ALOUD @ Los Angeles Public Library
823 episodes - English - Latest episode: 3 months ago - ★★★★★ - 49 ratingsALOUD is the Library Foundation of Los Angeles' award-winning literary series of live conversations, readings and performances at the historic Central Library and locations throughout Los Angeles.
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Episodes
My Time Will Come: A Memoir of Crime, Punishment, Hope, and Redemption
May 06, 2021 03:00 - 51 minutes - 72 MB“Ian is magic. His story is difficult and heartbreaking, but he takes us places we need to go to understand why we must do better,” writes Bryan Stevenson in the forward of Ian Manuel’s new memoir. At fourteen Manuel was sentenced to life without parole for a non-homicide crime. The United States is the only country in the world that sentences thirteen- and fourteen-year-old offenders, mostly youth of color, to life in prison without parole, regardless of the scientifically proven singulariti...
The Committed
April 13, 2021 03:00 - 56 minutes - 78.6 MBIn a highly anticipated sequel to the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen returns with an exhilarating spy thriller that takes on the global aftermath of the Vietnam War. The Committed follows the Sympathizer, the conflicted double agent, as he seeks refuge in Paris in the 1980s. Both charmed and disturbed by the gritty Paris underworld, the Sympathizer struggles to assimilate into a dominant culture. Nguyen, who was born in Vietnam and raised in America, has long...
Ongoing Challenges of Disability Discrimination in Law, Politics and Society
March 02, 2021 03:00 - 1 hour - 87.6 MBAs our fractured country moves forward after a year of social unrest and political division—how can we work towards inclusion, equity, and real change in our society? In celebration of Zero Discrimination Day, ALOUD is proud to welcome leading activists and academics for a discussion of the intersectional issues of gender, race, and disability rights. We’ll be joined by Jasmine Harris, Professor of Law and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall Research Scholar at the University of California—Davis. An...
Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City
February 19, 2021 03:00 - 59 minutes - 82.8 MBIn her forties, with two children, a spouse, a dog, a mortgage, and a full-time job as a tenured law professor at Georgetown University, Rosa Brooks decided to become a cop. Despite the extreme personal and professional risks, the liberal academic and journalist served as a reserve police officer between 2016-2020 with the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department in order to better understand the usually closed world of policing. In her new book Tangled Up in Blue, Brooks chronicles h...
We’re Better Than This: My Fight for the Future of Our Democracy
February 10, 2021 03:00 - 55 minutes - 77.2 MBIn a final call to action from a dearly missed champion of democracy, Elijah Cummings’ new posthumously published memoir offers an inspiring lesson of how we can do better in this country. Born and raised in Baltimore, Cummings was the first of his family to attend college. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa and then law school, he began his career of public service in the Maryland House of Delegates. He became the first African-American in Maryland history to be named Speaker Pro Tem before bei...
Finding Latinx: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity
February 04, 2021 03:00 - 1 hour - 83.2 MBThe first step towards change, writes journalist and activist Paola Ramos, is for us to recognize who we are. In an empowering new work of reportage, Ramos embarks on a cross-country journey to find the communities of people defining the controversial term, "Latinx." Many voices—Afrolatino, Indigenous, Muslim, queer, and undocumented, living in large cities and small towns—have been chronically overlooked in how the diverse population of almost sixty million Latinos in the U.S. has been repre...
Lift Every Voice: Why African American Poetry Matters
January 29, 2021 03:00 - 1 hour - 105 MBAs part of Lift Every Voice: Why African American Poetry Matters, the Library Foundation of Los Angeles joins the nationwide celebration of 250 years of African American poetry on the occasion of the release of Kevin Young’s anthology. This program will include a special reading of these poems that address questions of identity, race, place, voice, and the richness and diversity of African American poetic imagination. African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song is the centerpiece o...
