“Every writer says this, but growing up, the library was my main place,” said critically-acclaimed author and Los Angeles Times opinion columnist Meghan Daum last year when she spoke to us about her love of the Los Angeles Public Library. Next Thursday, July 23, Daum will return to her beloved sanctuary when she shares the ALOUD stage with another thought-provoking essayist. Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams confronts our personal and cultural urgency to feel. In The Unspeakable, Meghan Daum defiantly pushes back against the false sentimentality and shrink-wrapped platitudes that surround so much of contemporary American experience. Before you join us for an emotionally-charged evening with Jamison and Daum on the modern complexities of being human, here are a few interesting primers on their work.

On Meghan Daum’s The Unspeakable:
—Read an excerpt in The New Yorker.
–Read an interview with Meghan from The New Yorker‘s Page-Turner blog.
–Read an interview with Meghan from The Los Angeles Review of Books.
–Read Meghan’s Los Angeles Times column.

On Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams:
–Read an interview with Leslie in The Paris Review.
–Read recent articles by Leslie in Harper’s and The New Yorker.
–Read a piece by Leslie in The Believer.
–Watch Leslie talk with The Los Angeles Review of Books below.

Learn more about their upcoming ALOUD program here.