing works because generally speaking, “writers are weirdos. We’re all just oddballs coming together.” On the dance floor, an older lady who had also been at the dinner pulls me in to shimmy with her. When I ask if she’s enjoying the party, she says she’s glad they’re having one. “I think it allows for a connection that you don’t get just by sitting and listening,” she adds.

Around ten-thirty, Starr's microphoned voice comes echoing through the hall for a guerilla reading of five erotic poems from his collection Mouthful (2024), which he delivers standing on a chair in the middle of the red carpet. The first poem suitably reads, “the best place to get fingered / in the Museum of Natural History / is under the large stairwell / right when you enter the room / with the big blue whale / next to / the northern elephant seal display / next to / a bathroom / that's rarely used” (I believe I used this very bathroom tonight). At first, he’s met with a smattering of whoops and tittering, which give way to full-blown cackles as he ends on a high note with the poem “Slushy.” It’s a little unconventional for the occasion, but that’s what Dream Baby Press is all about—plus, as Starr points out, any attempts at censorship this evening could be considered a touch hypocritical.

When Starr and I debrief the event the following day, however, any trace of the previous night’s bravado has been replaced by pure amazement at what has just transpired. “I was just like, let's let it fucking rip,” he says of reading his poetry to the to the crowd amongst the fossils. “I was looking out at everybody, thinking, how lucky am I that I get to do this? And I don't take any of it for granted. It just makes me want to go even harder.”