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Lisa Brennan-Jobs: "Small Fry" | Talks at Google

Lisa Brennan-Jobs reads from and discusses her new memoir, "Small Fry," a poignant coming-of-age story about growing up in Silicon Valley that chronicles her relationship with her father, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

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Michael Ondaatje on "Warlight: A Novel" at the 2018 Miami Book Fair
Michael Ondaatje on "Warlight: A Novel" at the 2018 Miami Book Fair interviewed by Jeffrey Brown.

From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of The English Patient: a mesmerizing new novel that tells a dramatic story set in the decade after World War II through the lives of a small group of unexpected characters and two teenagers whose lives are indelibly shaped by their unwitting involvement.

In a narrative as beguiling and mysterious as memory itself—shadowed and luminous at once—we read the story of fourteen-year-old Nathaniel, and his older sister, Rachel. In 1945, just after World War II, they stay behind in London when their parents move to Singapore, leaving them in the care of a mysterious figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and they grow both more convinced and less concerned as they come to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women joined by a shared history of unspecified service during the war, all of whom seem, in some way, determined now to protect, and educate (in rather unusual ways) Rachel and Nathaniel. But are they really what and who they claim to be? And what does it mean when the siblings' mother returns after months of silence without their father, explaining nothing, excusing nothing? A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all that he didn't know and understand in that time, and it is this journey—through facts, recollection, and imagination—that he narrates in this masterwork from one of the great writers of our time.
New Poets of Native Nations: 2018 National Book Festival
Heid E. Erdrich, Natalie Diaz and Jennifer Elise Foerster present "New Poets of Native Nations" at the 2018 Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.

Speaker Biography: Natalie Diaz is an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian community and was born in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California. Her poetry collection "When My Brother Was an Aztec" was praised by The New York Times as a "beautiful book." She is a contributor to the anthology "New Poets of Native Nations" (Graywolf). Diaz has played professional basketball and received a full athletic scholarship to Old Dominion University, where she earned a B.A. and an M.F.A. Among her honors is the Louis Untermeyer Scholarship in Poetry from the Bread Loaf Foundation.

Speaker Biography: Natalie Diaz is an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian community and was born in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California. Her poetry collection "When My Brother Was an Aztec" was praised by The New York Times as a "beautiful book." She is a contributor to the anthology "New Poets of Native Nations" (Graywolf). Diaz has played professional basketball and received a full athletic scholarship to Old Dominion University, where she earned a B.A. and an M.F.A. Among her honors is the Louis Untermeyer Scholarship in Poetry from the Bread Loaf Foundation.

Speaker Biography: Poet Jennifer Elise Foerster is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma and one of the contributors to the anthology "New Poets of Native Nations" (Graywolf). She has a B.F.A. from the Institute of American Indian Arts, an M.F.A. from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a Ph.D. from the University of Denver. Her poetry collections are "Leaving Tulsa" and "Bright Raft in the Afterweather." She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Bread Loaf.
Joshua Hunt: "University of Nike" | Talks at Google
In the mid-1990s, facing severe cuts to its public funding, the University of Oregon—like so many colleges across the country—was desperate for cash. Luckily, the Oregon Ducks’ 1995 Rose Bowl berth caught the attention of the school’s wealthiest alumnus: Nike founder Phil Knight, who was seeking new marketing angles at the collegiate level. And so the University of Nike was born: Knight has so far donated more than half a billion dollars to the school in exchange for high-visibility branding opportunities.

But as journalist Joshua Hunt shows in University of Nike, Oregon has paid dearly for the veneer of financial prosperity and athletic success that has come with this brand partnering.
How Writers Build Authenticity Into Diverse Worlds | New York Comic Con 2018
Diversity and representation had never been more important in Science fiction and fantasy. In the era of #OwnVoices, how do writers craft sci-fi or fantasy stories using their own experience to create diverse and compelling worlds? Featuring authors Marlon James, Tochi Onyebuchi, Maura Milan, Julie Kagawa, Sam J. Miller, and moderated by Ali T. Kokmen.
Reading Lu Xun Through Carl Jung
Carolyn Brown discussed her just-published book "Reading Lu Xun Through Carl Jung," which offers a unique approach to the short stories of the most famous modern Chinese writer, Lu Xun (1881-1936). Brown uses foundational elements of the psychology of Carl Jung (1875-1961), who with Freud was the founder of modern Western psychology, to illuminate key structures in the works of this great writer. Approaching these works from a unique direction, Brown's lecture will shed new light on the psychological patterns within Lu Xun???s most famous story, "The True Story of Ah Q."

