ALOUD @ Los Angeles Public Library

MaddAddam: A NovelMargaret AtwoodIn conversation with author Sarah Shun-lien BynumIn Atwood’s dark and hilarious new novel, a man-made plague has swept the earth, but only a small group survives. In a world only Atwood could imagine, the Crakers’ reluctant prophet is hallucinating and giant Pigoons and malevolent Painballers threaten to attack. Join us for a conversation with this visionary author on the stunning conclusion to her dystopian trilogy, set in a future that is not only possible, but perhaps inevitable.*Click here to see photos from the program!

Over a multi-year collaboration, playwright and director Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, Melville scholar Wyn Kelley, and media expert Henry Jenkins have developed a new approach for teaching Moby-Dick in the age of YouTube and hip-hop. They will explore how "learning through remixing" can speak to contemporary youth, why Melville might be understood as the master mash-up artist of the 19th century, and what might have happened if Captain Ahab had been a 21st century gang leader.* Part of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles and Los Angeles Public Library’s month-long citywide initiative "What Ever Happened to Moby Dick?"*Click here to see photos from the program!

Award-winning Los Angeles-based visual artist Alison Saar explores her own artistic practice and that of the Luba people of Central Africa with African art scholar and curator Polly Nooter Roberts. Using memory and the use of the female body as a mnemonic for social and political history, they explore race and gender through this conversation on artistic form.*Click here to see photos from the program!

Kennedy—a Harvard Law professor, former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and author of the New York Times best-seller Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word—ponders the future of affirmative action and offers a definitive reckoning with one of the most explosively contentious and sharply divisive issues in American society.*Click here to see photos from the program!

Wilson: An Intimate PortraitA. Scott BergIn conversation with Jim Newton, editor-at-large, LA TimesPulitzer Prize-winning biographer A. Scott Berg clears away myths and misconceptions in this penetrating portrait of one of America’s most influential yet often misunderstood presidents. This deeply emotional study reflects the whole of Wilson’s life, accomplishments and failings- from designing the ill-fated League of Nations, using his trailblazing ideas that paved the way for the New Deal, to his denouement as a politician whose partisan battles left him a broken man. *Click here to see photos from the event!

Co-presented with The BroadThe Un-Private Collection: A New Museum for Los AngelesEli and Edythe Broad with Joanne HeylerIn conversation with Inge Reist, director, The Frick Collection's Center for the History of CollectingLos Angeles is a city of renowned private collections that have become public museums: The Getty, the Hammer, the Norton Simon, The Huntington, and soon, The Broad. Consisting of over 2,000 artworks by established and emerging international artists, The Broad will add significantly to the contemporary art holdings on view to the Southern California public. Inge Reist will lead a discussion with the Broads and The Broad museum director Joanne Heyler about how their aesthetic tastes and social and political viewpoints have informed their collection as well as the decision to build a new museum as an investment in downtown’s Grand Avenue and the cultural life of Los Angeles.*Click here to see photos from the program!

The Blank Page: Literature, Hip-Hop and FreedomMK AsanteIn conversation with Jeff Chang, author and director, Institute for Diversity in the Arts, Stanford UniversityIn MK Asante’s new memoir Buck, the award-winning writer, filmmaker, poet and professor scripts his rise from Philadelphia dealer and delinquent to the passionate and driven artist he is today. To share his powerful story of redemption, Asante sits down to rap with Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, on how he was transformed by the most unconventional teachers and the freedom to create on the blank page. *Click here to see photos from the program!

What might our city look like if the master plans of prominent architects had been brought to fruition? This panel—including architects, an architectural curator and the L.A. Times’ architecture critic-- looks at those visionary works, which held great potential to re-form Los Angeles, yet were undermined by institutions and infrastructure. Can L.A.’s civic future be shaped from these unrealized lessons of the past? *Click here to see photos from the program!

In March of 1928, the St. Francis Dam north of Los Angeles—designed by William Mulholland as a reservoir for the California Aqueduct—collapsed. The largest engineering disaster in California history is inextricably woven into the epic history of water in Los Angeles. In this centennial year of the California Aqueduct, join us for a discussion of the St. Francis tragedy and its enduring catastrophic and cultural significance. *Click here to see photos from the program!

The recently published Songs in the Key of Los Angeles showcases the rich sheet music collection of the Los Angeles Public Library, and is the fruit of a collaboration between USC Professor Kun, his students and the Library Foundation. Join us for a night of rare L.A. musical history, in which the Los Angeles Public Library’s sheet music archive will come alive in story and song when Kun is joined by beloved, GRAMMY-winning Los Angeles band Quetzal. *Click here to see photos from the program!

 Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:To make a poet black, and bid him sing!Countee Cullen (1925)In this Los Angeles segment of the Poetry Society of America’s 2013 national series, three distinguished poets will celebrate the lives and poetry of major 20th century figures— James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, and Gwendolyn Brooks-—discussing their influence, and reading poems of their own in tribute.*Click here to see photos from the program! 

In his newest book, Senegal Taxi, California’s Poet Laureate—and teacher and activist—turns his gaze to Africa. For this special evening, Herrera invites two talented younger poets to join him for a foray into what he calls: “the Plankton-like, Picasso-Like, Kandinsky-like chromatics of heart fire, short line enlightenment meditations… double shocked to the present life of what is going on in our diagonal world, war here, peace there—making it all right with these oceanic voices.” *Click here to see photos from the program!

On the morning of November 7, 1938, a seventeen-year-old Jewish refugee, Herschel Grynszpan, walked into the German embassy in Paris and assassinated Ernst vom Rath, a low-level Nazi diplomat. Two days later, the Third Reich exploited the murder to inaugurate its long-planned campaign of terror against Germany’s Jewish citizens—what became known as Kristallnacht. On the seventy-fifth anniversary of Kristallnacht, Kirsch— lawyer and bestselling author—unpacks the moral dimensions of one of the most enigmatic cases of World War II. *Click here to see photos from the program!

Imagine a rain-soaked Beckett knocks on your door with a new manuscript. What was it like to collaborate with, publish, and know the genius? Seaver (who with her husband discovered and published Beckett’s early work) and Mandell (an actor directed by the playwright himself) team up to read both Beckett’s work and the Seavers’ memoir about the golden age of publishing—and to discuss how the unconventional writer came to be revered by audiences everywhere. *Click here to see photos from the program!

The award-winning author of Half a Yellow Sun delivers a powerful new story of love and culture clash between two Nigerian friends across several decades and three different continents—keenly observing race, identity, and belonging in today’s globalized world. *Click here to see photos from the program!