Aloud @ Los Angeles Public Library

From 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 her past in San Francisco with her young son and her present institutional living with its absurdities and the thousands of women hustling for the bare essentials needed to survive. Kushner will discuss this emotionally acute yet unsentimental story with writer Danzy Senna, who frequently writes about race in America.

Two 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 Zagajewski, whose outlook was formed in the aftermath of the Second World War and the occupation of Poland, negotiates the earthbound and the ethereal in poems that can be as arresting as they are luminous, as witty as they are serious. His recent memoir, Slight Exaggeration, is a wry and philosophical defense of mystery. During a time when our world feels deeply damaged and charged with uncivil discourse, these two masters of language will explore poetry’s enduring inclination to marvel, with novelist Andrew Winer serving

In a special Los Angeles visit, human rights activists Robert King and Albert Woodfox, the two surviving members of the Angola 3, known for having served the longest solitary confinement sentences in U.S. history, share their remarkable story of survival and advocacy.  As comrades inside Louisiana State Penitentiary—the largest prison in the U.S. and former slave plantation known as “Angola”- they jointly established a chapter of the Black Panther Party within the prison and led peaceful non-violent protest against the racist and cruel conditions inflicted upon prisoners. Together with Herman Wallace (released 2013, deceased 2013) they collectively spent 114 years in solitary confinement. Since being released, King (released 2001) and Woodfox (released 2016) travel the globe campaigning for limits to solitary confinement and an end to the 13th amendment allowance for the enslavement of prisoners.  These two unbreakable spirits shed light on the reality of the American criminal justice system and rep

New York Times bestselling author Mohsin Hamid returns to ALOUD to discuss his latest novel Exit West, a visionary love story that imagines the forces that drive ordinary people from their homes into the uncertain embrace of new lands. Infusing the stark reality of a refugee narrative with the hopeful fantasy of a fairy tale, Exit West follows the journey of two young lovers who flee an unnamed country on the brink of civil war through a magical door that transports them to other places. A profound exploration of immigration and the universal human need to search for a better world, Pakistan-based author Hamid discusses this timely story with Viet Thanh Nguyen, a MacArthur Award-winning novelist who has also written eloquently about the refugee experience.

During his long tenure on the Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia—engaging as well as caustic and openly ideological—moved the Court to the right. In this eye-opening new book, legal scholar Richard L. Hasen analyzes Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s complex legacy as a conservative legal thinker and disruptive public intellectual who was crucial to reshaping jurisprudence on issues from abortion to gun rights to separation of powers. Hasen is joined by Erwin Chemerinsky in a special lunchtime conversation about the complex legacy of one of the most influential justices ever to serve on the United States Supreme Court.

“What if, for once in history, a woman’s story could be untethered from what we need it to be in order to feel better about ourselves?” writes visionary author Lidia Yuknavitch in her latest work, The Book of Joan. In this provocatively reimagined Joan of Arc story set in the near future, the world is ravaged by war, violence, and greed, and it brings into question art, sex, gender, and what it means to be human. Amber Tamblyn, widely known for her work as a director and actress, including her role as a modern-day Joan of Arc in the television series Joan of Arcadia, has also written several acclaimed collections of poetry. Yuknavitch and Tamblyn, two misfits who have spurned literary, cultural, and societal expectations to explore unlikely creative worlds, share the stage with fellow misfit Ann Friedman, journalist and co-host of the popular podcast Call Your Girlfriend, to discuss the art of nonconformity.

In his new book, UCLA law professor Adam Winkler offers a revelatory portrait of how U.S. corporations have seized political power over time. He traces the 200-year effort of pro-business court decisions that give corporations the same rights as people and details the deep historical roots of recent landmark cases like Citizens United and Hobby Lobby. For a special lunchtime conversation, Winkler discusses with author Rick Wartzman of the Drucker Institute how businesses have transformed the Constitution and changed the course of American politics today.

For award-winning writer and former agent for the United States Border Patrol Francisco Cantú, the border is in his blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. His new book, The Line Becomes A River: Dispatches from the Border, is haunted by the stories he experienced both while working for the Border Patrol—where he hauled in the dead and delivered to detention those he found alive—and also as a civilian after he abandoned the Patrol and helped an immigrant friend return to Mexico to visit his dying mother. Join us for an eye-opening look at the devastation the border wreaks on both sides as Cantú shares this deeply personal work with journalist Ruxandra Guidi, who frequently reports on immigration from the U.S.-Mexico border region.

