October 17, 2022
By Rebecca Hoods, Executive Director It is now my immense pleasure to introduce Maggie O’Farrell. Born in Northern Ireland and now a resident of Edinburgh, O’Farrell is the author of nine novels, a memoir, and two books for children. I came to her work first through her 2017 memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: […]
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October 7, 2022
If you want … I will sing. If not … I will hum. If you’re sad, I’ll give you a beat. A song I’ll sing is my dream. It is something that belongs to me. It’s loud, even with no sound. It’s quiet when it’s loud. I don’t care if you don’t listen but this […]
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September 23, 2022
By Rebecca Hoogs, Executive Director It is now my immense pleasure to introduce Professor Abdulrazak Gurnah. We are here tonight to celebrate Gurnah’s tenth novel, Afterlives, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Literature almost exactly one year ago today, as well as to honor his long career in literature. Gurnah’s books have been […]
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September 16, 2022
There’s a poem in this place a poem stronger than a steel cup a poem that races through your mind faster than a modern car There’s a poem in this place a poem so calm it feels like you’re sailing on the sea There’s a poem in this place a poem so wild it sounds like a rock […]
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April 18, 2022
“Here” feels so lonely. The hands of a ghost who loved another ghost, the space between fingertips, the hall light under the door. Whispers that evaporate into thin air like an August creek. Ferns line the sidewalks and the trails, spores frequenting their undersides. In kindergarten, someone told me that those spores heal cuts, but […]
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March 11, 2022
Amanda Miller created this comic while a student at Renaissance School of Art and Reasoning with WITS Writer-in-Residence David Lasky. Amanda read the poem to open our Literary Arts Series event with Daniel James Brown on March 15, 2022.
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February 18, 2022
By Rebecca Hoogs, Executive Director Charles Yu is the author of four works of fiction, including Interior Chinatown, which won the 2020 National Book Award for fiction. Previously, he received the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award, which he was selected for by Richard Powers, whom we will see on this stage in April. […]
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January 25, 2022
By Rebecca Hoogs, Executive Director I came to Bernardine Evaristo after she won the 2019 Booker Prize for her novel, Girl, Woman, Other. Her win was notable for several reasons. It was the first time that the Booker had been shared by two writers—Margaret Atwood was the other winner for The Testaments. Evaristo describes the […]
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January 20, 2022
My name is truth … but you could call me right on my ancestors’ history, because being right is telling stories with meaning… Remember me. I believe in equality for my brother’s children … I am built from glass which reflects truth and shatters with lies… Remember me. I come from strength that my African ancestors have shown in true times of peril … My […]
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November 18, 2021
By Rebecca Hoogs, Executive Director I am excited to continue our 2021/22 Literary Arts Series with Louise Erdrich, weaver of identities, secrets, ghost stories, and modern-day myths. We are here to celebrate the publication of her newest book, The Sentence, which was released just yesterday. Congratulations, Louise, on this tremendous accomplishment! The Sentence is Erdrich’s seventeenth […]
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