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Deborah Eisenberg reading at the University of Richmond

Ben Marcus has called MacArthur "genius" grant winner Deborah Eisenberg "one of the most important fiction writers now at work." Here she is reading "Some Other Better Otto," a story featuring a "very very irritable person at the best of times" who is in a "particularly horrible mood right now."

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Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change
“Extreme Cities” author Ashley Dawson in conversation with Kate Aronoff and Mandy Ikert. Moderated by Audrea Lim. Recorded at Verso Books in Brooklyn on October 20, 2017.

Ashley Dawson, author of “Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change,” offers an accessibly written discussion of two of the greatest forces affecting society in the twenty-first century: urbanization and climate change. Anchored in a portrait of New York City during and after Hurricane Sandy, he adopts a comparative lens to show how and why extreme social and climatological conditions are germinating in cities around the globe.

In addition to painting the challenges urban civilization faces in the twenty-first century in stark terms, “Extreme Cities” lays out a program for the socially just cities that are necessary to help humanity survive the coming storms of climate chaos.
A Celebration of Gwendolyn Brooks
Elizabeth Alexander, Tyehimba Jess, Yusef Komunyakaa, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Marilyn Nelson, Sharon Olds, Atsuro Riley, Sapphire, Solmaz Sharif and Patricia Smith get together for an evening of readings to celebrate the centenary of Gwendolyn Brooks — part of a year-long, nationwide tribute to one of America’s most influential poets whose career offers an example of an artist always responsive to the dramatic historical, political and aesthetic changes and challenges she lived through. Co-sponsored by Our Miss Brooks: A Centennial Celebration, the Academy of American Poets, Cave Canem Foundation, the NYU Creative Writing Program, the Poetry Society of America, Poets House and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (NYPL).

Recorded on Monday, November 13 at 92nd Street Y.
George Monbiot talks about Rules for Revolutionaries
This video is a portion of George Monbiot's talk "Out of the Wreckage" filmed for The Gaia Foundation

From The Gaia Foundation:

"In this powerful and positive talk for The Gaia Foundation, George Monbiot brings to life his new book, Out of the Wreckage - A New Politics for an Age of Crisis.

George explains how a toxic ideology of extreme competition and individualism not only rules the world, but misrepresents human nature, thereby destroying hope and common purpose whilst fracturing communities and the ecosystems upon which we all depend. He argues that only a positive vision can replace it; a new story that re-engages people in politics and lights a path to a better world, and a more respectful relationship with our beautiful planet.

George explore new findings in psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology cast human nature in a radically different light: as the supreme altruists and cooperators. He shows how we can build on these findings to create a new politics: a ‘politics of belonging’, and a politics which has community, reciprocity and respect for all species at its heart. Both democracy and economic life can be radically reorganised from the bottom up, enabling us to take back control and overthrow the forces that have thwarted our ambitions for a better society and better stewardship of the Earth.

George provides a thrilling and positive vision, and the hope and clarity required to change the world.

Find out more about The Gaia Foundation and our events here www.gaiafoundation.org

This was filmed in Heath Street Baptist Church, North London by Ben Gray for The Gaia Foundation. 23rd November 2017."
John Banville and Claire Messud reading new work
In Mrs. Osmond, his vivid and poignant new novel about a wholly modern woman, John Banville imagines a sequel to Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady. “He is one of the great living masters of English-language prose,” wrote the Los Angeles Times. Claire Messud’s new novel, The Burning Girl, is a hypnotic coming-of-age story about the bond of best friends and a complex portrait of female adolescence. “She has the imagination, the craft and the understanding of human nature to write about anything she chooses,” wrote the Chicago Tribune.

Introductions by Colum McCann and Liesl Schillinger

Recorded Thursday, November 16 at 92nd Street Y.
John Hodgman on VACATIONLAND
Hodgman speaks to the Amazon Book Review about painful beaches, bad facial hair, and his memoir, VACATIONLAND.
"Why do you have a grudge against America, Mr. Dorfman?"
Homeland Security Ate My Speech: Messages from the End of the World is an emotionally raw yet measured assessment of the United States after the election of Donald Trump from literary legend and political dissident Ariel Dorfman.
Masha Gessen - LIVE From The NYPL
Masha Gessen comes to the New York Public Library in honor of the annual Robert P. Silver Lecture.

