Events Calendar

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

Author Min Jin Lee creates “radical empathy through art” with a sharp focus on diaspora, human rights, and telling the stories that often don’t get told. Her novel Pachinko, the product of nearly thirty years of research, was a finalist for the National Book Award, a Top 10 Books of the Year for The New York Times, and a joint book club selection of PBS NewsHour and The New York Times. Lee’s debut novel, Free Food for Millionaires, was a Top 10 Books of the Year for The Times of London, NPR’s Fresh Air, and USA Today. Her writings have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and Wall Street Journal. Her work is a powerful meditation on the challenges of migration, immigration, assimilation, and discrimination. She is a Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellow for 2018-9.

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.

Limited Ticket Availability 
The event is currently sold out. Tickets are still available to BAM supporters at the Patron level and above. Please contact Patron Services at 718.636.4182 for more information.

6:30 p.m.  | First Draft: Miami Writers Institute Edition
8 p.m. | A Night with the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Honorees

The National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 program honors young fiction writers at the beginning of their careers. Every year, five National Book Award Finalists select one promising writer each to recognize at the beginning of National Book Awards week in November; each Honoree is under 35 and has published one novel or short story collection. Previous honorees include Valeria Luiselli, ZZ Packer, Karen Russell, Angela Flournoy, Phil Klay, and Yaa Gyasi.

Tonight features 4 of the 5 Under 35 honorees in Miami for an evening of readings with Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Hannah Lillith Assadi, Lydia Kiesling, and Moriel Rothman-Zecher.

The evening will be moderated by Anna Dobben.

In partnership with the National Book Foundation and Books & Books

Perhaps at no other moment in history have readers had access to such a wide range of literary voices that center the lives and stories of women and girls. How can we continue to shed shallow portrayals of young women and the tropes that have defined so many stories for younger readers? Join National Book Awards Finalists Elana K. Arnold (What Girls Are Made Of) and Erika L. Sánchez (I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter) for a discussion about the vital importance of sharing stories that are complex and empathetic, and that shed light on the realities and nuanced experiences of young women.

Literature transforms the way we look at the world, deepening our understanding of even the most complex issues of today. Recognizing the strength of the written word, the National Book Foundation’s Literature for Justice program brings broad awareness to the issue of mass incarceration in America through the power of books.

Join us for an evening with two of this year’s Literature for Justice’s picks James Kilgore and Robin Levi in conversation with Sergio de la Pava. The authors will discuss their books and how literature can transform our understandings of America’s carceral system.

A limited number of complementary books will be available to attendees.

Register to attend.

Speakers:

Robin Levi is co-editor with Ayelet Waldman of Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives From Women’s Prisons, which tells the stories of 13 women inside the American prison system. She is a consultant working in the field of human rights and is the former human rights director at Justice Now. While a staff attorney at the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, she documented sexual abuse of women in U.S. state prisons.

James Kilgore is the author of Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time. He lived as a fugitive in South Africa from 1991 to 2002 under the name John Pape. In 2002, authorities extradited him to the United States where he served six and a half years in prison for political offenses committed in the 1970s. Kilgore is a social justice activist and writes widely on issues pertaining to mass incarceration. He is also a research scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois.

Sergio De La Pava is a member of the 2018-2019 Literature for Justice Committee. He is the author of three novels: A Naked Singularity, Personae, and Lost Empress. He is also a lifelong public defender and Legal Director at New York County Defender Services in Manhattan where he represents indigent criminal defendants and advocates for large-scale criminal justice reform.

Co-sponsored by: Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, Human Rights Lab, School of Social Service Administration, and The National Book Foundation