What moved humans to create cultures—intelligent systems including the arts, morality, science, government, and technology? The answer to this question has typically been the human faculty of language, but preeminent neuroscientist, professor, and director of USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute Antonio Damasio argues that feelings―of pain and suffering or of anticipated pleasure―were the prime engines that stirred human intellect in the cultural direction. In his newest book The Strange Order of Things, Damasio traces the need for cultures back to one-cell organisms, long before there were nervous systems and conscious minds. Damasio will be joined by Manuel Castells, one of the world’s leading sociologists, for a fascinating conversation on the origins of life, mind, and culture that spans the biological and social sciences to offer a new way of understanding the world and our place in it.

Bassem Youssef, a satirist who rose to international fame in the middle of the Egyptian Revolution with his incendiary brand of comedy and his knack for unabashedly mocking dictators, has been dubbed “the Jon Stewart of the Arabic world.” In his new book, Revolution for Dummies: Laughing Through the Arab Spring, Youssef chronicles his transformation from a heart surgeon who filmed YouTube skits in the laundry room of his home to the host and creator of the popular Egyptian television show, AlBernameg (“The Program”). Youssef’s provocative political commentary quickly incensed the authoritarian government, who accused him of insulting the Egyptian presidency and Islam, and he was arrested and interrogated by the police. While his case was eventually dismissed, his television show was terminated, and Youssef, fearful for his safety, fled his homeland. Now living in exile in Los Angeles, Youssef will take the ALOUD stage to discusses his tumultuous—and hilarious—journey through a revolution that illuminates how

Because of its similar celebration of the beauty of the natural world and focus on compactness, contemporary Zapotec-language poetry shares much in common with the Japanese haiku. Poet Víctor Terán—who’s performed his work from Oaxaca to London—will share some of his translations of the Japanese masters of the form alongside his own original Zapotec haiku, and American poet Jane Hirshfield will discuss both the haiku form and the way that the natural world informs her own work. The program will culminate with the presentation of Terán’s new translation into Zapotec of a poem by Hirshfield and a conversation between the two poets, moderated by David Shook—translator, poet, and publisher of Phoneme Media. Bilingual program Spanish/English with simultaneous interpretation by Antena Los Ángeles. This program is produced as part of the Getty's initiative Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA.

Winner of a 2017 Pulitzer Prize, historian Heather Ann Thompson sheds new light on the infamous 1971 Attica Prison riot as one of the most important civil rights stories of the last century. Chronicling the horrific conditions that led to 1,300 prisoners taking over the upstate New York correctional facility and how the state violently retook the prison—killing thirty-nine men and severely wounding more than a hundred others—Blood in the Water also confronts the gruesome aftermath. From brutal retaliation against the prisoners, to corrupt investigations and cover-ups, and civil and criminal lawsuits, Thompson meticulously follows the ensuing forty-five-year fight for justice. In a conversation with Kelly Lytle Hernandez, a professor and director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA, Thompson discusses the impact of what this tragic historic moment can teach us about racial conflict, failures in mass incarceration, and police brutality in America today.

Last fall’s presidential election brought a range of impassioned voices to the national stage, but one of the most captivating speakers rose above petty politics with a deeply personal and very different view of what it means to be American. You may recall the Muslim parent Khizr Khan from the DNC when he spoke about his son, a U.S. Army Captain who was killed while protecting his base camp in Iraq. In Khan’s inspiring new book, An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice, he reflects on his grief for his son as well as his family history of pursuing the American dream during these tumultuous times. From humble beginnings on a poultry farm in Pakistan to obtaining a degree from Harvard Law School and raising a family in America—Khan shows what it means to leave the limitations of one’s country behind for the best values and promises of another. Khan will now take the ALOUD stage to discuss the realities of life in a nation of immigrants and the daily struggles of living up to our ideals.

What lies at the heart of humanity’s ability―and drive―to create? New York Times bestselling author and neuroscientist David Eagleman teams up with internationally acclaimed composer and Associate Professor at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music Anthony Brandt in a wide-ranging exploration of human creativity. In their new book, The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World, the pair studies hundreds of examples of human creativity from landing on the moon to paintings by Picasso to connect what creative acts have in common. By uncovering the essential elements of human innovation and examining them through the lens of cutting-edge neuroscience, Eagleman and Brandt consider how we can harness creativity to better our lives, schools, businesses, and institutions. Join us for an inspiring look at humanity’s unique ability to use the powerful tools of arts, technology, science, and more to improve our future.

