Aloud @ Los Angeles Public Library

Packer, award-winning staff writer for The New Yorker, explores the full range of ideas and emotions stirred up by our most controversial foreign-policy venture since Vietnam.This program was presented by ALOUD in 2005, and the recording from our archive was added into our podcast collection in 2014.

Butler, one of the world's great science fiction writers, explores the limits of  "otherness" in her new novel-the story of a young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly unhuman needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion.

Two great writers celebrate the novel—from the 1,000 year-old Tale of Genji to Zadie Smith’s recent bestseller White Teeth; from classics to little-known gems.This program was presented by ALOUD.

While he can remember the plot of every book he's ever read, the hero of Eco's raucous new novel no longer knows his own name.

In a career spanning five decades, W.S. Merwin, lauded poet, translator, and environmental activist, has become one of the most widely read poets in America.

The author of the prophetic national bestseller \"Blowback,\" offers a vivid look at the new caste of professional warriors who have infiltrated multiple branches of government, for whom the manipulation of the military budget is of vital interest. In conversation with journalist WARREN OLNEY (\"To the Point\").

A psychologist on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission asks, "What does it mean when we discover than the incarnation of evil is as frighteningly human as we are?" In Conversation with Louise Steinman

An in-depth look at the impact of Vietnam on post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy by a distinguished Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.

In this recording from ALOUD's early years, Ursula K. Le Guin reads and discusses her 2000 science fiction novel The Telling, the first follow-up to the Hainish Cycle since 1974's The Dispossessed. The work explores themes of memory and forgetting in the context of political and religious conflicts between a corporate, totalitarian government and the indigenous resistance. The story hinges on the preservation and protection of ancient traditions of storytelling, locally referred to as "the Telling."

This podcast, taken from the ALOUD archive, is a discussion from 2000's \"Words In the World\" series; a curated series of artists whose stories, essays, poems, novels, and films illuminated a global culture in crisis and celebration, extending their imaginations into the vast territory of the heart and the world.

Robert Pinsky answers the question, "What Shall We Teach the Young?", touching on art and poetry.This program was presented by ALOUD's The Big Questions Series.

This podcast, taken from the ALOUD archive, is a discussion from 1999's \"The Big Questions\" series. A celebration of writing, reading, and public debate, \"The Big Questions\" features visionary thinkers in the arts, sciences, and humanities who are asking new questions, challenging accepted theories, and reframing ancient dialects.

The great American writer John Updike received the Los Angeles Public Library's Literary Award in 1999. The award, given annually, is granted to a writer for his or her contribution to literature. Updike joins past winners Norman Mailer, Harper Lee, Susan Sontag, and Seamus Heaney in receiving this honor. The following recording is taken from his acceptance speech at the Library Foundation of Los Angeles' Annual Awards dinner.

A novel about of a woman who refused to shrink from a life alone, and who comes to terms with the love she learns to share with both men and women.

This podcast, taken from the ALOUD archive, is a discussion from 1998's \"Racing Towards the Millenium: Voices From the American West,\" a predecessor to ALOUD.

 Bernard Cooper writes eloquently about the difficult landscape of memory as it pertains to sexuality, loss, AIDS, and family. He is the author of the collection of memoirs Maps to Anywhere, the novel A Year of Rhymes, and a recent collection of memoirs, Truth Serum. He received the 1991 PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award and a 1995 O. Henry Prize. He has taught at Antioch/Los Angeles, for the Masters of Professional Writing program at USC, at the UCLA Writer’s Program, and he has been a core faculty member in the MFA Writing Program at Bennington College. Of Truth Serum, playwright Tony Kushner has written, "One of the most beautiful and moving memoirs I've ever read... Reading Bernard Cooper is like reading Chechov, he's really that good." This program was originally produced as part of the 1997 season of Racing Toward the Millennium: Voices from the American West, in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Kathleen Norris is the author of the 1993 bestseller Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. Her newest book, The Cloister Walk, is structured around two nine-month residencies at a Benedictine monastery. In it, she links the disparate worlds of 4th-century desert monks and modern-day Benedictines to epiphanies in the tiny South Dakota town where she and her husband moved in 1974. Renowned author Dr. Robert Coles lauded Norris's work in The New York Times Book Review: "Her writing is personal and epigrammatic -- a series of short takes that ironically addresses the biggest subject matter possible: how one ought to live life and with what purposes in mind." Norris's narrative and lyrical poems have appeared in The New Yorker and the Paris Review. This program was produced as part of the 1997 season of Racing Toward the Millennium: Voices from the American West in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. 

Dagoberto Gilb, of Anglo and Mexican heritage, calls both El Paso and Los Angeles home and is a union carpenter with a degree in philosophy. Gilb's rich experiences translate into stories that range the width of his native desert lands. He has been called "a powerful necessary voice in American literature whose emergence defies any pigeon-holing." He is a winner of the James D. Phelan Award in Literature, the Whiting Award, the Dobie-Paisano Fellowship from the Texas Institute of Letters, and a recipient of an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship. He is an author of "The Last Residence of Mickey Acuna" and "The Magic of Blood," stories which Jim Harrison said "deal with a portion of society that literature seldom ever reaches." Howard Junker is the founding editor & publisher of ZYZZYVA, a quarterly of West Coast writers and artists. This program was produced as part of the 1997 season of Racing Toward the Millennium: Voices from the American West in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary A

Terry Tempest Williams is one of the most knowledgeable and elegant voices of the American West. She brings to her writing, in the words of the poet W.S. Merwin, "the dedicated observation of a naturalist and the abiding innocence and excitement of an open heart." Williams is a Naturalist-In-Residence at the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City. A member of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Williams is committed to protecting Americas Red Rock Desert. She is a recipient of a 1993 Fellowship for Nonfiction from the Lannan Foundation. Among her books are An Unnatural History of Family and Places and An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field.This program was produced as part of the 1997 season of Racing Toward the Millennium: Voices from the American West in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Anne Lamott is the author of five novels, most recently Crooked Little Heart (1997). In addition, she wrote the bestseller Operating Instructions (1993), a highly personal account of life as a single mother during her son's first year; and Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, "a candidly drawn map of a writer's home terrain: dazzling peaks and weird, dark cellars." Lamott has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and has taught writing at U.C. Davis and at many writing conferences around the United States. She lives in the Bay Area.This program was produced as part of the 1997 season of Racing Toward the Millennium: Voices from the American West in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.