ALOUD is gearing up for a whirlwind fall season with an incredible slate of authors, artists, thinkers, and activists! Here’s a rundown of what’s on the horizon. Be sure to visit lfla.dev/aloud for more details.
Kicking off the season on Thursday, Sept. 10, revered author and 2012 Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award winner Salman Rushdie returns to the ALOUD stage for a conversation with writer Héctor Tobar about his newest work of fiction, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights.
On Monday, Sept. 21, ALOUD heads west to the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts for a special evening with Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. In conversation with author and CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, Breyer will discuss the ever-evolving influences on America’s highest court in the wake of a historic summer of groundbreaking Supreme Court decisions and on the occasion of his latest book, The Court and the World. More information on tickets is available through thewallis.org.
On Thursday, Sept. 24, Los Angeles Times Book Critic David L. Ulin sits down with critically acclaimed and bestselling memoirist Mary Karr to talk about the art of her deeply personal genre. And on Wednesday, Sept. 30, award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author Lauren Groff joins ALOUD to discuss her newest novel, Fates and Furies.
New Yorker staff writer Larissa MacFarquhar and Jessica Jackley, co-founder of the micro-lending site, Kiva, come together on Thursday, Oct. 1, to share inspiring and unsettling stories of do-gooders around the world and consider what we value most, and why. The next week, Egyptian American feminist writer and commentator Mona Eltahawy presents her revolutionary new book, Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution, on Thursday, Oct. 8.
On Monday, Oct. 19, Los Angeles Times columnist Patt Morrison interviews two influential champions for equality on the occasion of their new books: litigator Roberta Kaplan, who recently won the defining United States v. Windsor case to defeat the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and award-winning activist, author, and scholar Lillian Faderman.
On Monday, Oct. 26, journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates – a national correspondent for The Atlantic, which published his landmark 2014 essay, “The Case for Reparations” – takes the ALOUD stage to discuss what it means to be black in America today on the occasion of his revelatory and timely new memoir, Between the World and Me, with historian Robin D. G. Kelley.
Award-winning novelist, poet, and author Sandra Cisneros visits ALOUD on Wednesday, Oct. 28, for a conversation about her new memoir, A House of My Own, which compiles more than three decades of true stories, essays, talks, and poems from her storied life and career.
On Wednesday, Nov. 4, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and acclaimed historian Stacy Schiff (Véra, Cleopatra) unpacks the fantastical story of the Salem Witch Trials – the only moment in American history when women played the central role in the shaping of the future republic – with her latest seminal work, The Witches: Salem, 1692.
Simon Winchester, acclaimed author and passionate explorer of subjects from the Oxford English Dictionary to earthquakes, offers an enthralling new biography of the Pacific on Tuesday, Nov. 10.
Iconic poet, artist, musician, and National Book Award-winning author Patti Smith returns to ALOUD on Monday, Nov. 16. Taking the stage at downtown’s beautiful Orpheum Theatre, Smith will share from her new memoir, M Train, a deeply moving meditation on art, travel, memory, and humanity. Tickets (which include a copy of the new book) are on sale now at lfla.dev/aloud.
And closing out the season on Wednesday, Dec. 2, is Michael Cunningham – the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours – with an enchanting evening of reimagined bedtime stories and beloved fairy tales, told with an adult twist.
The entire ALOUD Fall 2015 calendar is now available at lfla.dev/aloud where you can learn more about these programs.