Aloud @ Los Angeles Public Library

 The award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of The Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia delivers an exhilarating new novel about the creative partnership of marriage, and the yoke joining love, art, and power. Framed in Greek mythology and told from the opposing perspectives of husband and wife, Fates and Furies digs beneath the surface of a “good” marriage and vividly explores the duplicitous nature of a loving, yet surprisingly complicated relationship over the course of 24 years. One of the most talented writers of her generation, Groff visits ALOUD to discuss her dazzling literary masterpiece that will stir both the mind and the heart.**Click here to see photos from the program. 

Over the past three decades, the critically acclaimed and bestselling author of three previous memoirs, Mary Karr has elevated the art of the deeply personal genre to become one of the most influential memoirists working today. In her newest work, Karr pulls back the curtain on her craft. The rare, brilliant practitioner who is also a distinguished teacher, Karr breaks down key elements from her favorite memoirs and reflects on the challenges of transforming memories for the page. Reserve your seat at ALOUD for a master class with a master craftsman.**Click here to see photos from the program.

 In the wake of an historic summer of groundbreaking Supreme Court decisions, Justice Stephen Breyer returns to ALOUD to discuss the ever-evolving influences on America’s highest court. In his latest book, The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities, Justice Breyer considers the great legal challenges facing our increasingly globalized and interdependent world. From sweeping national security policy to the use of online sites like Airbnb for international commerce, judicial awareness is no longer contained within America’s borders. Hear from one of today’s most pragmatic legal luminaries on how the world beyond our national frontiers is steering American law, and how this expansion is drawing American jurists into a new role of “constitutional diplomats.” Co-presented with The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts **Click here for photos of the event. 

 Returning to ALOUD after receiving the 2012 Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award for his distinguished commitment to libraries and literature, Rushdie shares his newest work of fiction. Inspired by the traditional “wonder tales” of the East and set in a strange near-future New York City, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights blends history, mythology, and a timeless love story. Satirical and bawdy, full of cunning and folly, kismet and karma, rapture and redemption, Rushdie’s novel is a masterpiece about the age-old conflicts that remain in today’s world. Discussing this work with Héctor Tobar, one of L.A.’s most respected voices, Rushdie takes the stage for a magical evening of storytelling.**Click here to see photos from the program. 

Laura KarpmanWith performance by Janai Brugger (soprano), Victoria Kirsch (piano), Taura Stinson (voice) and David Young (bass)From Africa to the Americas, the south to the north, cities to suburbs, opera to jazz, gospel to be-bop, and “shadows to fire”—discover “Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz,” Hughes’ response to the riots at the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival. Emmy Award-winning composer Laura Karpman, originally commissioned by Carnegie Hall to create the first vocal performance of Hughes’ poem, created an orchestral composition with plural voices including Hughes’, projected images, and recorded selections drawn from a dozen musical traditions, in an epic tapestry evoking the turbulent flux of American cultural life. This special presentation of “Ask Your Mama,” adapted for the ALOUD stage, features Karpman and soprano Janai Brugger, and marks the release of a new recording of the orchestral work. *Click here to see photos from the program!

Leslie Jamison and Meghan DaumIn conversation with Molly Pulda, Provost's Postdoctoral Scholar in the Humanities, USCLeslie Jamison’s critically acclaimed The Empathy Exams confronts our personal and cultural urgency to feel. In The Unspeakable, Los Angeles Times opinion columnist Meghan Daum defiantly pushes back against the false sentimentality and shrink-wrapped platitudes that surround so much of contemporary American experience. With piercing insight and wit, hear from two of today’s most thought-provoking and intimately honest essayists, grappling with the modern complexities of being human.*Click here to see photos from the program!  

