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Nathan Englander is with PBS Books to talk about his latest novel, Dinner at the Center of the Earth. Englander was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2013. He’s also a Guggenheim fellow and was selected as one of “20 Writers for the 21st Century” by The New Yorker.
FROM THE PUBLISHER:
A prisoner in a secret cell. The guard who has watched over him a dozen years. An American waitress in Paris. A young Palestinian man in Berlin who strikes up an odd friendship with a wealthy Canadian businessman. And The General, Israel's most controversial leader, who lies dying in a hospital, the only man who knows of the prisoner's existence.
From these vastly different lives Nathan Englander has woven a powerful, intensely suspenseful portrait of a nation riven by insoluble conflict, even as the lives of its citizens become fatefully and inextricably entwined—a political thriller of the highest order that interrogates the anguished, violent division between Israelis and Palestinians, and dramatizes the immense moral ambiguities haunting both sides. Who is right, who is wrong—who is the guard, who is truly the prisoner? 
“I became a writer once I realised no one liked my stuff.” Watch Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey’s favourite author, Pulitzer Prize-winning Colson Whitehead, on how rejections of his first stab at a novel made him realize that he wanted to pursue writing.
As a child, Whitehead read a lot of Marvel comic books and initially wanted to work within that genre. It wasn't until he started working for the New York newspaper The Village Voice that he began writing, and being a freelance journalist furthermore allowed him the time to write fiction. However, his first attempt at a novel was rejected several times – he was even dumped by his agent – but this only made him want to continue writing: “I had no choice than to keep going and start another novel, and that was ‘The Intuitionist’, which came out in 1999.”
“I figured if you know how to do a certain kind of story, why do it again?” Whitehead likes to switch genres, “moving from pseudo-detective novels to non-fiction to horror novels” to keep it interesting – and challenging – for him as a writer: “If there’s an element of fear involved in not knowing how it’s going to work out in terms of execution, that’s always good.” If Whitehead is unsure about which direction to take a story, he writes his ideas in two different notebooks, going with the one where the ideas seem to flow more freely. He takes notes for up to a year before he starts writing, figuring out the characters as well as the beginning and the end: “I have to know the destination before I set out.”
Colson Whitehead (b. 1969) is an award-winning American novelist. He is the author of several novels, including his debut ‘The Intuitionist’ (1999) and ‘The Underground Railroad’ (2016), for which he won the prestigious 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He has also written the non-fiction book ‘The Colossus of New York’ (2003). Whitehead is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (2002) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2013). He lives and works in New York City.
Colson Whitehead was interviewed by Tonny Vorm in August 2017 in connection with the Louisiana Litera-ture festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. 
Trans advocates Sarah McBride and Prof. Jennifer Finney Boylan discuss McBride’s powerful new memoir, “Tomorrow Will Be Different.”
Before Sarah McBride became the first transgender person to speak at a national political convention, Sarah struggled with the sadly familiar challenge several young members of the LGBTQ community face: whether or not to come out – not just to family, but to her peers, her classmates she led from her role as student body president.
Sarah knew she was a girl from her earliest memories, but it wasn’t until the Facebook post announcing her truth went viral that she realized just how much impact her story could have on the country. Four years later, she had become one of the most prominent transgender activists, working within the walls of the White House, advocating the passing of laws, and addressing the country in the midst of a heated presidential election.
Informative, heartbreaking, and empowering, “Tomorrow Will Be Different” is Sarah’s story of love and loss, a powerful entry into the LGBTQ community’s battle for equal rights and what it means to be openly transgender.
Sarah McBride is a LGBT rights activist and political figure. She is currently the National Press Secretary of the Human Rights Campaign, and is largely credited with the passage of legislation in Delaware banning discrimination on the basis of gender identity in employment, housing, insurance, and public accommodations. She has been a speaker at the Democratic National Convention, becoming the first openly transgender person to address a major party convention in American history.
Professor Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of fifteen books, is the inaugural Anna Quindlen Writer in Residence at Barnard College of Columbia University. Her column “Men & Women” appears on the op/ed page of the New York Times on alternate Wednesdays. From 2011 to 2018 she served on the Board of Directors of GLAAD, the media advocacy group for LGBT people worldwide. She was a consultant and cast member for I AM CAIT, the docu-series about Caitlyn Jenner that debuted on the E! network in July of 2015; and also served as a consultant to the Amazon series TRANSPARENT. Her 2003 memoir, “She’s Not There: a Life in Two Genders” (Broadway/Doubleday/Random House) was the first bestselling work by a transgender American. With Katharine Ashe, Lisa Kleypas, Beverly Jenkins, Alisha Rai, Alyssa Cole, & Ron Hogan
The romance genre has been objectified since its inception, but has grown into the foremost feminist genre, written for women/by women. This panel features some of the foremost authors of the genre, and a few of the young, diverse voices actively working to evolve the genre and general public perception, coming together to discuss the appeal, power and strength of Romance to an open-minded (male) moderator. It’s time to turn the tables, and womansplain the appeal and cultural relevance of the most popular commercial genre.