Speaker Biography: Carolyn Brown is a scholar of Chinese literature and the former director of the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.
The Pushcart Prize XLIII - Best of the Small Presses 2019
The Writers Studio, in partnership with The Strand Bookstore, is pleased to present The Pushcart Prize XLIII - Best of the Small Presses 2019. Published every year since 1976, The Pushcart Prize is the most honored literary project in America, featuring hundreds of presses and writers of short stories, poetry, and essays in its annual collections.

Come together and connect with our writers' community, with readings by:

Cortney Lamar Charleston

Rick Moody

Thylias Moss

Oliver de la Paz

Marisa Silver

Introduction by founder/editor Bill Henderson.

Cortney Lamar Charleston is the author of Telepathologies, selected by D.A. Powell for the 2016 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. He was awarded a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and he has also received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Conversation Literary Festival and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. His poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, New England Review, AGNI, TriQuarterly and elsewhere. He serves as a poetry editor at The Rumpus.

Rick Moody is the author of The Ice Storm, Demonology, Hotels of North America, and many other books. He writes about music at The Rumpus and has an advice column at LitHub.

Thylias Moss, prize-winning multiracial maker, has won a number of awards beginning in 1983 with her poem, “Coming of Age in Sandusky,” for which she received $25.00 from the Cleveland, Ohio Public Library. Since then, she has authored a total of 15 books, most of which have won awards, notably, a MacArthur Genius Fellowship, and two finalist awards from the National Book Critics Circle Award. She will be featuring her novel in verse, Slave Moth written by a literate slave girl, “Varl,” a collection she needed to make after a visit to her son’s middle school, a trip that necessitated her making the dress on the cover, by hand in the dark.

Oliver de la Paz is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Requiem for the Orchard, winner of the Akron Prize for Poetry. His honors include a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Award and a 2009 GAP Grant from Artist Trust. His work has appeared in literary journals and magazines including Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House, Chattahoochee Review, and in anthologies such as Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation.

Marisa Silver is the author of four novels, including Little Nothing and Mary Coin, and two collections of short stories. In 2017, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work has received the Ohioana Book Prize, the Southern California Independent Bookseller Award, and the O. Henry Award. Her short fiction has been published in the New Yorker, as well as other journals, and has been included in The Best American Short Stories and other anthologies. She is a 2018-19 New York Public Library Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow during which time she’ll be working on a new novel, The Mysteries.

Founded in 1987 by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Philip Schultz, The Writers Studio is an independent creative writing program, offering six and eight-week workshops specializing in topics from the necessity of political fiction to writers beginning in their fifties. The classes, which meet in New York City, San Francisco, Tucson, the Hudson Valley and Online utilize an original teaching method which combines technique-based instruction with personal weekly feedback. Since its inception in 1990, The Writers Studio Reading Series has featured numerous writers and poets, including Lydia Davis, Junot Diaz, Andre Dubus III, Jennifer Egan, Mary Gaitskill, Julia Glass, Edward Hirsch, A.M. Homes, Etgar Keret, Marie Ponsot, Robert Pinsky, Gary Shteyngart, Colson Whitehead, and Yehuda Amichai. www.writerstudio.com
Jonathan Weisman, "(((Semitism)))"
Book TV visited the National Press Club's annual Book Fair & Author's Night. There we interviewed Jonathan Weisman about his book "(((Semitism)))."
Nomi Prins: "Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World" | Talks at Google
From a former Wall Street insider and author of All the Presidents' Bankers, a searing exposé of the collusion between public and private banks as they seek to control global markets and dictate economic policy. Central banks and institutions like the IMF and the World Bank are overstepping the boundaries of their mandates by using the flow of money to control global markets and dictate economic policy both at the domestic and global level. These public institutions have become so dependent on funding from private banking and the revolving door between the two worlds is so smooth that public and private banks are effectively working toward the same goals.
Kiese Laymon | Heavy: An American Memoir
Join us as Kiese Laymon shares his highly-anticipated forthcoming book Heavy: An American Memoir.

It's a searing memoir that explores what the weight of a lifetime of secrets, lies, and deception does to a black body, a black family, and a nation teetering on the brink of moral collapse.

With a commitment to facing hard truths, Heavy charts Laymon’s early experiences of sexual violence and toxic masculinity growing up in Jackson, Mississippi; his complex and often painful relationship to his brilliant mother; first-hand experiences with racism in academia; and the physical manifestations of trauma, including obesity, anorexia, and gambling addiction, on his own body.