This Is Not My Memoir
December 07, 2020 03:00 - 1 hour - 97 MB“Adventure. Compassion. Hatred. Money. Friendship. Marriage. Theatre. Failure. Beauty. Revelation. Cinema. Success. Death. Creation. And re-creation. This is a remarkable story, of a life so deeply lived,” writes Martin Scorsese on the breadth of André Gregory’s new memoir. For the first time in book form, the iconic theatre director, writer, and actor tells his fantastic life story in This is Not My Memoir. Discussing this highly entertaining autobiography-of-sorts at ALOUD, Gregory will be ...
Collaboration & Innovation: Mixografia’s Revolutionary Printmaking
November 20, 2020 03:00 - 56 minutes - 78.2 MBIn the first program of a new two-part series on Collaboration & Innovation, ALOUD is excited to explore the rich history of one of L.A.’s foremost artistic workshops. Mixografia is a fine arts printer and publisher founded and run by the Remba family for three generations. Moving from Mexico City to Los Angeles, Mixografia’s three-dimensional printing technique has evolved over 40 years to expand printmaking possibilities for artists and to make art more accessible through its innovative pri...
Just Us: An American Conversation
November 16, 2020 03:00 - 1 hour - 102 MBHow do we talk about race in America? Two of our country's most award-winning poets and unflinching voices on racism will join ALOUD for their first public event together. Claudia Rankine is an artistic innovator, Yale professor, and MacArthur fellow. Her previous groundbreaking book, Citizen: An American Lyric, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Rankine’s newest book, Just Us: An American Conversation, invites readers to engage with what is said ...
Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny
October 15, 2020 03:00 - 51 minutes - 71.7 MBAs ALOUD examines the delicate balancing act of power and value in a special series this fall, we’ll consider how technology tips the scales to redefine the dynamics of our human relationships. What will happen to our notions of marriage and parenthood as reproductive technologies allow for new ways of creating babies? What will happen to our understanding of gender as medical advances enable individuals to transition from one set of sexual characteristics to another or to remain happily perc...
Media and Our Present Moment
September 10, 2020 03:00 - 58 minutes - 81.5 MBThe media is a powerful voice driving our perception of the world. But over the last decade, the political divisions across America have threatened the ability of the media to deliver unbiased news. Further putting into question the role of the media, individuals armed with their smartphones have stepped in to provide some of the most raw, unfiltered stories of our times. As part of ALOUD’s Power and Value series, we welcome three journalists from the fields of newspaper, radio, and televisio...
The Cost of Inequality
September 04, 2020 03:00 - 57 minutes - 79.6 MBIncome inequality in the U.S. is the highest of all the G7 nations, and the wealth gap between America’s richest and poorer families more than doubled from 1989 to 2016. This hierarchy of power gives control to the rich, while leaving the rest to fend for themselves without support or voice. ALOUD’s Power and Value series will kick-off with a program that unpacks America’s income gap with professor, author, and political commentator Robert Reich and Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, an American ...
Becoming Los Angeles: Myth, Memory, and a Sense of Place
August 21, 2020 03:00 - 58 minutes - 81.7 MB“What do we talk about when we talk about Los Angeles today?” asks D.J. Waldie. A writer whose work has been called a “gorgeous distillation of architectural and social history” by The New York Times, Waldie is the author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir and other books that illuminate the ordinary and the everyday in lyrical prose. Becoming Los Angeles, his newest collection, blends history, memory, and critical analysis to illuminate how Angelenos have seen themselves and their city. From th...
Dreams, Genes, & Machines: Are We Living Science Fiction?
July 31, 2020 03:00 - 1 hour - 86.7 MBIn ALOUD’s first live program, we’ll explore the science of virtual learning. As schools around the country prepare for an online fall semester, hear from neuroscientist, psychologist, and former teacher Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang about the educational implications for this generation of learners. Focusing on teenagers and their developing brains, Dr. Immordino-Yang will discuss how current events are impacting the ways teenagers think, feel, and process the world. This program is generous...
Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
February 27, 2020 03:00 - 1 hour - 96.5 MBWhen New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof returned to his hometown of Yamhill, Oregon, the portrait of life in rural America was grim. In a new book, written alongside Sheryl WuDunn, the team of the bestselling Half the Sky tells a story of how a once prospering blue-collar town was devastated by the loss of well-paying union jobs. Moving beyond this one part of the country, and showing a similar trend representative of places ranging from the Dakotas and Oklahoma to New York and V...
Gish Jen
February 20, 2020 03:00 - 1 hour - 86.5 MB"I think this book could really save the world," said Ann Patchett of Gish Jen’s new dystopian novel The Resisters. This extraordinary story imagines a not-so-distant future of America—which she calls "AutoAmerica" and is half underwater and populated by two groups of people: the "Netted" of the higher ground and the “Surplus,” who live on swampland. A “Surplus” family’s home life is upended when their teen daughter with amazing baseball talents is allowed to play ball with the "Netted" in th...
NBF Presents: Untold Stories
February 13, 2020 03:00 - 1 hour - 84.8 MB2019 National Book Award Finalist Kali Fajardo-Anstine (Sabrina & Corina: Stories) will discuss her work and why the preservation, perpetuation, and presentation of the experience of Mexican-American women in literature matters. Moderated by Lisa Lucas, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, and presented in partnership with the Library Foundation of Los Angeles and Scripps Presents.
Diane Ravitch
February 10, 2020 03:00 - 1 hour - 89.2 MBEducation is an issue that hits home to every American. One of the foremost authorities on education and the history of education in the United States and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, Diane Ravitch offers an impassioned defense of public education. In her new book, Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools, Ravitch fights back against "disruptors" who wish to privatize schools. Documenting examples of how corpor...
Carl Zimmer
February 07, 2020 03:00 - 1 hour - 96.1 MBQuantum mechanics is the most important idea in physics, and physicists themselves readily admit that they don’t understand it. Genetics is another commonly misconceived area of science with the rise of new biomedical technologies and the popularity of at-home DNA testing kits. Fortunately for ALOUD audiences, we welcome two of the most celebrated science writers to help make sense of how we live in the world—through space and time, and what we pass along from generation to generation. Carl Z...
American Oligarchs
January 31, 2020 03:00 - 56 minutes - 78 MBAndrea Bernstein, the award-winning journalist, and host of the WNYC/ProPublica podcast Trump, Inc., offers a sweeping new exposé into the multigenerational saga of two emblematic American families. American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power follows how these families rose from immigrant roots to the pinnacle of U.S. power. Through extensive reporting, Bernstein traces their journey to the White House—from growing rich on federal programs that bolstered ...
Dreams, Genes, & Machines: Are We Living Science Fiction? Artificial Intelligence
November 22, 2019 03:00 - 1 hour - 82.7 MBWhat if search-and-rescue robots could sense survivors through dense smoke? What if surgical robots could perform impossible surgeries by seeing details invisible to a human doctor? At Dr. Achuta Kadambi’s UCLA lab, his team works to make these possibilities a reality. By symbiotically blending camera and algorithm designs, Kadambi gives the gift of sight to machines. With journalist Nellie Bowles, who covers tech and internet culture from San Francisco for the New York Times, Kadambi discuss...
Ta-Nehisi Coates
October 18, 2019 03:00In a special evening celebrating National Book Award-winning author Ta-Nehisi Coates’ first book of fiction, he’ll be joined by Ryan Coogler, revolutionary director of Black Panther. Coates’ newly released novel The Water Dancer offers a timely exploration of the most intimate evil of enslavement—the cleaving and separation of families. Following the story of Hiram Walker, who was born into bondage and motherless, Coates not only tells the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generation...
Dreams, Genes, & Machines: Are We Living Science Fiction? Gene Editing
October 11, 2019 03:00 - 57 minutes - 78.9 MBThe leaps and advances of science and technology to revolutionize human DNA have sparked fierce public debate about what the future of gene editing holds for humanity. Moving beyond some of the alarming sci-fi scenarios of gene editing, groundbreaking scientists are harnessing the power of these biological breakthroughs to save lives. At Dr. April Pyle’s laboratory at UCLA, she investigates human pluripotent stem cell biology and the differentiation of these cells for use in regenerative medi...
