Aloud @ Los Angeles Public Library

In his first collection in nine years, McGuane confirms his status as a modern master of Big Sky country. With a comic genius that recalls Mark Twain, and his own beautiful way with words, McGuane (The Bushwacked Piano, Gallatin Canyon, Ninety-two in the Shade) offers a jubilant and thunderous new batch of stories about life’s complicated nature from the wilds of Montana. Join us for a reading and conversation with one of America’s most deeply admired storytellers. *Click here to see photos from the program! 

Coming together for the first time on stage, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Adam Johnson and bestselling nonfiction author Blaine Harden explore how their different paths of storytelling led them to similar truths about illusive North Korea. Join Johnson, author of the spellbinding novel, The Orphan Master’s Son, and Harden, author of the new historical exposé, The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and the Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom, for a fascinating discussion about the world’s longest-lasting totalitarian regime. *Click here to see photos from the program! 

A year ago, Russia invaded Ukraine, destroying a peaceful order in Europe and placing its own regime at risk.  We in the West have experienced this historical turning point through a haze of propaganda.  According to Snyder, the Kremlin was perhaps wrong about the political weakness of Ukraine, but likely right about some intellectual weaknesses of Americans and Europeans.  When will the war end? This rare pairing of two essential thinkers on Eastern European politics offers a revelatory look at why what happens in Ukraine is of significant international importance.*Click here to see photos from the program!

Co-presented with Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA  The multi-talented dancer, choreographer, and director Bill T. Jones presents a provocative collage of movement, music, and personal narrative from Story/Time, a recent dance work produced by his company and inspired by the legendary composer John Cage. This program coincides with the publication of a new book based on Jones’ brilliant hybrid work and meditations as an African American artist struggling to find a place in a white-dominated dance world. Jones and two extraordinary dancers from his company will perform and then discuss this powerful experiment in storytelling. *Click here to see photos from the program! 

The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and consultant on the Academy Award-winning film 12 Years a Slave discusses his latest book, which unearths extraordinary findings from Columbia University’s archives to shed new light on the Underground Railroad. Join Foner in conversation with Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy for an illuminating look at the fraught history of American slavery and the courageous acts of individuals who defied the law in the fight for freedom decades before the Civil War.  *Click here to see photos from the program!   

Co-presented with Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing ArtsDavid Axelrod, the great strategist who masterminded President Barack Obama’s historic election campaigns, sits down with Emmy Award-winning NPR host Michel Martin to discuss his years as a young journalist, political consultant, and ultimately senior adviser to the president.  From a young journalist in 1970s and 80s Chicago—where he reported on the dissolution of the last of the big city political machines--to his twenty-year friendship with Obama, to serving during two wars and an economic disaster, Axelrod offers a rich account of the man and the mind behind some of the greatest political changes of the last decade. This event took place at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing ArtsClick here to see photos from the program!

The work of Wendy L. Freedman, one of the world’s most influential astronomers, is based on being an observer, while that of Caltech cosmologist Sean Carroll is based on his role as theorist. In a phenomenal period of discovery in which the view of the universe has expanded enormously, what fundamental discoveries might yet be uncovered? Join us for a conversation with these two experts about what could literally be on the horizon.Click here to see photos from the program!

Internationally recognized authority on comics and visual communication, Scott McCloud wrote the book on how comics work (Understanding Comics.) Now he vaults into fiction with a breathtaking, funny, and unforgettable new work. In The Sculptor, McCloud delivers a spellbinding adult urban fable about a wish, a deal with death, the price of art, and the value of life. Join KCRW’s Elvis Mitchell for a conversation with McCloud on his long-awaited magnum opus and the power of storytelling.Click here to see photos from the program

Ghettoside tells the kaleidoscopic story of one American murder—one young black man slaying another—and a driven crew of detectives whose creed is to pursue justice for forgotten victims at all costs.  This fast-paced narrative of a devastating crime in South Los Angeles provides a new lens into the great subject of why murder happens in America—and how the plague of killings might yet be stopped. KCRW’s Warren Olney sits down with award-winning reporter Leovy to discuss this master work of literary journalism that is equal parts gripping detective story and provocative social critique.Click here to see photos from the program!

Though never charged with a crime, Mohamedou Ould Slahi has been imprisoned at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp since 2002. His deeply personal diary—an unprecedented publishing event as the first ever book published by a still-imprisoned detainee—is a terrifying (and darkly humorous) chronicle of a vivid miscarriage of justice. To discuss the book and the case, longtime human rights activist and editor of Slahi’s book, Larry Siems, joins Slahi’s lawyer, Nancy Hollander, whose practice is devoted to criminal cases (including that of Chelsea E. Manning) involving national security issues.  Click here to see photos from the program!