Panel discussion with Ron Finley, Elizabeth Medrano and Neelam SharmaIn conversation with author Josh Kun, author and professor, USC Annenberg School for CommunicationThe L.A. food scene is as trendy, tweeted, pop-upped, and profit-busting as it’s ever been, and yet more people are going hungry at a greater rate than perhaps any other moment in the city’s history. As the USDA has declared, Los Angeles is the nation’s “epicenter of hunger,” where the phrase “food insecurity”—lacking reliable access to nutritious and safe food—has become as much a part of the local vernacular for activists and organizers as sunshine and traffic. In a special collaboration with the Library Foundation to rediscover the Los Angeles Public Library’s vast archive, USC professor Josh Kun uses the Library’s menu collection to explore the shaping of Los Angeles. With vintage menus as our guides, join Kun for a conversation about the struggles and triumphs of contemporary food activism with urban gardener Ron Finley, the Healthy School

Lynell George and Marisela NorteWith live DJ mix by Frosty of dublab“Love, Los Angeles” is a letter in progress—a series of notes, fragments, reflections and odes—written by two native daughters navigating the quickly-changing landscape of contemporary Los Angeles. Through photographs and texts, journalist and essayist Lynell George and writer Marisela Norte have tunneled on foot from Boyle Heights to Venice and the Miracle Mile to Arcadia, crisscrossing time, place, dreams, and memory. Share in these in-the-moment observations of hope, grit, faith and longing as they are presented for the first time on stage, and eavesdrop on this intimate look into the heart of our city.*Click here to see photos from the program. 

Readings and conversations with Luis Alberto Ambroggio, Christopher Merrill and Sholeh WolpéMusical performance by Sahba MotallebiWith all of its American idioms, virtues, and contradictions, what is it about Walt Whitman’s epic verse “Song of Myself” that so deeply resonates across other cultures and languages? In 2013, Christopher Merrill, the director of the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa, launched “Every Atom,” a multimedia project to collectively translate the poem in 15 languages, working with fellow poets and translators Luis Alberto Ambroggio and Sholeh Wolpé. Join us for a spirited evening of poetry and music, featuring a performance by internationally renowned musician Sahba Motallebi, as these collaborators explore how Whitman’s radical poetic vision lives and breathes in English, Persian, and Spanish.*Click here to see photos from the program! 

Panel discussion with chefs Cynthia Hawkins, and Ricardo DiazIn conversation with Josh Kun, author and professor, USC Annenberg School for CommunicationCan a city’s history be told through restaurant menus? In a second installment of a special collaboration with the Library Foundation to rediscover the Los Angeles Public Library’s vast archive, USC professor Josh Kun uses the Library’s menu collection to explore the shaping of Los Angeles, from the city’s first restaurants in the 1850s up through the most recent food revolutions. Join him for a multimedia tour of the L.A. menu paired with a conversation on L.A. food past and present with chefs Cynthia Hawkins (Hawkins House of Burgers), and Ricardo Diaz (Colonia Publica)*Click here to see photos from the program! 

In conversation with Alex Cohen, co-host of KPCC's "Take Two"Co-presented with the Japanese American Cultural and Community CenterOn this special evening, one of America’s most beloved storytellers, Judy Blume, will discuss her work—from young adult classics like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret to her new novel for adults, In the Unlikely Event. The story, inspired by a series of real-life plane crashes that occurred in the 1950s in Blume’s home town of Elizabeth, New Jersey, weaves together three generations of families, friends and strangers, whose lives are profoundly changed by a succession of disasters. This iconic author who has won the hearts and minds of readers of all ages, is also known for her passionate advocacy to protect the freedom to read. She will be joined in conversation with KPCC host and super Blume fan, Alex Cohen. Join us for a night to remember! *Click here to see photos from the event!  

The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet discusses her new memoir, a gorgeous kaleidoscope of self and family, that explores the meaning of home against a complex backdrop of race, religion, and unbreakable bonds. With lyrical precision and a tender intelligence, Smith delves into the life and death of her mother.  Smith struggles to understand her mother’s steadfast Christian faith, ultimately discovering her own prayer-like solace in poetry. Lynell George, whose own body of work includes reflections about place, family, and her mother, leads an intimate conversation with Smith about the extraordinary journey of a daughter.*Click here to see photos from the event! 

