TICKETS NOW AVAILABLE FOR 2019 TRIBUNE LITERARY AWARDS

Join us later this month as we celebrate the Tribune’s longstanding commitment to the literary arts with a series of awards recognizing the outstanding accomplishments of critic and historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., novelist Rebecca Makkai and journalist Sarah Smarsh. Gates will receive the Tribune’s Literary Award for lifetime achievement, while Makkai and Smarsh will each receive a Heartland Prize for their most recent books.

Smarsh, author of “Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth,” will appear in conversation with Tribune columnist Mary Schmich on Sunday, Oct. 27 at 12:30 p.m. A program featuring Makkai, author of “The Great Believers,” and Tribune columnist Rick Kogan will follow at 4:30 p.m. Gates will talk with Tribune publisher and editor-in-chief Bruce Dold on Sunday, Nov. 3 at 11 a.m.

Gates is widely celebrated as one of the foremost authorities on the history of African American literature. Credited with discovering the earliest known literary works by African American writers, Gates is also celebrated for the work he has done to make history accessible and appealing through his PBS show, “Finding Your Roots,” and through his numerous, acclaimed documentaries. In his newest book, “Stony The Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow,” Gates argues that the roots of contemporary structural racism can be traced to this transformative period following the Civil War. He demonstrates yet again why he is one of America’s most powerful voices on race and history.

“Heartland,” a National Book Award finalist, is required reading for anyone seeking insight into the realities of American poverty. Stories from Smarsh’s own life as a fifth-generation member of a Kansas wheat farming family are contextualized with incisive sociological analysis. It’s a powerful portrayal of a very real divide in the United States: one between the working class and the American dream.

“The Great Believers” was lauded in these pages as “a swing for the literary fences, a vast, ambitious epic,” representing “a grand fusion of the past and the present, the public and the personal.” The novel, set in Chicago and Paris, depicts both the height of the American AIDS epidemic and its aftermath for those who loved and lost during the worst of its ravages. The book was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Each of the programs are presented in partnership with the Chicago Humanities Festival. Tickets are on sale now at chicagohumanities.org.