Michael Pollan
May 15, 2019 03:00 - 1 hour - 67.4 MBIn this #1 New York Times bestseller, Michael Pollan offers a mind-bending investigation into the medical and scientific revolution taking place around psychedelic drugs—and the spellbinding story of his own life-changing psychedelic experiences as he set out to research the active ingredients in magic mushrooms. Blending science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism through Pollan’s discovery of how these remarkable s...
Anand Giridharadas
May 07, 2019 03:00 - 1 hour - 67.6 MBIn an impassioned call to action for elites and everyday citizens alike, former New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas shines a light on the shady side of philanthropy. Winners Take All offers a scathing investigation of how the global elite’s efforts to “change the world” preserve the status quo and obscure their role in causing the problems they later seek to solve. This bestselling groundbreaking book poses many hard questions like: Why should our gravest problems be solved by the une...
Rachel Cusk
April 10, 2019 03:00 - 59 minutes - 54.8 MBRachel Cusk is an international literary superstar. Her most recent trilogy–Outline, Transit, and Kudos–draws its hero, Faye, through a collage of vignettes. Through tales told by the people Faye encounters–an airline companion, a disgruntled neighbor, and a fellow writer, among others–Faye’s own haunting past is stealthily revealed, making for an artful and hypnotic reading experience. “After her controversial memoirs of motherhood and marriage, the writer has a new design for fiction,” writ...
Ottessa Moshfegh
March 13, 2019 03:00 - 59 minutes - 54.9 MBOn the heels of one of last year’s boldest, most celebrated novels, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, join us to hear from Ottessa Moshfegh for a celebration of a new edition of her groundbreaking debut novella, McGlue. Set in Salem, Massachusetts, 1851—the same year as the publication of Moby Dick—McGlue follows the foggy recollections of a hard-drinking seafarer who may or may not have killed his best friend. Discussing her sharply observational body of work that illuminates the exhilaratingl...
We Want to Negotiate: The Secret World of Kidnapping, Hostages and Ransom
February 01, 2019 03:00 - 57 minutes - 52.6 MBAs the Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Joel Simon spends his time taking action on behalf of journalists who are targeted, attacked, imprisoned, or killed. He is an expert on how countries around the world handle the kidnapping of their nationals, including how they analyze and respond to intelligence and provide support for the hostage families. At a time when journalists are in greater danger than ever before, Simon’s newest book draws on his extensive experience...
Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries and Letters, 1542 to 2018
December 12, 2018 03:00 - 47.9 MBWhat might Marilyn Monroe, Cesar Chavez, Susan Sontag, and Albert Einstein have to say about Los Angeles? Their diary entries, along with those of other actors, musicians, activists, cartographers, students, geologists, cooks, merchants, journalists, politicians, composers, and many more—provide a kaleidoscopic view of Los Angeles over the past four centuries from the Spanish missionary expeditions of the 16 century to the present day. Book editor, critic, and Los Angeles native David Kipen h...
Stories From a Life Lived Along the Border
November 14, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 73.3 MBBestselling author Reyna Grande’s newest memoir, A Dream Called Home , offers an inspiring account of one woman’s quest to find her place in America as a first-generation Latina university student and then pursue her dream of writing. Award-winning writer Jean Guerrero’s Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir tries to locate the border between truth and fantasy as she explores her troubled father’s life as an immigrant battling with self-destructive behavior. Octavio Solis, one of the most prominent Lat...
Of Love & War
November 02, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 56.3 MBThe Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur-winning photojournalist and New York Times bestselling author Lynsey Addario has captured audiences with her highly compelling and beautifully harrowing photographs from war zones across the globe. With her uncanny ability to emotionally connect with her subjects and to personalize even the most remote corners and unimaginable circumstances, Addario offers a stunning new selection of work from the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa that documents life in Afgh...