Oswalt—comedian, actor, social media genius—illuminates the story of his early days of the comedy scene in Los Angeles and his unshakeable addiction to the New Beverly Cinema. From Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, the bestselling author of Zombie Spaceship Wasteland chronicles his coming of age from fledgling stand-up at the Largo to self-assured sitcom actor.  Oswalt’s witty prose proves that funny is just as fit for the page as it is the stage. Click here to see photos from the program!

In the waning days of the Obama era, artists and young people are shaping our discussion about race through activism, social media, film, and art. Author Jeff Chang’s newest book Who We Be: The Colorization of America remixes comic strips and contemporary art, campus protests and corporate marketing campaigns for a fresh look at America’s racial divide. Director Justin Simien's Dear White People film taps into the unease of "post-racial" hype among college students of color. Join Chang and Simien in a talk about how art and writing are speaking to this moment, and what happens next when the Obamas leave and the White House goes back to being a white house.Click here to see photos from the program

Lee, a deeply influential writer about race, class and immigrant life in America, sets his gripping and fiercely imagined new novel in a chilling dystopia, where abandoned post-industrial cities have been converted into forced labor colonies populated with immigrant workers. The fate of the world may lay in the hands of one nervy girl named Fan, a beautiful fish tank diver, who jolts the labor colony by running away. Join Lee and the story-bending author Charles Yu (How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe) for a conversation on alternate realities and the power of a riveting story to change the way we see the world.Click here to see photos from the program

When artists and artisans can’t make a living, we all pay the price. Scott Timberg’s original and important  new book, Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class, examines the roots of a creative crisis that has put booksellers, indie musicians, architects and graphic designers out of work and struggling to afford healthcare, stable housing and educational opportunities for their kids. This panel of creative thinkers and doers convenes to examine this urgent issue and explore what we can do to change course.Click here to see photos from the program

One of the most influential and celebrated musicians of our time, Carlos Santana will sit down with L.A.'s own Cheech Marin to share the story of his life-- from his humble childhood in Mexico, to his emergence in the 1960s rock underground in San Francisco and the explosion of his musical career. In his new memoir The Universal Tone, Santana’s authentic voice and unparalleled story is delivered with a level of passion and soul equal to the legendary charge of his guitar. From collaborations with other greats like Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock to Juanes, Pitbull and Lila Downs, hear the remarkable life story from a musician Rolling Stone has rated as one of the greatest guitarists of all time.*Click HERE to see photos from the event!

The comprehensive new Norton Anthology of World Religions, under the editorial direction of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jack Miles, assembles primary texts from six major world religions in the religious equivalent of a giant “family album.” Miles questions whether religion can be defined, and considers how, sometimes, the supposedly ancient turns out to be quite recent, and the truly ancient turns out to be surprisingly modern. Three religious traditions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—loom especially large in the lives of Americans; listen in on a discussion that promises to unveil many other surprises as these three religious “cousins” flip through the album together.*Click HERE to see photos from the program!

In her new book, Thornton, best-selling author of Seven Days in the Art World, uses a structure of richly linked, cinematic scenes that allow us access to understanding a dazzling range of artists—including Cindy Sherman, Gabriel Orozco, Marina Abramović, Ai Weiwei, and Christian Marclay, among many others. In this conversation with the Hammer’s Allison Agsten, Thornton discusses her research—how she rummaged through artists’ bank accounts, bedrooms, and studios and witnessed their crises and triumphs-- as well as the wildly different answers—and non-answers—she received to the question, “What is an artist?”*Click HERE to see photos from the event!

In her years of research, Lepore—Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer—has uncovered an astonishing trove of documents, including the never-before-seen private papers of Wonder Woman’s creator, William Moulton Marston. Marston, who also invented the lie detector—lived a life of secrets, only to spill them onto the pages of Wonder Woman comics. Lepore discusses this riveting story about the most popular female superhero of all time, illustrating a crucial history of twentieth century feminism.*Click HERE to see photos from the event!

From Madame Bovary to Hedda Gabler, some of literature’s most passionate heroines find themselves under the fire of their times. In Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary, the Irish novelist took on nothing less than the mother of Christ. In his masterful new novel, Nora Webster, he portrays a fiercely compelling young Irish widow and mother of four navigating grief and fear and struggling for hope. Rachel Kushner (The Flamethrowers) joins Tóibín for a discussion about creating characters that erupt off the page, in novels where the political and the personal are locked in a deep and fascinating embrace.*Click HERE to see photos from the program!

One of our greatest American writers returns to the small Iowa town of Gilead—the setting of her earlier Pulitzer Prize-winning novel—in the unforgettable story of a girlhood lived on the fringes of society in fear, awe, and wonder. Hear Robinson read and reflect on this masterpiece of prose, where the small town of Gilead becomes as quintessential to the rich fabric of American life as Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County.*Click here to see photos from the program!