Kiese Laymon is a black southern writer, born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon attended Millsaps College and Jackson State University before graduating from Oberlin College. He earned an MFA in Fiction from Indiana University. Laymon is currently a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of the award-winning novel, Long Division and a collection of essays, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Laymon has written for numerous publications including New York Times, NPR, Los Angeles Times, Esquire, The Guardian, McSweeneys, Colorlines, The Best American Series, Ebony and many others. He is a contributing editor of Oxford American.
Appel Salon | Susan Orlean | November 22, 2018
"I began the book in what felt like a very different era and the change in the culture made the book feel really urgent in a way I hadn't anticipated: Not only was it about the respect and love for books, it was also about the belief that there can be shared space that is inclusive and that celebrates the idea of a community working together with open doors." —Susan Orlean
Martha C. Nussbaum: The Monarchy of Fear
Acclaimed scholar and humanist Martha C. Nussbaum turns her attention to the current political climate crisis of party polarization, divisive rhetoric, and the increasing inability of two halves of the country to communicate with one another in her most recent work, The Monarchy of Fear. At the heart of the problem, Nussbaum sees a simple truth: The political is always emotional, and the psychological constant of fear of the other will always be at-the-ready to fuel the fires of anger, disgust, envy, and blame. Drawing on a mix of historical and contemporary examples, from classical Athens to the musical Hamilton, Nussbaum will discuss the emotions behind our political culture, and suggest a roadmap for where we might go next.
Alan Hollinghurst: "The Sparsholt Affair" | Talks at Google
Alan Hollinghurst is the award-winning author of "The Swimming Pool Library", "The Folding Star", and 2004 Man Booker Prize winner "The Line of Beauty".

In this talk, he reads from his first novel in six years, "The Sparsholt Affair", a multi-generational exploration of the legacy of a family scandal and the shifting attitudes towards England's gay community from World War II to the present day.
Minneapolis – Be The Facts You Wish To Read: A Press Freedom Discussion
With an overflow in the amount of information that is readily available to us as readers due to the advancement of technology, it may be difficult to understand the facts that are presented to us as consumers of the news. The Target Performance Hall located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was the host location for an in-depth discussion about censorship, news literacy, and the importance of fact-checking with locally based writers and authors.

Panel members for this conversation included Sheila Regan and Sun Yung Shin along with PEN America Members Shannon Gibney, Caroline Casey, and Marya Hornbacher. This panel was moderated by Joanna R. Demkiewicz (The Riveter). When it comes to fraudulent news, you have an active role to play. After this evening, participants were able to take the steps necessary to understand how they can speak up for press freedom and learn to engage in productive dialogue.
Ralph Gibson & Laurie Anderson | Self-Exposure
Self-Exposure is the autobiography of celebrated American art photographer Ralph Gibson. With his 80th birthday on the horizon in January 2019 and a career spanning over 50 years, Gibson is at a point of reflection in his life and work and decided to put pen to paper.

Writing in candid prose, Gibson takes the reader through his life and career from his earliest memories of growing up in California (the son of a Hollywood director, Gibson's childhood is touched by the old glamour of the silver screen: the likes of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth make appearances) to his time in the navy and his continuous love affair with photography.

Gibson's memories are filled with rich characters and period details. Often moving, the narratives of his at times troublesome childhood provide a rich background to the charismatic artist Gibson has become. Gibson covers a range of topics such as music, Catholicism, his wife, Mary Jane, and a long line of fellow artists and photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Robert Frank. His ruminations on his life so far display a deep, thoughtful understanding and self-awareness that make this book a fascinating read in itself as well as an illuminating companion to his work.

What emerges is an insight into the mind of an incredible, highly decorated artist. Evocatively illustrated, Self-Exposure presents Gibson's life story alongside his photographic work. Designed and produced in close collaboration with Gibson, this large-format publication—as much a biography as it is an artist's book—is Gibson's most personal book to date.

Join us as Ralph shares his latest work with fellow artist Laurie Anderson.

Ralph Gibson was born in Los Angeles in 1939. In 1956 he enlisted in the navy, where he began studying photography. His work is widely exhibited and held in public collections around the world, such as the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Laurie Anderson is a American avant-garde artist, composer, musician and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and sculpting, Anderson pursued a variety of performance art projects in New York during the 1970s, focusing particularly on language, technology, and visual imagery.
Lawrence P. Jackson: 2018 National Book Festival
Lawrence P. Jackson discusses "Chester B. Himes: A Biography" at the 2018 Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.

Speaker Biography: Lawrence P. Jackson is the award-winning author of "Chester B. Himes: A Biography" (Norton), a finalist for the NAACP Image Award and the Edgar Award for Biography. A native of Baltimore, Jackson is a prominent historian known for his scholarship on African-American culture and literature. In addition to his highly praised biography of Himes, Jackson has written numerous books that explore African-American narratives: "My Father's Name: A Black Virginia Family after the Civil War," "The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics" and "Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius, 1913-1952." Jackson's forthcoming book is a collection of essays, "Christmas in Baltimore." He is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and History at John Hopkins University.

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Lisa Brennan-Jobs: "Small Fry" | Talks at Google

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