Speaker highlights
All of the speakers in the main PLA program will appear at the Greater Columbus Convention Center Hall A, and the program begins on Wednesday with a keynote by
Joy Buolamwini (8:30–10 a.m.). Buolamwini—an MIT researcher and the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, a nonprofit chartered to raise awareness about the impacts of AI and to mitigate biases in the technology— advises governments at home and abroad on preventing AI harms. She is also the author of the recently published Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines (Random House), which PW’s review called “urgent and incisive” and “a vital examination of AI’s pitfalls.”
PLA’s popular Big Ideas speaker series will open on Thursday with a talk by Ta-Nehisi Coates (8–9 a.m.)., the author of, among other works, the 2015 National Book Award–winning Between the World and Me. His journalism career spans more than two decades and includes the National Magazine Award–winning 2012 essay “Fear of a Black President” and the highly influential June 2014 essay “The Case for Reparations.” Coates also enjoyed a run writing Marvel’s Black Panther (2016–2021) and Captain America (2018–2021) comics series.
The Big Idea series continues Friday with a talk with
Mary Annaïse Heglar (8–9 a.m.), a writer who focuses on climate change, climate grief, and climate justice. The cohost and cocreator of the Hot Take podcast and newsletter (which she retired in 2022), Heglar has written for major media outlets and is the author of the just-published children’s book This World Is Yours to
Cherish, illustrated by Vivian Mineker (Random House Kids). Heglar is also the editor of the recently announced ’Til Earth and Heaven Ring—an all-Black climate anthology to be published by Pantheon Books.
The PLA main speaker program closes Friday evening with a talk with Dulcé Sloan (5–6 p.m). Sloan has been a correspondent on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show since 2017. She is also the author of the just-published memoir Hello, Friends!: Stories of Dating, Destiny, and Day Jobs (Andscape Books), which PW’s review praised as a collection of “brash and funny reflections” on such topics as her love life, going to a predominantly white school, and the vagaries of establishing a career in comedy.