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PEN World Voices: What Went Wrong?

The Moth storytelling series presents "What Went Wrong?" at the 2011 PEN World Voices Festival, featuring Jonathan Franzen, Warren Macdonald, Jenny Allen, Edgar Oliver, and Elif Shafa.

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Sarah McBride & Jennifer Finney Boylan | Tomorrow Will Be Different
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.
Martin Amis | Appel Salon
"You've got to hold on to the meanings of words for as long as you can, and then cease to use them when they become ambiguous." —Martin Amis

One of the world's most provocative and widely read writers discuss his definitive collection of essays and reportage written during the past 30 years. Martin Amis in conversation with Brent Bambury.
Directorate S: Steve Coll on the CIA & America’s Secret Wars
The U.S. is intensifying its air war in Afghanistan as U.S. Central Command has announced it is shifting military resources from Iraq and Syria back to Afghanistan, where the United States has been fighting for over 16 years in the longest war in U.S. history. U.S. Air Force Major General James Hecker recently said Afghanistan has “become CENTCOM’s main effort.” The news comes after a particularly bloody period in Afghanistan. Despite the spiraling violence, President Trump recently ruled out negotiations with the Taliban during a meeting of members of the United Nations Security Council. We speak to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll about his new book, “Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
Caitlin Moran - Penguin Random House Presents 2018
Caitlin Moran is back with her latest novel How to be Famous, her follow up to the bestselling How to Build a Girl - and was on hand to join us on the sofa.

As well as the new book, topics of conversation included how famous people have really big heads and bad sex at 17 ("You think it's maybe something you'll get used to - like whisky and olives").
NBCC Finalists Readings for Award Year 2017
On Wednesday, March 14, 2018, the night before the awards ceremony, many of the finalists read from their work at the New School Here is the complete video. See below for order of appearances.

Welcome: Luis Jaramillo, Interim Director, The New School Writing Program

Opening Remarks: Kate Tuttle, President, National Book Critics Circle

Poetry

Nuar Alsadir, Fourth Person Singular (Liverpool University Press/Oxford)

James Longenbach, Earthling (Norton)

Layli Long Soldier, Whereas (Graywolf)

Frank Ormsby, The Darkness of Snow (Wake Forest University Press)

Criticism

Carina Chocano, You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages (Mariner)

Edwidge Danticat, The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story (Graywolf)

Camille T. Dungy, Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History (Norton)

Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions (Coffee House)

Kevin Young, Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts and Fake News (Graywolf)

Autobiography

Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir (Abrams)

Biography

Caroline Fraser, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Metropolitan Books)

Edmund Gordon, The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography (Oxford)

Howard Markel, The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek (Pantheon)

William Taubman, Gorbachev: His Life and Times (Norton)

Kenneth Whyte, Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times (Knopf)

Fiction

Joan Silber, Improvement (Counterpoint)

Nonfiction

Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea (Liveright)

Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America (Simon & Schuster)

Masha Gessen, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (Riverhead)
Njinga of Angola: Africa's Warrior Queen
Linda Heywood discussed her book "Njinga of Angola: Africa's Warrior Queen," about this multifaceted and successful 17th-Century African ruler.

Speaker Biography: Linda Heywood is a professor of African history and the history of the African diaspora and African-American studies at Boston University.
NBCC Awards Ceremony for Award Year 2017
Event held on March 15, 2018 at the New School, New York, NY

Welcome: Luis Jaramillo, Interim Director, The New School Writing Program

Opening Remarks: Kate Tuttle, President, National Book Critics Circle

John Leonard Prize: Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties (Graywolf)

Introduced by Daniel Akst

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing: Charles Finch

Introduced by Katherine A. Powers

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award: John McPhee

Introduced by Michael Schaub and Stacey Vanek Smith

Poetry

Layli Long Soldier, Whereas (Graywolf)

Introduced by Tess Taylor

Criticism

Carina Chocano, You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages (Mariner) Edwidge Danticat, The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story (Graywolf)

Introduced by Carlin Romano

Autobiography

Xiaolu Guo, Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China (Grove)

Introduced by Laurie Hertzel

Biography

Caroline Fraser, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Metropolitan Books)

Introduced by Elizabeth Taylor

Nonfiction

Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America (Simon & Schuster)

Introduced by Mary Ann Gwinn

Fiction

Joan Silber, Improvement (Counterpoint)

Introduced by Tom Beer
Rwanda Women Rising
Swanee Hunt discussed her book "Rwandan Women Rising," the story of how the female population of the tiny African nation led that country's rebirth after the horrific 1994 genocide that left nearly a million dead.

