In A Confederacy of Dumptys: Portraits of American Scoundrels in Verse, actor, author, and illustrator John Lithgow, with cutting humor, offers a rogues’ gallery of American villains, powerful men and women who were corrupt, venal, criminal, adulterous, racist, or just plain disgusting.
In A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance, poet, essayist, and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib examines how Black performance, from music to dance to schoolyard fistfights, is woven into the fabric of American culture. Moderated by Leonard Pitts Jr., Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of The Last Thing You Surrender: […]
In Dream Girl: A Novel, Laura Lippman shares the story of writer Gerry Andersen, injured in a freak fall and confined to a hospital bed in his high-rise apartment. Then late one night, the phone rings – and the caller claims to be the “real” Aubrey, the title character from Andersen's most successful novel, Dream […]
Drawing on both political observations and personal experience as a Black son of the South, New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow heralds a call to action in The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto by which Black people can finally achieve equality, on their own terms. Moderated by writer and podcaster Touré, author […]
Dawn Turner’s memoir Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood is about three Black women – Turner, her younger sister Kim, and her best friend, Debra – friends since childhood. In examining their fates, the author offers an exploration of race, opportunity, friendship, sisterhood, and the forces that allow […]
Somebody’s Daughter: A Memoir is Ashley C. Ford's powerful debut work, a story of growing up a poor Black girl in Indiana battling her body and her environment, within a family fragmented by incarceration. For Celestial and Roy, the couple at the center of Tayari Jones‘ An American Marriage: A Novel, the American dream in […]
Mindfulness doesn’t have to be an individualistic solution to our challenges. In Sit Down to Rise Up: How Radical Self-Care Can Change the World, Shelly Tygielski argues that mindfulness can also be a powerful tool for spurring profound social change by going inward. Moderated by Arianna Huffington, author and founder of The Huffington Post.
The Matter of Black Lives: Writing from The New Yorker is a collection of the venerated magazine's writing on race in America. Spanning a century, this anthology edited by Jelani Cobb and David Remnick brings together contributions by writers such as James Baldwin, Elizabeth Alexander, Hilton Als, Vinson Cunningham, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Malcolm […]
Merissa Nathan Gerson’s Forget Prayers, Bring Cake: A Single Woman’s Guide to Grieving is a relatable account of one woman’s reckoning with loss, and a guide to the world of self-recovery, self-love, and the skills necessary to meet one's own needs in times of pain – especially when that pain is suffered alone.
In Our Last Blue Moon: A Memoir, her first book, psychotherapist and former dancer and choreographer Kris O’Shee tells the story of the loss of her husband, Alan Cheuse, the novelist, teacher, and literary commentator known as the “voice of books” on NPR’s All Things Considered. Panelists include poet Robert Pinsky, fiction writer Ana Menéndez, […]
Polly, the protagonist of Sen. Elizabeth Warren and illustrator Charlene Chua’s Pinkie Promises, knows she’s strong and capable. But whenever she offers to help her uncle or brother or neighbor, they tell her: “That’s not what girls do.” Then Polly goes to a rally to meet a woman running for president, and they make a […]
Mina Simpson, the narrator of Rabih Alameddine’s The Wrong End of the Telescope: A Novel, is a transgender Lebanese doctor volunteering in the Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, Greece. As she deals with her own losses and displacement, Mina’s story offers a rare view into the many layers of the refugee crisis. Moderated by author […]