The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity
October 26, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 79.8 MBWho do you think you are? What do you think you are? These questions of gender, religion, race, nationality, class, culture, and all our polarizing, contradictory natures permeate Kwame Anthony Appiah’s newest book. In The Lies That Bind, Appiah, the author of the Ethicist column for the New York Times, challenges our assumptions of identities—or rather mistaken identities. Njideka Akunyili Crosby, a MacArthur Award-winning Nigerian born visual artist who lives in Los Angeles, meshes painting...
The Library Book
October 17, 2018 03:00 - 57.6 MBJoin us for a special program on the 25th anniversary of the reopening of the Los Angeles Central Library that brings home the inspiring story of how Central Library rose from the ashes after the catastrophic fire of April 29, 1986. In a new book by New Yorker staff writer and author of seven books, including Rin Tin Tin and The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean offers a profoundly moving cultural history of the Los Angeles Public Library and its critical civic role since its inception in 1872. Reex...
How to Cover the World: The Promise and Peril of Journalism in the Digital Age
October 12, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 57.5 MBTechnology has made possible new forms of transnational investigative journalism and fueled the rise of new digital media organizations in the US and around the world. Yet more journalists are imprisoned around the world than at any time in recent history; censorship is on the rise; and government-run disinformation campaigns are undermining public understanding and fueling distrust in the media. Two leading figures in global journalism help make sense of this confusing and contradictory envi...
History of Violence: A Novel
October 11, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 67.4 MB"Édouard Louis uses literature as a weapon," says a recent New York Times profile of the internationally bestselling French author. Louis, whose highly acclaimed first autobiographical novel, The End of Eddy, confronts both the institution of discrimination as he experienced it first-hand, growing up in a small town in Northern France where he was bullied and forced to conceal his homosexuality and as well, the violence perpetrated on his hardscrabble community by an indifferent state. Now in...
There, There: A Novel
September 21, 2018 03:00 - 59 minutes - 54.3 MBTommy Orange’s There There is an extraordinary portrait of America like we’ve never seen before. Orange, an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma who grew up in Oakland, brings an exhilaratingly fresh, urgent, and poetic voice to the disorienting experiences of urban Indians who struggle with the paradoxes of inhabiting traditions in the absence of a homeland, living both inside and outside of history. In his debut bestselling novel, a cast of 12 Native American chara...
The Browns of California: The Family Dynasty that Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation
September 18, 2018 03:00 - 56 minutes - 51.4 MBMiriam Pawel, the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of the definitive biography, The Crusades of Cesar Chavez, continues to chronicle the fascinating history of California and the exceptional people who have shaped our state. In Pawel’s newest work, she demystifies transformative moments of California history—from the Gold Rush to Silicon Valley—as she considers the significant impact of one family dynasty. Beginning with Pat Brown, the beloved father who presided over California d...
From Prison to President: The Letters of Nelson Mandela
July 25, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 69.1 MBOn the centenary of Nelson Mandela’s birth, comes a new portrait of one of the most inspiring historical figures of the twentieth century. Arrested in 1962 as South Africa’s apartheid regime intensified its brutal campaign against political opponents, forty-four-year-old lawyer and African National Congress activist Nelson Mandela had no idea that he would spend the next twenty-seven years in jail. During his 10,052 days of incarceration, Mandela wrote hundreds of letters to unyielding prison...
Bruce Lee and the Afro-Asian Culture Connection
July 18, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 88 MBIn the 1970’s Bruce Lee captivated African American audiences with his stylish and philosophical kung fu movies. Lee was a rarity—a non-white leading man fighting oppression, crime, and racism at a time when there were still signs that read: “No dogs or Chinese Allowed” and “Whites Only.” Through the physical, mental, and spiritual embodiment of martial arts, Lee modeled an intense pride in his own cultural heritage that was an inspiration to all people of color—especially young African Ameri...
What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City
July 12, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 63.5 MBThe dramatic story of the Flint water crisis is one of the signature environmental disasters of our time—and at the heart of this tragedy is an inspiring tale of scientific resistance by a relentless physician and whistleblower who stood up to power. What the Eyes Don’t See is the personal story of how Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha—accompanied by an idiosyncratic team of researchers, parents, friends, and community leaders—proved that Flint’s kids were exposed to lead despite the state’s assurance t...
