Events Calendar

In its third and final year, the National Book Foundation’s Literature for Justice program continues to offer literature as a vehicle for conversations on the topic of mass incarceration, partnering with the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands to present a two-part virtual series to dig deeper into titles selected for this year’s reading list.

Join writer and curator Nicole R. Fleetwood (Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration) and scholar Sarah Haley (No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity) for a discussion on the convergences and divergences of academia, archives, and art in the carceral system.

Moderated by Literature for Justice committee member, National Book Award Finalist, and Center Director Natalie Diaz.

Presented in partnership with the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University.

Books are available for purchase at Bookshop.org with thanks to Loyalty Bookstores in Washington, D.C.

Literature for Justice is made possible by the Art for Justice Fund, a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, in partnership with the Ford Foundation.

Watch the event here.

Presented in partnership with Brooklyn Academy of Music

Moderated by Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of The New Yorker.

“one of the most important voices of her generation” —Essence

Jones is the author of An American Marriage, which was a New York Times bestseller, an Oprah’s Book Club pick, and selected by Barack Obama for his summer reading list. She is a native of Atlanta, which serves as the setting for An American Marriage as well as her other novels Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and the forthcoming Old Fourth Ward. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times; The Washington Post; O, The Oprah Magazine; Time; Tin House; and The Believer, among other publications. Jones is currently a Charles Howard Candler Professor at Emory University and an A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.

Please visit BAM’s website to purchase tickets.

Purchase copies of featured authors’ books from Greenlight bookstore here.

This program includes closed captioning. If there is anything we can do to make this program as accessible to you as possible, please let us know. Contact BAM at [email protected] with any questions, suggestions, or for additional information.

Join us for a [email protected] discussion with National Book Award Finalist Jarrett Krosoczka about his book Hey, Kiddo, which traces Jarrett’s search for his father, his difficult interactions with his mother, his day-to-day life with his grandparents, and his path to becoming an artist. This event is open to the public and will feature a student-generated Q+A with the author.

Registration is required. Please register here.

It’s National Poetry Month, and to celebrate, National Book Award–honored authors Toi Derricotte (“I”: New and Selected Poems, 2019 Poetry Finalist), Camonghne Felix (Build Yourself a Boat, 2019 Poetry Longlist), and Terrance Hayes (Lighthead, 2010 Poetry Winner; How to Be Drawn, 2015 Poetry Finalist; American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, 2018 Poetry Finalist) discuss the impact of protest poetry on American literature and American politics.

Moderated by Kyle Dacuyan, Executive Director of The Poetry Project.

Books are available for purchase at Bookshop.org with thanks to this season’s bookseller, Loyalty Bookstores.

Over the past three years, the National Book Foundation’s Literature for Justice committees have curated thought-provoking reading lists on the topic of mass incarceration. When former committee member and selected author Reginald Dwayne Betts founded the Million Book Project to establish “Freedom Libraries” in prisons and juvenile detention centers nationwide, the Foundation partnered to send Literature for Justice titles to pilot reading groups.

For the program finale, join authors and committee members Susan Burton (Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women, 2019-2020 Reading List) and Rachel Kushner (The Mars Room, 2019-2020 Reading List) in conversation on their work and the larger work of literature inside and outside of prisons to open new worlds of possibility.

Moderated by Reginald Dwayne Betts Betts (Shahid Reads His Own Palm, 2018-2019 Reading List), Million Book Project Founder & Director.

This event will be edited as a bonus episode of the Million Book Project’s podcast, The Freedom Takes, and include reader-submitted questions. Presented in partnership with the Million Book Project.

Books are available for purchase at Bookshop.org with thanks to Loyalty Bookstores in Washington, D.C.

Literature for Justice is made possible by the Art for Justice Fund, a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, in partnership with the Ford Foundation.