Events Calendar

Celebrating 14 years of programming at Concordia College, the Foundation will be back in Minnesota to present readings and a conversation between 2018 National Book Award Fiction Winner Sigrid Nunez (The Friend) and 2018 National Book Award Nonfiction Finalist Victoria Johnson (American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic). The host and moderator for the evening will be John Ydstie, former National Public Radio correspondent and regular guest host of NPR news programs. Funding for this event is provided by Concordia College.

Maya Angelou once wrote, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” How do we ensure that crucial stories that shed light on America’s mass prison system are able to reach readers? Join authors of titles on the National Book Foundation’s inaugural Literature for Justice reading list for an evening that will center around the power and strength of witnessing. Jimmy Santiago Baca (A Place to Stand) and Reginald Dwayne Betts (Shahid Reads His Own Palm) will discuss the urgent need to share stories about incarceration, redemption, and the search for hope in darkness. This event will be moderated by Literature for Justice Committee Member and author Sergio De La Pava (Lost Empress).

Eat, Drink & Be Literary brings major contemporary authors to BAMcafé for intimate readings, engaging discussions, and a festive meal.

Presented in partnership with Brooklyn Academy of Music

Moderated by Deborah Treisman

John Edgar Wideman’s books include American Histories, Writing to Save a Life, Philadelphia Fire, Brothers and Keepers, Fatheralong, Hoop Roots, and Sent for You Yesterday. A MacArthur Fellow and two-time PEN/Faulkner Award winner, he has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award twice. The New York Times writes that Wideman “spins tales both true and untrue that overlap and accumulate, like 3-D printing, into tangible landscapes and characters.” His work, often autobiographical, speaks powerfully to questions and conversations of the moment, with a particular focus on the experience of black men in America. For several decades, he has worked to produce a distinguished and influential body of work that will resonate for years to come.

Moderator: Deborah Treisman
Deborah Treisman is the fiction editor at The New Yorker. She is the host of that publication’s award-winning fiction podcast, the editor of the anthology 20 Under 40: Stories from The New Yorker, and the recipient of the 2012 Maxwell Perkins Award for Distinguished Contribution to Fiction.

TICKETING

On-sale now. Tickets sold through the BAM box office, BAM.org.

At the Virginia Festival of the Book, the Foundation will take center stage with four celebrated writers in conversation. The program will feature 2018 National Book Award Finalists Leslie Connor (Young People’s Literature, The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle), Diana Khoi Nguyen (Poetry, Ghost Of), Rebecca Makkai (Fiction, The Great Believers), and Sarah Smarsh (Nonfiction, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth).

In the Western world, sexuality is regularly demonized and shamed, making the subject difficult to navigate. But more and more, contemporary writing challenges this taboo, recognizing that desire in literature can function as a lens to examine issues of identity, race, gender, politics, and more. Join 2016 NBA Longlister Garth Greenwell (What Belongs to You) and 2018 NBA Winner Justin Phillip Reed (Indecency) as they parse the history and contemporary portrayal of sexuality in literature.