The masterful poet and essayist shares her latest two works—Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World, a dazzling collection of essays on poetry, and The Beauty, her newest book of poems—for a close look at poetry’s power to expand our perception of the perimeters of existence. Join Hirshfield as she walks us through many wonderful poems, examining how they work by tuning our attention, renovating language and unfastening the mind.*Click here to see photos from the event!  

Co-presented with LéaLA, Feria del Libro en Español de Los ÁngelesInspired by the author’s years living in Mexico and ten years of field research, this transporting, visceral novel tells the story of young women in rural Guerrero who live in the shadows of the drug war. The poetic narrative of heroine Ladydi--disguised by her mother as a boy for protection from the vicious cartels—shows great resilience and resolve as a young woman caught in a real-life nightmare. This fictionalized work by award-winning author and the former President of PEN Mexico, ensures that the most vulnerable voices cannot be silenced at a time when fiction never seemed truer to fact than the present. *Click here to see photos from the event! 

Featuring Sydney Barile, Justin Evans, Amanda Foushee, Melissa Gutierrez, Michael Mitchell, Nicole Olweean, Niela Orr, Sean Pessin, Julian Smith-Newman and Paula Tang.Our second annual gathering unites students from five Southland graduate writing programs—CalArts, Otis College, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, and USC—to share recent work and tune our ears to the future of language. What are the ideas, forms, questions, syntaxes, images, and narratives of our immediate future? Who better as our compass in the wilds of the now than emerging writers? *Click here to see photos from the event!

Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics, has time and time again offered a singular voice of reason to diagnose America’s greatest economic challenges. In his provocative new book, the bestselling author makes an urgent case for Americans to solve inequality now. Veteran journalist Jim Newton engages Stiglitz in conversation, probing for answers to the greatest threat to American prosperity—the yawning gap between the rich and the poor.*Click here to see photos from the program!

Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics, has time and time again offered a singular voice of reason to diagnose America’s greatest economic challenges. In his provocative new book, the bestselling author makes an urgent case for Americans to solve inequality now. Veteran journalist Jim Newton engages Stiglitz in conversation, probing for answers to the greatest threat to American prosperity—the yawning gap between the rich and the poor. *Click here to see photos from the event!   

Espíritu Rebelde: Letras de Poder y ProtestaAna Tijoux en conversación con la poeta y traductora Jen HoferPresentado en conjunto con la Asociación Filarmónica de Los ÁngelesAlzando su voz por los derechos de las mujeres, la reforma migratoria, el activismo ambiental y demás, la cantante nominada al GRAMMY, Ana Tijoux, ha transformado el escenario mundial con sus versos cargados de fuerza política. Las composiciones de Tijoux, sin límites geográficos o de género musical, reflejan las influencias literarias de su juventud y las ricas tradiciones musicales de su Chile natal. De Eduardo Galeano a Violeta Parra, escucha –mediante conversación y canto- las inspiraciones que impulsan su espíritu rebelde.Co-presented with the Los Angeles Philharmonic AssociationRebel Spirit: Lyrics of Power and ProtestRaising her voice for women’s rights, immigration reform, environmental activism, and more, GRAMMY-nominated musician Ana Tijoux has transformed the global stage with her politically powered verses. Unbounded by geograp

The veteran journalist and critically acclaimed author of The Lemon Tree brings us another true story of hope in the Palestinian-Israeli impasse. His newest book, Children of the Stone, chronicles a young violist--- Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan-- who escapes a Palestinian refugee camp and later returns to fulfill his dream: establishing a music school with the help of Israeli musicians including Daniel Barenboim, director of the Berlin State Opera and La Scala. Join Tolan for a moving conversation about how a love of music transforms and empowers lives in a war-torn land. *Click here to see photos of the program!  

A veteran of twenty years of human rights research and activism and recent recipient of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Bennoune offers an eye-opening chronicle of peaceful resistance to extremism in her recent book. Scouring the globe for stories of heroic individuals—artists, doctors, lawyers, and educators— who challenge stereotypes of Islamist fundamentalism, Bennoune shares these vivid portraits that offer an uplifting look at our best hopes for ending fundamentalist oppression worldwide. *Click here to see photos from the program!