In How We Give Now, Lucy Bernholz shows that philanthropy is more than writing a check and claiming a tax deduction. For most of us—the non-wealthy givers—philanthropy can be a way of living our values and fully participating in society. We give in all kinds of ways—shopping at certain businesses, canvassing for candidates, donating money, and making conscious choices with our retirement funds. We give our cash, our time, and even our data to make the world a better place. Join us for “Lucy Bernholz’s How We Give Now,” a candid conversation with Lucy Bernholz, Vu Le, the writer of Nonprofit AF, and Dr. Carmen Rojas, President and CEO of Marguerite Casey Foundation, about the often-overlooked worlds of participatory philanthropy, and how philanthropy by the rest of us—across geographies and cultural traditions—begins with and builds on active commitment to our communities.

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 Thursday, January 13, at 7:00 p.m, or catch it streaming on Facebook Live!

Bernardine Evaristo is the author of the 2019 Booker Prize-winning novel Girl, Woman, Other, and the forthcoming memoir Manifesto, which investigates her long journey as a Black writer in a white-dominated industry. Evaristo’s writing is characterized by experimentation, daring, subversion, and challenging the myths of various Afro-diasporic histories and identities, and her books range in genre from poetry to short story to drama to criticism. Q&A with Dr. Carmen Rojas, President and CEO of Marguerite Casey Foundation.

Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Minor Feelings is a vulnerable, humorous, and provocative essay collection, whose relentless pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world. Hong will be in conversation with Our Existence Beyond Trauma Series curator, Ijeoma Oluo, for this event, which is co-presented by Langston Seattle.

From the creator of The Good Place and the co-creator of Parks and Recreation, comes How to Be Perfect—a hilarious, thought-provoking guide to living an ethical life, drawing on 2,500 years of deep thinking from around the world. Most tickets include a copy of How to Be Perfect (except Student/25 & Under, complimentary, and a limited number of no-book Reduced Price and Side Wing tickets). Books will be shipped by our partner bookstore to the ticket holder’s door shortly after the event.

Science journalist Ed Yong writes about everything that is or was once alive, from the microbes that secretly rule the world to the species disappearing from it. In this Journalism Series talk, Yong will be discussing his Pulitzer Prize-winning COVID-19 coverage. A staff writer for The Atlantic, Yong is the author of the New York Times bestseller I Contain Multitudes, a book about the amazing partnerships between animals and microbes. In examining nature at its most granular, Yong’s writing seeks to change our sense of where humans belong within it. Q&A with journalist Wudan Yan.

Charles Yu is the infinitely inventive writer on HBO’s Westworld and the author of four books, including his latest, Interior Chinatown, winner of the 2020 National Book Award. Interior Chinatown is a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play. Q&A with Shawn Wong.

Inspired by her popular BuzzFeed piece “37 Difficult Questions from My Mixed-Raced Son,” Mira Jacob’s graphic memoir, Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations is Jacob’s response to timely and pointed questions raised by her six-year-old son, Zakir. At an increasingly fraught time for immigrants and their families, Good Talk delves into difficult conversations about race, sex, love, and belonging that are both unavoidable and necessary. A gifted storyteller, Jacob’s work is earnest, moving, and often laugh-out-loud funny as she weaves together the threads of one American life.

Daniel James Brown is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Indifferent Stars Above, Under a Flaming Sky, and The Boys in the Boat. His latest, Facing the Mountain, is a gripping saga about the contributions and sacrifices Japanese immigrants and their children made during World War II: the courageous Japanese American Army unit that overcame brutal odds in Europe; their families, incarcerated back home; and a young man who refused to surrender his constitutional rights.

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 Tuesday, March 29, at 7:00 p.m, or catch it streaming on Facebook Live!

The multilayered works of National Book Award-winning translator, poet, and essayist Don Mee Choi are known for holding history accountable. Her most recent book, DMZ Colony is described as “a tour de force of personal and political reckoning set over eight acts.” As a storyteller, Choi often weaves together poems, prose, photographs, and drawings to create a palimpsest of voices that further intertwine. In these fertile overlaps, Choi creates space for these voices to converse and to question truth, fact, and imagination. Q&A with Stefania Heim.

The characters created by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Powers share a certain discomfort with the world. They shift between the impulse to connect and the urge to withdraw—into a novel, a piece of music, a movie house, a museum, even cyberspace. The Overstory, Powers’ sweeping, impassioned paean to the natural world, was a move to unite a cast of iconoclastic activists and resisters, roots to crown. His forthcoming novel, Bewilderment, is a deeply felt study into attachment, loss, and hope: of a grieving father, an extraordinary yet troubled son, and an imperiled planet, each of which is inextricably linked with the others. All Literary Arts Series, Create Your Own Series, and Super SAL subscribers (except Student/25 & Under and complimentary subscriptions) receive Powers’ forthcoming book, Bewilderment, mailed to the subscriber’s address.

World-renowned activist Sonya Renee Taylor is the Founder and Radical Executive Officer of The Body is Not An Apology, a digital media and education company promoting radical self-love and body empowerment as the foundational tool for social justice and global transformation. Taylor is also a former National and International poetry slam champion, the author of two books, including The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love, and an educator who has enlightened and inspired organizations, audiences, and individuals, from board rooms to prisons, universities to homeless shelters, elementary schools to some of the biggest stages in the world.

Author of the novel Queen Sugar, Natalie Baszile has created an immersive, polyphonic examination of Black people’s connection to American land from Emancipation to the present day. We Are Each Other’s Harvest is an anthology of essays, poems, photographs, quotes, conversations, and first-person stories that explore the lives of Black farmers today: why they continue to farm despite systemic discrimination and land loss, how they are building on the legacy of their ancestors, and the challenges they face in seeking to redress food justice, food sovereignty, and reparations.

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, May 9, at 7:00 p.m, or catch it streaming on Facebook Live!

“There is a crisis of violence in our communities,” says Connie Walker, an award-winning Cree journalist from Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan. In her podcasts Stolen and Missing & Murdered, Walker investigates cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. In seeking to unravel the mysterious disappearance of Jermain Charlo—a young Indigenous mother who left a bar in Missoula, Montana, in 2018 and was never seen again—Walker’s work examines more broadly what it means to be an Indigenous woman in America.

One of our most popular events of the year, each Moth Mainstage features simple, old-fashioned storytelling, by five wildly divergent raconteurs who develop and shape their stories with The Moth’s directors. This year’s theme and storytellers will be announced in Spring 2022!