What does it mean to be Black and alive right now? Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham have brought together a new collection of work—images, photos, essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more—in Black Futures, which tells the story of the radical, imaginative, provocative, and gorgeous world that Black creators are bringing forth today. Drew and Wortham will be in conversation with one of the contributors, King Britt, in a pre-recorded, online-only event that is co-presented with the Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas (CD Forum).

Maggie Smith is the author of four award-winning books: Lamp of the Body, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, and Good Bones, named by the Washington Post as one of the Five Best Poetry Books of 2017. Her most recent book, Keep Moving, is a beautiful nonfiction work of quotes and essays, in which she writes about new beginnings as opportunities for transformation.

Madeline Miller is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, The Song of Achilles (2012), a reimagining of The Iliad, and Circe (2018), a feminist inversion of The Odyssey. In each book, Miller brings a fresh perspective to ancient tales, re-centering these stories on characters whose voices have been excluded from the narrative for thousands of years.

Gabrielle Hamilton is the chef/owner of Prune restaurant in New York’s East Village and the author of the New York Times best-selling memoir Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. Anthony Bourdain called Blood, Bones & Butter “simply the best memoir by a chef. Ever.” Hamilton also writes for the New York Times on food, memory, and the restaurant industry.

Lawrence Wright is an author, screenwriter, playwright, and a staff writer for The New Yorker. At the magazine, Wright has written “some of the most astonishing journalism of our time,” according to journalist David Remnick, including reporting on al-Qaeda that shaped his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Looming Tower. Now, Wright presents the pandemic thriller The End of October, as packed with suspense as it is with the fascinating history of viral diseases.

Coming from Des Moines, Iowa – because, as he notes, “somebody had to” – bestselling Anglo-American author Bill Bryson has transformed narrative non-fiction for a generation with his witty, laugh-aloud-funny, observational writing. He has explored far-flung places from the Australian outback to the beginning of the universe itself. This time, in his latest book, The Body: A Guide for Occupants (2019), he turns his attention inwards to explore the human body, how it functions, and its remarkable ability to heal itself.