Why has our society become so punitive? In recent years, critics have assailed the rise of mass incarceration, emphasizing its disproportionate impact on people of color. However, many African American leaders in the nation’s urban centers supported the war on crime that began in the 1970s. James Forman, Jr., a professor of law at Yale Law School and former D.C. public defender, wrestles with the complexities of race and the criminal justice system in his new book, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. Chronicling riveting stories of politicians, community activists, police officers, defendants, and crime victims, Forman illustrates with great compassion how racism plagues our current system of tough-on-crime measures. In an eye-opening conversation with Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA Robin D.G. Kelley, Forman shines a light on the urgent debate over the future of America’s criminal justice system.

L.A.’s own Janet Fitch, the mega-bestselling author of White Oleander and Paint It Black, returns to ALOUD with her newest work, a sweeping historical saga of the Russian Revolution. Beginning on New Year’s Eve in 1916 St. Petersburg, The Revolution of Marina M. follows the mesmerizing coming-of-age story of a young woman of privilege who aches to break free of the constraints of her genteel life, a life about to be violently upended by the vast forces of history. Joining Fitch to discuss this epic journey through some of the most dramatic events of the last century is Boris Dralyuk, Russian literature scholar and executive editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books, who helped Fitch with the Russian translations for her book. 

The program is conducted in both Spanish and English.  Anthropologists have traced the Meso-American acceptance of people of mixed gender back to pre-Columbian Mexico accounts of Aztec priests and Mayan gods who cross-dressed and were considered both male and female. In the shifting landscape of gender identity, what might we learn from the indigenous Zapotec people of Oaxaca’s isthmus region, who embrace a third gender—the muxe—within their communities? Zackary Drucker, transgender multimedia artist and producer of the Amazon series Transparent moderates a conversation with Victor Cata, Zapotec historian, writer, and linguist; Bamby Salcedo, founder of the Los Angeles-based TransLatin@Coalition, and Maritza Sanchez, Embajadora de los muxes en el exterior (Ambassador of Muxes in the Exterior.) Simultaneous interpretation was provided by Antena Los Ángeles. This program was produced as part of The Getty's Pacific Standard Time: LA/LAinitiative.

This program was conducted in both Spanish and English. Join us for an evening celebrating indigenous poetry from the United States and Mexico with three major poets—Natalie Diaz (member of the Mojave and Pima Indian tribes, winner of the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, language activist and educator), Layli Long Soldier (an Oglala Lakota poet, writer, and artist whose debut poetry collection WHEREAS is short-listed for the National Book Award), and Natalia Toledo (a Mexican poet and translator who writes in Spanish and Zapotec and won the Nezhualcóyotl Prize, Mexico’s highest honor for indigenous-language literature). Each poet will read from their distinctive work that moves across many languages and lands, exploring what it means to be an indigenous woman writer in today’s world. This special program will also feature a performance by Cahuilla Bird singing master Michael Mirelez and company, who are part of a long, inter-generational tradition of culture bearers within the local Californ

Caitlin Doughty, a mortician, best-selling author, blogger, YouTube personality, and director of the nonprofit funeral home, Undertaking LA, has long been fascinated by death, what it means to treat the dead with dignity, and why we are so afraid of dead bodies. Her new book, From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, sets out on a global journey to discover how other cultures care for their dead. With curiosity and morbid humor, Doughty encounters a range of rituals from a grandpa’s mummy being cared for in a family home in rural Indonesia to a Japanese practice of using chopsticks to pick bones from cremation ashes. As many cultures around the world celebrate their ancestors this time of year, join us for a refreshing look at death practices, mourning rituals, and how we might bring life to the way we think about death.

No American city was more important to the Nazis than Los Angeles, home to Hollywood, the greatest propaganda machine in the world. There were Nazi plots to hang prominent Hollywood figures like Charlie Chaplin, gun down Jews in Boyle Heights, and plans to sabotage local military installations. As law enforcement agencies were busy monitoring the Reds instead of Nazis, an attorney named Leon Lewis and his ring of spies entered the picture. Acclaimed historian and USC Professor Steven J. Ross’ new book, Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America, tells this little-known story of Lewis, whose covert operation infiltrated every Nazi and fascist group in the area to disrupt their plans. Ross is joined by the Jewish Journal’s former Editor-in-Chief Rob Eshman, for a fascinating look at how a daring group of individuals banded together to confront the rise of hate.