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An Evening with Garth Risk Hallberg, bestselling author of CITY ON FIRE
Garth Risk Hallberg is the author of City on Fire, named a best book of 2015 by the Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. His book has been translated into 17 languages. In a lecture at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Hallberg will explore the affinities between the modern social novel and the modern city. From Dicken’s London to Richard Wright’s Chicago, from the Paris of…
Find out more »Life of a Klansman: Writer Edward Ball Digs into His Family History
Life of a Klansman Tuesday, May 2 | 4 PM Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA Edward Ball is a nonfiction writer who has published five books of history and biography. At this event, Ball will speak about his next book, which explores the roots of white supremacy, and his path to writing it. Ball has been investigating the life of a fighter in the Ku Klux Klan in Louisiana, who was…
Find out more »History, Identity, Politics, and the Art of Writing: A Lecture with VIET THANH NGUYEN
What are the challenges for writers concerned with history, identity, and politics? How do writers respond to these themes in language, form, story, and theme? In this lecture, VIET THANH NGUYEN offers some answers through an exploration of his writing and criticism. His remarks will be followed by a discussion with writer GISH JEN. Register online. VIET THANH NGUYEN is the author of Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. Grove/Atlantic published his novel The Sympathizer in 2015…
Find out more »The Writer and the Critic: Marilynne Robinson and James Wood in Conversation
Pulitzer Prize–winning author MARILYNN ROBINSON—acclaimed for the novels “Housekeeping” (1980), “Gilead” (2004), “Home” (2008), and “Lila” (2014)—will participate in a conversation with literary critic JAMES WOOD. Please register online.
Find out more »Visual Storytelling, Visual Communication
We rely on our eyes like never before: to navigate not only the physical world, but also the narrative and information landscapes we increasingly inhabit. In a fast-moving cascade of images and ideas, the author and cartoonist SCOTT MCCLOUD shares why there are no neutral visual decisions, why all pictures are words, and why an era of misinformation calls for a new approach to visual education. Register online.
Find out more »Did You Know?
Certain books were “banned in Boston” at least as far back as 1651, when one William Pynchon wrote a book criticizing Puritanism.