Join The New York Times best-selling author ROXANE GAY in conversation with CYNTHIA GREENLEE. Gay's writing explores what it means to be a feminist, a woman of color, and quite simply a human being with a body. Gay's work includes Bad Feminist (2014), Difficult Women (2017), the memoir Hunger (2017), and the forthcoming (out later […]
An in-depth discussion with veteran investigative reporters KYRA GURNEY, NICHOLAS NEHAMAS, JAY WEAVER and JIM WYSS as host JOHN COX digs into their work to tell the story of death, drugs, and corruption within the gold mining industry within Latin America and the the impact the pursuit of greed has on the people caught both […]
Join us in conversation with novelists JOHN HART, ROD DAVIS, and DENNIS McCARTHY. Hart's latest novel, The Unwilling, is a thriller framed around the consequences of the Vietnam War for those who served. It is described as “crime fiction at its most raw,” which aptly describes the work of novelist Rod Davis as well. Publisher’s Weekly describes […]
We'll talk the craft of food with award winning chef and author WHITNEY OTAWKA as she shares her journey from the Mojave Desert in California to Cumberland Island, Georgia with stops along the way in Michelin starred kitchens and a season of Top Chef, and RICKY MOORE, who after a stint in the military attended […]
Join us for a not-to-be-missed conversation with award-winning Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor! Her works of Africanfuturism and Africanjujuism, works include Who Fears Death (currently in series development with HBO), the Binti novella trilogy, The Book of Phoenix, and the Akata series and Lagoon.
Join Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America editor AMY REED and contributors TRACY DEONN, AMBER SMITH, and IW GREGORIO as they look back on their contribution to Our Stories, Our Voices. We'll take a closer look at how their perspectives have changed over the past four years and […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 in a writing workshop to explore how to find your own "voice" as a writer. Each author will speak about their journey and then guide participants through a writing exercise to […]
KAITLYN GREENIDGE and ANNETTE SAUNOOKE CLAPSADDLE are two rising stars in the world of literary fiction. Greenidge’s Libertie has been called “Pure brilliance. So much will be written about how it blends history and magic into a new kind of telling, how it spins the past to draw deft circles around our present--but none of it […]
CANDACY TAYLOR, author of Overground Railroad:The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America, joins preservationist NATALIE PASS-MILLER and The Historic Magnolia House, one of only four Green Book sites in North Carolina still in operation. Taylor reaches into her personal history to share the story of the Green Book and the roots […]
A Measure of Belonging: 21 Writers of Color on the New American South editor CINELLE BARNES fell in love with a boy from the Carolinas, moved South with him, and immediately encountered the worst and the best The South has to offer. Committed to “making this place as big as it is,” she found 21 […]
At the center of the powerful, tender new titles, What’s Mine and Yours by NAIMA COSTER and This Close to Okay by LEESA CROSS-SMITH, are deftly wrought, perfectly imperfect characters whose paths can never be unwoven from not only each other, but also from the ways we see our communities and ourselves. Life is often, if […]
The non-fiction work of DENISE KIERNAN has become surefire bestseller material (The Girls of Atomic City, The Last Castle) and her latest book, We Gather Together: A Nation Divided, a President in Turmoil, and a Historic Campaign to Embrace Gratitude and Grace, brings her considerable gifts to the untold story of Lincoln and the burgeoning […]
JOHN SAYLES is an indy film legend. He has written and directed dozens of movies including Lone Star, Brother From Another Planet, Matewan, Eight Men Out, and The Secret of Roan Inish. Sayles has also written a handful of novels and story collections. His 2011 novel, A Moment in the Sun, looks at America in […]
Hosted by Jennifer Worrells, HS Poet Laureate coordinator and Library Media Specialist at Grimsley High School. 2021 Poetry Judge J. SCOTT WALKER is an English and creative writing teacher based in Greensboro. When he's not teaching he writes songs, plays, and poetry. A graduate of Appalachian State University and the University of Alaska, his poems […]