Heart Berries: A Memoir
June 29, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 76.7 MBThe New York Times bestselling memoir Heart Berries is the powerful, poetic meditation of a woman’s coming-of-age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder, Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Ma...
The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism
June 20, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 78.8 MBFor most of the twentieth century, politics and sports were as separate as church and state. Today, with the transformation of a fueled American patriotism, sports and politics have become increasingly more entwined. However, as sports journalist Howard Bryant explores in his new book, this has always been more complicated for black athletes, who from the start, were committing a political act simply by being on the field. Bryant’s new book The Heritage traces the influences of the radical po...
Planet of the Blind: A Poet’s Journey
May 25, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 62 MBFrom the author of several collections of poetry and memoirs, including the New York Times "Notable Book of the Year" Planet of the Blind, Stephen Kuusisto discusses his latest book, Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet’s Journey, a lyrical love letter and "a dog-driven invitation to living full forward." Born legally blind, Kuusisto was raised in the 1950s before the Americans with Disability Act and was taught to deny his blindness in order to "pass" as sighted. For most of his life, he coped with...
A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership
May 25, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 61.9 MBBetween his tenure as the director of the FBI from 2013 to 2017 under the appointment of President Obama, to his roles as the U.S Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the United States Deputy Attorney General in the administration of President George W. Bush, James Comey has been involved in some of the most consequential cases and policies of recent history. On the occasion of his new book following his highly contentious firing, Comey will take the ALOUD stage and share for th...
The End of Capitalism: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment
May 18, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 60.9 MBWhat happens when you take on the establishment? Renowned economist and former finance minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis gives a blistering account of his momentous clash with the mightiest economic and political forces on earth when he attempted to re-negotiate Greece’s relationship with the EU in 2015, sparking a spectacular battle with global implications. In a special lunchtime talk, Varoufakis offers an inside look at an extraordinary story fueled by hypocrisy and betrayal that shook ...
The End of Capitalism: My Battle With the European and American Deep Establishment
May 18, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 60.9 MBWhat happens when you take on the establishment? Renowned economist and former finance minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis gives a blistering account of his momentous clash with the mightiest economic and political forces on earth when he attempted to re-negotiate Greece’s relationship with the EU in 2015, sparking a spectacular battle with global implications. In a special lunchtime talk, Varoufakis offers an inside look at an extraordinary story fueled by hypocrisy and betrayal that shook ...
Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: How Capitalism Works – and How it Fails
May 18, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 78.2 MBGreece’s former finance minister, international bestselling author, and an activist working for the revival of democracy in Europe, Yanis Varoufakis pens a series of letters to his young daughter, educating her about the business, politics, and corruption of world economics. In this intimate new book, written to his teenage daughter, Varoufakis uses clear language and vivid examples to explain heady economic theories, the historical origins of inequality, and our rising global instability. Jo...
The Mars Room
May 11, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 86.7 MBFrom the twice National Book Award–nominated and bestselling author of The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner offers a heart-stopping new novel, The Mars Room, that straddles the inside—and outside—of protagonist Romy Hall’s reality: an inmate beginning two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility, deep in California’s Central Valley, where “you do not see a single star.” With great humor and precision, Kushner moves between Hall’s polar worlds: the severed world of he...
Should We Praise the Mutilated World? Poetry from California to Krakow
April 25, 2018 03:00 - 1 hour - 83.6 MBTwo of the world’s greatest living poets come together for a rare Los Angeles reading and conversation. The work of Robert Hass, former U.S. Poet Laureate and long-time translator of Nobel Laureate Czesław Miłosz, speaks to us of love and loss, of the hopefulness and the limitations of intimacy, of our humanness laid bare in the midst of art, the natural world, and each other. His most recent essay collection, A Little Book on Form, illuminates the impulses that underlie great poetry. Adam Za...