Lannan Foundation Literary Series and In Pursuit of Cultural Freedom Events 2015-2016
All events are at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St. For information, visit www.lannan.org.
Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2015
Elizabeth Alexander with Maureen Corrigan
Elizabeth Alexander is a poet, essayist, playwright, and author of the recent memoir, The Light of the World. Maureen Corrigan is a book critic for National Public Radio’s Fresh Air and a columnist for the Washington Post.
Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015
Henry A. Giroux with Maya Schenwar
Henry A. Giroux has written more than 60 books, including Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education and The Violence of Organized Forgetting: Thinking Beyond America’s Disimagination Machine. He is a contributor to Truthout, a nonprofit, independent online news organization. He talks about the systematic undermining of American democracy by corporate and politically driven interests, followed by a conversation with Maya Schenwar, editor in chief of Truthout and author of Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better.
Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015
Aminatta Forna with Laila Lalami
Novelist Aminatta Forna is the author of The Hired Man, The Memory of Love, Ancestor Stones, and a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water, which investigates the murder of her father. Forna is a Lannan Visiting Chair at Georgetown University and a columnist for The Guardian. Laila Lalami is the author of the novels Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, Secret Son, and The Moor’s Account, winner of the American Book Award and the Arab American Book Award.
Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2015
Richard Falk with Ali Abunimah
Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law and practice at Princeton University and a research fellow at Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, writes about global issues and international law in the books Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope and Chaos and Counterrevolution: After the Arab Spring. Here Falk talks about Palestinian self-determination, followed by a conversation with Ali Abunimah, a journalist and the cofounder and executive director of The Electronic Intifada, an independent, nonprofit, online news organization dedicated to Palestine.
Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor with Donna Murch
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, an assistant professor at the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University, writes about black politics, housing inequality, and issues of race and class. Her book, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, will be published in 2016 by Haymarket Books. Taylor talks about the black liberation movement and the current and historical struggles of African Americans against police violence and for equal rights, and then she talks with Donna Murch, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University and author of Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland.
Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2016 Teju Cole with Amitava Kumar
Teju Cole wrote the novella Every Day Is for the Thief, named a notable book of the year by The New York Times, and the novel Open City. He received the PEN/Hemingway Award and the 2015 Windham Campbell Prize for Fiction and is the Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College. Amitava Kumar has written several books of nonfiction, a novel, and a collection of essays, Lunch With a Bigot: The Writer in the World.
Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2016
Winona LaDuke with Mililani Trask
Indigenous rights activist Winona LaDuke is known for her work on tribal land claims, preservation, and sustainable development. She has twice run as the Green Party’s vice-presidential candidate. Among her books are The Militarization of Indian Country and All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life. LaDuke talks about climate change and climate justice in the indigenous peoples’ communities, followed by a conversation with Mililani Trask, a Native Hawaiian attorney and founding member of the Indigenous Women’s Network.
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Gabrielle Walker with Chris Williams
Gabrielle Walker, an expert on climate change and the energy industry, is the author of Antarctica: An Intimate Portrait of a Mysterious Continent and co-author of The Hot Topic: What We Can Do About Global Warming. She talks about climate change, action, and sustainability, followed by a conversation with Chris Williams, environmental activist and author of Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis.
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Nadeem Aslam with Phil Klay
Nadeem Aslam is a British-Pakistani novelist whose works include Maps for Lost Lovers, The Wasted Vigil, and The Blind Man’s Garden. Phil Klay is the author of the short-story collection Redeployment, winner of the National Book Award for Fiction.
Wednesday, April 6, 2016 Juan Cole with Phyllis Bennis
Juan Cole is the author of Engaging the Muslim World and The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation Is Changing the Middle East. He will talk about the Middle East, highlighting ISIS and recent developments in the region, followed by a conversation with Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., and a fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Karl Ove Knausgaard with Zadie Smith
Karl Ove Knausgaard is a Norwegian author whose books include A Time for Everything, Out of This World, and a sixvolume, 3,600-page autobiographical novel, My Struggle. Zadie Smith has written four novels, including the critically acclaimed White Teeth, as well as a nonfiction book about writing, Fail Better.
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Louise Glück with Peter Streckfus
Louise Glück, a former poet laureate of the United States, has written more than a dozen books of poetry, including Faithful and Virtuous Night. She taught at Williams College for 20 years and is currently Rosenkranz Writer in Residence at Yale University. Peter Streckfus is the author of two volumes of poetry, Errings and The Cuckoo.