Masha Gessen seven words :

Fetus

Transgender

Diversity

Vulnerable

Entitlement

Evidence Based

Science Based

Recorded live at the Celeste Bartos Forum at the New York Public Library on December 18, 2017
Jason Reynolds reads from Long Way Down
Jason Reynolds reads from his YA verse novel, Long Way Down, beautifully illustrated by Chris Priestley.

Excerpted from the audiobook: Long Way Down.

Published by Faber & Faber, 2018

Synopsis:

After Will's brother is shot in a gang crime, he knows the next steps. Don't cry. Don't snitch. Get revenge. So he gets in the lift with Shawn's gun, determined to follow The Rules. Only when the lift door opens, Buck walks in, Will's friend who died years ago. And Dani, who was shot years before that. As more people from his past arrive, Will has to ask himself if he really knows what he's doing.
Salman Rushdie and Daniel Alarcón reading new works
Set against the backdrop of American culture and politics, Salman Rushdie’s new novel, The Golden House, is a modern epic of love and terrorism, loss and reinvention. Full of unforgettable characters, Daniel Alarcón’s The King is Always Above the People is a new collection of stories about immigration, broken dreams, Los Angeles gang members and Latin American families. “He’s a storyteller whose wisdom outpaces his youth and whose talent is already ablaze,” wrote ZZ Packer.

Introduced by Emma Brockes and Laura Perciasepe
Ruth Whippman: "America the Anxious"
Ruth Whippman discusses her new book, America the Anxious: How Our Pursuit of Happiness is Creating a Nation of Nervous Wrecks. When Whippman, a British journalist, moved to California, she found that the most common obsession amongst the people she met was finding happiness. But it seems as though all the yoga, mindfulness, and self-help seminars are actually making us less happy, not more.
Mexico's Nobodies: The Cultural Legacy of the Soldadera & Afro-Mexican Women
Christine Arce discusses her book, "Mexico's Nobodies: The Cultural Legacy of the Soldadera and Afro-Mexican Women," which examines key figures of Mexican history that have remained anonymous despite their proliferation in the arts: soldaderas and Afro-Mexicans.
Tony Kushner and Jeremy McCarter: Radical Stories
How has America been made and remade by men and women who dream of a better world? Why do we tell and retell their stories? Jeremy McCarter, author of Young Radicals: In the War for American Ideals and co-author with Lin-Manuel Miranda of Hamilton: The Revolution, comes to CHF for an urgently needed conversation about the challenge and the necessity of depicting American dreamers with Tony Kushner, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Angels in America, the Academy Award-nominated screenplay of Lincoln, and the forthcoming The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. Join us for a timely discussion about American ideals and the people who fight for them.
Meghan L. O'Sullivan, Windfall
Meghan L. O'Sullivan discusses her new book, 'Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America's Power.'
Kevin Young: Bunk, Humbug, and Fake News
“There goes Kevin Young again, giving us books we greatly need, cleverly disguised as books we merely want. Unexpectedly essential.” — Marlon James

Kevin Young, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and Poetry editor of The New Yorker, joins us for a timely conversation about his latest book, Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post–Facts, and Fake News, which traces a peculiarly American history, woven from stereotype and suspicion, with race as the most insidious hoax of all. From Joice Heth, a black woman whom P.T. Barnum presented as George Washington’s 161–year–old nursemaid, to the made–up memoirs of James Frey, to the identity theft of Rachel Dolezal, Young reveals how forgers and frauds sell us lies.
Fiction lovers panel with Emily Ruskovich, Lisa Wingate, and Elizabeth Berg
Novelists Emily Ruskovich (IDAHO), Lisa Wingate (BEFORE WE WERE YOURS), and Elizabeth Berg (THE STORY OF ARTHUR TRULUV) discuss their latest books and literary lives. Moderated by Refinery29’s Elizabeth Kiefer. Filmed at Random House Off the Page in New York City, 11/9/17.

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