As part of Lift Every Voice: Why African American Poetry Matters, the Library Foundation of Los Angeles joins the nationwide celebration of 250 years of African American poetry on the occasion of the release of Kevin Young’s anthology. This program will include a special reading of these poems that address questions of identity, race, place, voice, and the richness and diversity of African American poetic imagination. African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song is the centerpiece o...
Jan 29, 2021•1 hr 16 min
“Adventure. Compassion. Hatred. Money. Friendship. Marriage. Theatre. Failure. Beauty. Revelation. Cinema. Success. Death. Creation. And re-creation. This is a remarkable story, of a life so deeply lived,” writes Martin Scorsese on the breadth of André Gregory’s new memoir. For the first time in book form, the iconic theatre director, writer, and actor tells his fantastic life story in This is Not My Memoir. Discussing this highly entertaining autobiography-of-sorts at ALOUD, Gregory will be joi...
Dec 07, 2020•1 hr 10 min
In the first program of a new two-part series on Collaboration & Innovation, ALOUD is excited to explore the rich history of one of L.A.’s foremost artistic workshops. Mixografia is a fine arts printer and publisher founded and run by the Remba family for three generations. Moving from Mexico City to Los Angeles, Mixografia’s three-dimensional printing technique has evolved over 40 years to expand printmaking possibilities for artists and to make art more accessible through its innovative pr...
Nov 20, 2020•56 min
How do we talk about race in America? Two of our country's most award-winning poets and unflinching voices on racism will join ALOUD for their first public event together. Claudia Rankine is an artistic innovator, Yale professor, and MacArthur fellow. Her previous groundbreaking book, Citizen: An American Lyric, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Rankine’s newest book, Just Us: An American Conversation, invites readers to engage with what is said and...
Nov 16, 2020•1 hr 14 min
As ALOUD examines the delicate balancing act of power and value in a special series this fall, we’ll consider how technology tips the scales to redefine the dynamics of our human relationships. What will happen to our notions of marriage and parenthood as reproductive technologies allow for new ways of creating babies? What will happen to our understanding of gender as medical advances enable individuals to transition from one set of sexual characteristics to another or to remain happily perched...
Oct 15, 2020•52 min
The media is a powerful voice driving our perception of the world. But over the last decade, the political divisions across America have threatened the ability of the media to deliver unbiased news. Further putting into question the role of the media, individuals armed with their smartphones have stepped in to provide some of the most raw, unfiltered stories of our times. As part of ALOUD’s Power and Value series, we welcome three journalists from the fields of newspaper, radio, and television t...
Sep 10, 2020•59 min
Income inequality in the U.S. is the highest of all the G7 nations, and the wealth gap between America’s richest and poorer families more than doubled from 1989 to 2016. This hierarchy of power gives control to the rich, while leaving the rest to fend for themselves without support or voice. ALOUD’s Power and Value series will kick-off with a program that unpacks America’s income gap with professor, author, and political commentator Robert Reich and Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, an American Pro...
Sep 04, 2020•57 min
“What do we talk about when we talk about Los Angeles today?” asks D.J. Waldie. A writer whose work has been called a “gorgeous distillation of architectural and social history” by The New York Times, Waldie is the author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir and other books that illuminate the ordinary and the everyday in lyrical prose. Becoming Los Angeles, his newest collection, blends history, memory, and critical analysis to illuminate how Angelenos have seen themselves and their city. From the o...
Aug 21, 2020•59 min
In ALOUD’s first live program, we’ll explore the science of virtual learning. As schools around the country prepare for an online fall semester, hear from neuroscientist, psychologist, and former teacher Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang about the educational implications for this generation of learners. Focusing on teenagers and their developing brains, Dr. Immordino-Yang will discuss how current events are impacting the ways teenagers think, feel, and process the world. This program is generously ...
Jul 31, 2020•1 hr 3 min
When New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof returned to his hometown of Yamhill, Oregon, the portrait of life in rural America was grim. In a new book, written alongside Sheryl WuDunn, the team of the bestselling Half the Sky tells a story of how a once prospering blue-collar town was devastated by the loss of well-paying union jobs. Moving beyond this one part of the country, and showing a similar trend representative of places ranging from the Dakotas and Oklahoma to New York and Virg...
