Coming Together When Things Fall Apart: Giving Voice to Emotional Truth in Our Times

• Current Affairs
• Health, Psychology & Spirituality
• Literary

When this compelling all-star event aired live as a ticketed fundraiser in May 2020, the response was powerfully moving. “Incredible,” “fascinating,” and “you’re helping me to feel less isolated” were just a few of the comments from attendees. We’re thrilled to make this nourishing event available to everyone, at a time when its lessons and takeaways are more relevant than ever. Best-selling novelist R.O. Kwon’s New York Times essay about grief in times of uncertainty—an all-too-pertinent theme in our current moment—was the inspiration for this conversation. In a raw, emotionally profound exchange not without its moments of levity and transcendence, she was joined by Pulitzer Prize winners Anthony Doerr, whose blockbuster World War II novel All the Light We Cannot See illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another; and Viet Thanh Nguyen, whose witty, exquisite The Sympathizer captures the ambivalence and humanity of “a man of two minds” in the midst of a traumatic war. These literary luminaries share an uncanny gift for describing the indescribable, and that’s exactly what they do in a conversation that has made many of us feel seen and understood in all our complexity. Moderated by award-winning author Danielle Evans, whose beautiful Sewanee Review essay about sheltering-in-place, “How to Be Alone,” was recently adapted and updated for an episode of NPR’s “This American Life.”

Recommended Reading

Anthony Doerr, All The Light We Cannot See
Danielle Evans, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
R.O. Kwon, The Incendiaries
Viet Thahn Nguyen, The Sympathizer

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