Kick Off Another Award-Winning Year at ALOUD

On Wednesday night, the winners of this year’s National Book Awards were announced. Celebrating a diversity of voices in American literature, we noticed one thing many winners shared in common: they had recently visited ALOUD. The National Book Award for Nonfiction went to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. Watch below as Coates spoke about this unflinching look at race in America when he visited ALOUD in October. In the spring, Adam Johnson came to ALOUD, and last night he received the National Book Award for fiction. The prize for poetry went to Robin Coste Lewisshe took the ALOUD stage alongside prize-winning poet Claudia Rankine last fall.

What will be recognized as the “best of” literature in 2016? Take part in ALOUD to discover the year’s brightest voices. This winter, the critically-acclaimed ALOUD series of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles proudly welcomes poets, novelists, artists, activists, dancers, and scientists to the historic downtown Central Library – and later in the season, to the The Broad Stage – for an incredible season of conversations, readings, and performances.

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Kicking off the new year, on Thursday, Jan. 14, New York Times dance critic Brian Seibert offers an authoritative account of the great American art of tap dancing before a special performance by L.A. choreographer Sarah Reich.

On Wednesday, Jan. 20, L.A. Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodriguez, author Michael Meade, and musician John Densmore – all men who have been at the forefront of social and cultural change – share in an illuminating evening of readings, stories, and performance.

Psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and bestselling author Norman Doidge joins ALOUD on Wednesday, Jan. 27 to discuss his new book, The Brain’s Way of Healing, cutting-edge science, and human lives transformed through the brain’s amazing capacity to heal itself.

On Thursday, Feb. 4, award-winning poets and longtime friends Elizabeth Alexander and Kevin Young will share the stage for poetry, companionship, and to discuss their newest works: lyrical forays into life’s passages through grief and joy.

 

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Ingrid Betancourt
, the extraordinary Colombian French politician and activist, whose New York Times bestselling memoir chronicled her six and a half year captivity in the Colombian jungle by the FARC, shares her stunning debut novel, The Blue Line, on Tuesday, Feb. 9.

 

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Rachel Sussman, artist and author of the The Oldest Living Things in the World, and Ursula K. Heise, a professor in the Department of English and the Institute of Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, will discuss questions of nature, technology, and our understanding of time on Wednesday, Feb. 17.

 

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On Tuesday, Feb. 23, Los Angeles Times Book Critic David L. Ulin sits down with Hanya Yanagihara to discuss her novel, A Little Life – a masterful depiction of heartbreak and brotherly and one of the most talked-about books of 2015 (nominated for both the Man Booker Prize and The National Book Award).

Closing out the season on Monday, Feb. 29, ALOUD heads west to The Broad Stage for a special evening with renowned Brazilian photojournalist and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Sebastião Salgado. In conversation with author Pico Iyer, one of the world’s most revered travel writers, Salgado shares the stories behind some of his most perspective-shifting images of life on Earth. Tickets will go on sale to Members and Broad subscribers on Thursday, Nov. 19; and to the public on Tuesday, Dec. 1 at thebroadstage.com.

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Nenet Nomads, Wind Storm, Siberia, Russia, 2011 © Sebastião Salgado / Amazonas Images, Courtesy Peter Fetterman Gallery

And in advance of Salgado’s appearance at The Broad Stage, on Friday, Feb. 25, at Central Library, ALOUD presents a special free screening of The Salt of the Earth, the Academy Award nominated and Cannes Film Festival prize-winning documentary about the artist.

The entire ALOUD Winter 2016 calendar will be made available to the public at lfla.dev/aloud on Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2016. Library Foundation Members receive advance notice of ALOUD programs.

 

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