Feb 27, 2020•1 hr 10 min
"I think this book could really save the world," said Ann Patchett of Gish Jen’s new dystopian novel The Resisters. This extraordinary story imagines a not-so-distant future of America—which she calls "AutoAmerica" and is half underwater and populated by two groups of people: the "Netted" of the higher ground and the “Surplus,” who live on swampland. A “Surplus” family’s home life is upended when their teen daughter with amazing baseball talents is allowed to play ball with the "Netted" in the h...
Feb 20, 2020•1 hr 3 min
2019 National Book Award Finalist Kali Fajardo-Anstine (Sabrina & Corina: Stories) will discuss her work and why the preservation, perpetuation, and presentation of the experience of Mexican-American women in literature matters. Moderated by Lisa Lucas, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, and presented in partnership with the Library Foundation of Los Angeles and Scripps Presents.
Feb 13, 2020•1 hr 2 min
Education is an issue that hits home to every American. One of the foremost authorities on education and the history of education in the United States and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, Diane Ravitch offers an impassioned defense of public education. In her new book, Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools, Ravitch fights back against "disruptors" who wish to privatize schools. Documenting examples of how corporati...
Feb 10, 2020•1 hr 5 min
Quantum mechanics is the most important idea in physics, and physicists themselves readily admit that they don’t understand it. Genetics is another commonly misconceived area of science with the rise of new biomedical technologies and the popularity of at-home DNA testing kits. Fortunately for ALOUD audiences, we welcome two of the most celebrated science writers to help make sense of how we live in the world—through space and time, and what we pass along from generation to generation. Carl Zimm...
Feb 07, 2020•1 hr 10 min
Andrea Bernstein, the award-winning journalist, and host of the WNYC/ProPublica podcast Trump, Inc., offers a sweeping new exposé into the multigenerational saga of two emblematic American families. American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power follows how these families rose from immigrant roots to the pinnacle of U.S. power. Through extensive reporting, Bernstein traces their journey to the White House—from growing rich on federal programs that bolstered the...
Jan 31, 2020•57 min
What if search-and-rescue robots could sense survivors through dense smoke? What if surgical robots could perform impossible surgeries by seeing details invisible to a human doctor? At Dr. Achuta Kadambi’s UCLA lab, his team works to make these possibilities a reality. By symbiotically blending camera and algorithm designs, Kadambi gives the gift of sight to machines. With journalist Nellie Bowles, who covers tech and internet culture from San Francisco for the New York Times, Kadambi discusses ...
Nov 22, 2019•1 hr
In a special evening celebrating National Book Award-winning author Ta-Nehisi Coates’ first book of fiction, he’ll be joined by Ryan Coogler, revolutionary director of Black Panther. Coates’ newly released novel The Water Dancer offers a timely exploration of the most intimate evil of enslavement—the cleaving and separation of families. Following the story of Hiram Walker, who was born into bondage and motherless, Coates not only tells the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations o...
Oct 18, 2019
The leaps and advances of science and technology to revolutionize human DNA have sparked fierce public debate about what the future of gene editing holds for humanity. Moving beyond some of the alarming sci-fi scenarios of gene editing, groundbreaking scientists are harnessing the power of these biological breakthroughs to save lives. At Dr. April Pyle’s laboratory at UCLA, she investigates human pluripotent stem cell biology and the differentiation of these cells for use in regenerative medicin...
Oct 11, 2019•57 min
In this #1 New York Times bestseller, Michael Pollan offers a mind-bending investigation into the medical and scientific revolution taking place around psychedelic drugs—and the spellbinding story of his own life-changing psychedelic experiences as he set out to research the active ingredients in magic mushrooms. Blending science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism through Pollan’s discovery of how these remarkable subs...
May 15, 2019•1 hr 14 min
In an impassioned call to action for elites and everyday citizens alike, former New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas shines a light on the shady side of philanthropy. Winners Take All offers a scathing investigation of how the global elite’s efforts to “change the world” preserve the status quo and obscure their role in causing the problems they later seek to solve. This bestselling groundbreaking book poses many hard questions like: Why should our gravest problems be solved by the unelec...
