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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. 
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? 
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. 
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) 
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