Social activist Patrisse Cullors is the New York Times bestselling author of When They Call You A Terrorist and the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. Since she began the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013, it has expanded into a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated global foundation, supporting Black-led movements in the US, UK, and Canada. Now, in her new book, An Abolitionist’s Handbook, Cullors charts a framework for how everyday activists can effectively fight for an abolitionist present and future. Filled with relatable pedagogy on the history of abolition, a reimagining of what reparations look like for Black lives and real-life anecdotes from Cullors, An Abolitionist’s Handbook offers a bold, innovative, and humanistic approach to how to be a modern-day abolitionist. Cullors will be in conversation with Our Existence Beyond Trauma Series curator, Ijeoma Oluo, for this online-only event, which is co-presented by Langston Seattle.

Since 2012, Jelani Cobb has been contributing his deep knowledge of history and masterful journalism to The New Yorker, bringing nuance and clarity around issues of race, politics, history, and culture. Cobb is the Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism at Columbia University, specializing in post-Civil War African American history, 20th-century American politics, and the history of the Cold War. Now, with co-editor David Remnick, he’s releasing The Matter of Black Lives, The New Yorker’s groundbreaking anthology on race in America—including work by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hilton Als, Zadie Smith, and more—with a foreword by Cobb. Q&A with Marcus Harrison Green. All Journalism Series, Create Your Own Series, and Super SAL subscribers (except Student/25 & Under and complimentary subscriptions) receive Cobb’s forthcoming book, The Matter of Black Lives, mailed to the subscriber’s address.

The inaugural James Welch Prize reading, celebrating two Indigenous poets from the U.S., will be presented in partnership with Hugo House and Poetry Northwest, featuring judge Sherwin Bitsui and winner Kenzie Allen. This event has moved to an online-only format. Q&A with Jennifer Elise Foerster.

Local Voices presents a unique opportunity to eavesdrop on the works of SAL’s Writers in the Schools resident writers. These locally acclaimed novelists, poets, essayists, and storytellers come together to read from their own works-in-progress, and inspire the same craft and performance skills they teach in the classroom. Join us in this free event at Hugo House on Monday, November 8, at 7:00 p.m, or catch it streaming on Facebook Live!

The National Book Award-winning author of seventeen novels, Louise Erdrich’s fiction reflects aspects of her mixed heritage: German through her father, and French and Ojibwa through her mother. In her new, powerful, and timely novel, The Sentence, Erdrich explores how the burdens of history, and especially identity, appropriation, exploitation, and violence done to human beings in the name of justice, manifest in ordinary lives today. Q&A with Kristen Millares Young. All Literary Arts Series, Create Your Own Series, and Super SAL subscribers (except Student/25 & Under and complimentary subscriptions) receive Erdrich’s forthcoming book, The Sentence, mailed to the subscriber’s address.

Around the time scientists discovered a vast underground network of fungi connecting trees of different species—an arboreal Internet or “wood wide web”—renowned forester and New York Times bestselling author Peter Wohlleben began to notice bizarre root shapes and strange growth patterns in the forests he tended in Western Germany. In The Hidden Life of Trees, Wohlleben describes what he learned by listening to trees; in his newest work, The Heartbeat of Trees, he delves deeper, drawing on research and new scientific discoveries to show how humans are deeply connected to the natural world. All tickets (except Student/25 & Under, complimentary, and a limited number of Reduced Price/No Book tickets) include a copy of Wohlleben’s book, The Heartbeat of Trees, shipped by our partner bookstore to the ticket holder’s address.