May 07, 2019•1 hr 14 min
Rachel Cusk is an international literary superstar. Her most recent trilogy–Outline, Transit, and Kudos–draws its hero, Faye, through a collage of vignettes. Through tales told by the people Faye encounters–an airline companion, a disgruntled neighbor, and a fellow writer, among others–Faye’s own haunting past is stealthily revealed, making for an artful and hypnotic reading experience. “After her controversial memoirs of motherhood and marriage, the writer has a new design for fiction,” writes ...
Apr 10, 2019•1 hr
On the heels of one of last year’s boldest, most celebrated novels, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, join us to hear from Ottessa Moshfegh for a celebration of a new edition of her groundbreaking debut novella, McGlue. Set in Salem, Massachusetts, 1851—the same year as the publication of Moby Dick—McGlue follows the foggy recollections of a hard-drinking seafarer who may or may not have killed his best friend. Discussing her sharply observational body of work that illuminates the exhilaratingly d...
Mar 13, 2019•1 hr
As the Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Joel Simon spends his time taking action on behalf of journalists who are targeted, attacked, imprisoned, or killed. He is an expert on how countries around the world handle the kidnapping of their nationals, including how they analyze and respond to intelligence and provide support for the hostage families. At a time when journalists are in greater danger than ever before, Simon’s newest book draws on his extensive experience in...
Feb 01, 2019•57 min
What might Marilyn Monroe, Cesar Chavez, Susan Sontag, and Albert Einstein have to say about Los Angeles? Their diary entries, along with those of other actors, musicians, activists, cartographers, students, geologists, cooks, merchants, journalists, politicians, composers, and many more—provide a kaleidoscopic view of Los Angeles over the past four centuries from the Spanish missionary expeditions of the 16 century to the present day. Book editor, critic, and Los Angeles native David Kipen has ...
Dec 12, 2018
Bestselling author Reyna Grande’s newest memoir, A Dream Called Home , offers an inspiring account of one woman’s quest to find her place in America as a first-generation Latina university student and then pursue her dream of writing. Award-winning writer Jean Guerrero’s Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir tries to locate the border between truth and fantasy as she explores her troubled father’s life as an immigrant battling with self-destructive behavior. Octavio Solis, one of the most prominent Latino...
Nov 14, 2018•1 hr 20 min
The Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur-winning photojournalist and New York Times bestselling author Lynsey Addario has captured audiences with her highly compelling and beautifully harrowing photographs from war zones across the globe. With her uncanny ability to emotionally connect with her subjects and to personalize even the most remote corners and unimaginable circumstances, Addario offers a stunning new selection of work from the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa that documents life in Afghani...
Nov 02, 2018•1 hr 2 min
Who do you think you are? What do you think you are? These questions of gender, religion, race, nationality, class, culture, and all our polarizing, contradictory natures permeate Kwame Anthony Appiah’s newest book. In The Lies That Bind, Appiah, the author of the Ethicist column for the New York Times, challenges our assumptions of identities—or rather mistaken identities. Njideka Akunyili Crosby, a MacArthur Award-winning Nigerian born visual artist who lives in Los Angeles, meshes painting, p...
Oct 26, 2018•1 hr 27 min
Join us for a special program on the 25th anniversary of the reopening of the Los Angeles Central Library that brings home the inspiring story of how Central Library rose from the ashes after the catastrophic fire of April 29, 1986. In a new book by New Yorker staff writer and author of seven books, including Rin Tin Tin and The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean offers a profoundly moving cultural history of the Los Angeles Public Library and its critical civic role since its inception in 1872. Reexami...
Oct 17, 2018
Technology has made possible new forms of transnational investigative journalism and fueled the rise of new digital media organizations in the US and around the world. Yet more journalists are imprisoned around the world than at any time in recent history; censorship is on the rise; and government-run disinformation campaigns are undermining public understanding and fueling distrust in the media. Two leading figures in global journalism help make sense of this confusing and contradictory environ...
Oct 12, 2018•1 hr 3 min
"Édouard Louis uses literature as a weapon," says a recent New York Times profile of the internationally bestselling French author. Louis, whose highly acclaimed first autobiographical novel, The End of Eddy, confronts both the institution of discrimination as he experienced it first-hand, growing up in a small town in Northern France where he was bullied and forced to conceal his homosexuality and as well, the violence perpetrated on his hardscrabble community by an indifferent state. Now in hi...
Oct 11, 2018•1 hr 14 min
