Join the discussion with SHANNA GREENE BENJAMIN and LISA LEVENSTEIN about memory, the public persona and the private individual, the biographer/historian's relationship to her subject(s), and the intersectionality of sexism, racism, and economic inequality. Benjamin’s Half in Shadow gives a full and surprising picture of the life of Nellie Y. McKay (1930-2006), an American literary scholar […]
Join us in a discussion on love, justice, and healing with SHARON SALZBERG and OMID SAFI. Host MOLLY SENTELL HAILE will explore how ideas of radical love and loving kindness relate to our personal lives, pandemic living, and social change. Sharon Salzberg is a central figure in the field of meditation and a world-renowned teacher […]
In their new novel, Sorrowland, RIVERS SOLOMON introduces us to Vern, a pregnant woman on the run from the mysterious compound where she was raised. As she seeks shelter in the woods, she begins to change. KM SZPARA's new novel, First, Become Ashes, follows Lark, raised since childhood to fight and kill monsters before the FBI […]
Read Romance, Fight Patriarchy! Host SARAH COLONNA frames the conversation thusly with romance Authors KIANNA ALEXANDER, ROSIE DANAN, JOANNA LOWELL, and ALISHA RAI. Our authors unpack the ways in which modern romance writers are reshaping what it means to write romance novels by crafting stories that are more reflective of the reality of “romance” and […]
Join poets and partners JESSICA JACOBS and NICKOLE BROWN in a poetry workshop to get "All Up In Your Feels." For all you lonely hearts, flaming hearts, celebrators (or detesters) of Valentine's Day, this generative workshop focuses on the difficult art of writing about love. We'll draw inspiration from poems by Traci Brimhall and Dorianne Laux […]
Essayist ISSAC BAILEY author of Why Didn’t We Riot: A Black Man in Trumpland, and CNN commentator BAKARI SELLERS, author of My Vanishing Country, review the life of African Americans in post-Trump America and in the South. They address traumas that shaped their lives: Dylan Roof and Mother Emmanuel AME, African American accommodation of whites, […]
Watch moderator (referee?) DREW PERRY as he survives the interests and eccentricities of two of the Carolinas’ best short story writers, ALLAN GURGANUS and GEORGE SINGLETON. Born in Rocky Mount, NC, Allan Gurganus has written four novels (including the bestselling The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All) and four short story collections and his work has appeared in The […]
Poems in a Crisis: Navigating Family, the Pandemic, and Remaking the World. Join poets TRACI BRIMHALL and NICKOLE BROWN and editor ALICE QUINN in a soulful discussion of navigating family, the pandemic and remaking the world through poetry. What does it mean to reckon with our ill treatment of animals? What does it mean to write lullabies […]
Former US Poet Laureate BILLY COLLINS has been hailed as "the most popular poet in America." RON RASH has been celebrated as the “Appalachian Shakespeare." Host Michael Gaspeny will investigate the mysteries of art and the heart in a discussion of their latest works (Whale Day: And Other Poems and In the Valley: Stories) that […]
Join Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America editor AMY REED and contributors AMBER SMITH and IW GREGORIO as they discuss what it means to write in one's own voice, how do you make the personal political, what is the role of literature and art in social […]
Authors MASON DEAVER and NITA TYNDALL join host SHANNON JONES in a conversation about how Young Adult authors outside the gender binary are reshaping that world, pulling down pillars of black and white to tell stories of what growing up can mean when you feel like there’s no place for "someone like you." In a South where queer is […]
Authors GINGER GAFFNEY and JAMES TATE (JT) HILL talk about the craft of writing memoir, sifting through your personal life, and facing your vulnerability on the page with host STEVE MITCHELL. Gaffney's Half Broke is the memoir of a woman who related more to horses than people and how she finds a home of sorts teaching […]