Speaker Biography: A former U.S. Ambassador to Austria, Swanee Hunt chairs the Washington-based Institute for Inclusive Security. She is the Eleanor Roosevelt Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, CEO of Hunt Alternatives and a member of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations.
The Media, Myth & Fake News: From Watergate to Today
American University professor W. Joseph Campbell discusses the rise of "fake news" and the prevalence of media myths in this talk drawn from a new, expanded edition of his book "Getting It Wrong: Debunking the Greatest Myths in American Journalism."

Speaker Biography: W. Joseph Campbell is a professor in the School of Communication at American University. He is the author of "Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies," "The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and Clash of Paradigms" and "Getting It Wrong."
FIRST LOOK: Trump U., the Inside Story of Trump University
"Trump U." is the only insider account to emerge from Trump University, one of the president's signature cons. At the heart of the outrage is Stephen Gilpin, a self-taught real estate wunderkind who found himself unwittingly at the center of a shadowy "cabal of charlatans."
Left of Black with Brittney Cooper
Left of Black host Dr. Mark Anthony Neal travels to Wake Forest University to talk with 2018 Anna Julia Cooper lecturer, Dr. Brittney Cooper.

Dr. Brittney Cooper is an Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University. She's the author of Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (University of Illinois Press, May 2017) and Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower (St. Martin’s, February 2018), and the co-editor of The Crunk Feminist Collection (The Feminist Press 2017).

Dr. Neal teaches Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African-American Studies at Duke University.
Jimmy O. Yang + Awkwafina: HIGHLIGHTS
Actor/comedian Jimmy O. Yang and actress/rapper Awkwafina (aka Nora Lum) discuss Yang’s new book “How to American,” their roles in the upcoming film adaptation of “Crazy Rich Asians,” growing up Asian-American and why Nora never became a meat inspector.

As a stand-up comedian, actor, and fan favorite as the character Jian Yang from the popular HBO series Silicon Valley, Jimmy O. Yang has achieved the American dream, but he wasn’t born into it. He started his journey as a teenage immigrant from Hong Kong, determinedly chasing the elusive Hollywood career. He defied his parents’ wishes, learning English by watching BET RapCity for three hours a day, and worked as a strip club DJ while pursuing a career in comedy. He was almost deported during a trip abroad before finally becoming a US citizen. Now he’s written a memoir recounting it all.

In his book “How to American,” Jimmy O. tells those stories and many more, while sharing some hard-earned lessons and insightful advice for those looking to achieve the American Dream.
Nathan Englander interview at AWP 2018
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?
Stephen Fry: The Waterstones Interview
The font of all knowledge on QI for many years, Stephen Fry has the kind of voice and authority that makes listening to him such a joy. His latest book Mythos is a retelling of the Greek myths and in this exclusive interview he told us about why he finds them so enthralling and why these ancient tales still speak so clearly to readers today.
Inauguration of Jacqueline Woodson as the Ambassador for Young People's Lit
The Library of Congress in collaboration with the Children's Book Council and Every Child a Reader inaugurated Jacqueline Woodson as the new National Ambassador for Young People's Literature.

Speaker Biography: Carla Hayden is the 14th Librarian of Congress.

Speaker Biography: Gene Yang was the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature from 2016 to 2017.

Speaker Biography: Carl Lennertz is the executive director of the Children's Book Council.

Speaker Biography: Jacqueline Woodson is the new National Ambassador for Young People's Literature from 2018 to 2019.

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PEN World Voices: What Went Wrong?

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