The Secrets of Being an Extraordinary Woman: Three Authors on Ambition, Adventure, and Equality
Who says women can’t have it all? Get inspired by a powerful trio from Finland, Iceland, and the United States whose new books radically redefine pathways to happiness and a better society. In her research-based book, Lara Bazelon liberates…
Secrets and Revelations, Lies and Love: Family Legacies in Fiction
Every family harbors its secrets. And eventually, those secrets always come out. What happens afterwards? Legacies are revealed, and the possibility of healing—or at least understanding—glimmers. Monica West’s Revival Season earned comparisons…
From the Window Seat: Travel the World with Aminatta Forna
Be a passenger on one of the most thought-provoking journeys you’ll ever take, with a first-class wandering soul guiding the itinerary. Award-winning novelist Aminatta Forna (The Memory of Love; Happiness) is one of our most important and…
Let Her Tell It: Black Women Writing on the Body and Mind
Many Black women have a complex relationship with their bodies. Historically their bodies have been racialized, hypersexualized, exoticized, abused, exploited for labor and othered. Stressors in their lives affects physical and mental health.…
Building a Literary Community
Inspired by romantic images of lonely geniuses in secluded garrets, writers might feel compelled to toil away in isolation, but here’s a provocative idea: what if, by connecting with other writers, you could not only support their work but…
Talking Single Motherhood, Community, and Black Girl Magic with Novelist Jayne Allen
Single mothers: they’ve been stigmatized, sidelined, and called superheroes and saints—sometimes in the same breath. Novelist Jayne Allen, with Black Girls Must be Magic, gives us a portrait of single motherhood by choice that upends all…
What It Means to Be Human: Memoirs Rooted in Nature
Three remarkable writers remind us how close we really are to nature, and how wildness speaks a universal language of love, loss, grief, and change. The essays in Suzanne Roberts’ Animal Bodies interrogate how landscapes, ranging from the…
Science Fiction: In Search of Hope
As Stephen Hawking once remarked, “to confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.” There’s no limit to the spirit or imagination of the three brilliant science fiction writers gathered on our stage…
Shine Bright: Black Women in Pop Music
From formerly enslaved poet Phyllis Wheatley to Mahalia Jackson to Tina Turner, brilliant Black women have been instrumental—indeed, foundational—in creating one of America’s most significant cultural contributions: its pop music. One…
Crime: True and Imagined
Why are we so fascinated by crimes, real or fictional? Maybe it’s what they reveal about human nature, fairness, society–and, not least of all, ourselves. Legendary cold-case investigator Paul Holes (Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s…