Award-winning journalist Eyal Press joined Greenlight to present his groundbreaking, urgent book Dirty Work, which illuminates the moving, sometimes harrowing stories of the people doing the work that society considers essential but morally compromised. Urging us to think about both secrecy and apathy as enabling injustice, Dirty Work reveals fundamental truths about the moral dimensions of work and the hidden costs of inequality in America. In a heavy-hitting, incisive conversation with E. Tammy Kim, New York Times contributor and co-host of the podcast Time to Say Goodbye, Press explored the complexity of activism against structures of power and complicity that shape the lives of “essential workers” who perform the “dirty work” that upholds the current social order. (Recorded August 17, 2021)

What does it mean to write a narrative of yourself? Whiting award winner Nadia Owusu joined Greenlight to launch the paperback edition of Aftershocks, her debut book and a deeply felt memoir about belonging, the seismic emotional toll of family secrets, and the heart it takes to pull oneself out of the wreckage. Tope Folarin (A Particular Kind of Black Man) engaged Owusu in a thoughtful discussion about the connections between their work and writing from the real versus the imposed sense of self. (Recorded August 9, 2021)

Bestselling authors Deborah Copaken and New Yorker staff writer Tad Friend (also Copaken’s actual friend!) graced Greenlight’s virtual stage for the launch of Copaken’s new memoir, Ladyparts. An inventory of both the female body and the body politic of womanhood in America, Ladyparts moves body part by body part and confronts divorce, single motherhood, the steep price of childcare, shady landlords, the death of Copaken’s father, sexism, ageism, and moore. In a frank and personal conversation, Copaken unraveled the challenges of being a woman in America—and specifically, in the American healthcare system. (Recorded August 2, 2021)

On the heels of an unprecedented, unforgettable year of quarantine, Geoff Manaugh (A Burglar’s Guide to the City) and science journalist Nicola Twilley launched their new book, Until Proven Safe. Tracing the history and future of quarantine  around the globe, Manaugh and Twilley unfold the connections between emergency isolation and freedom, governance, and mutual responsibility. Mary Roach (Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law) joined for a conversation that roamed through space pathogens, the problem of nuclear waste, and the difference between isolation and quarantine. (Recorded July 20, 2021)

Katie Kitamura, acclaimed author of A Separation and Greenlight neighbor, joined us virtually to launch her electrifying new novel. In Intimacies, an interpreter and woman of many languages and identities relocates to The Hague in search of a sense of home and finds herself drawn into simmering dramas of violence, political controversy, betrayal, and heartbreak. Raven Leilani (Luster)--Kitamura’s former student!--joined for a brilliant conversation about uncertainty, the residues of translation, and the mystical experience of writing as something “received”.  (Recorded July 20, 2021)  

Award-winning author Joshua Henkin graces the virtual Greenlight stage to share from his sweeping new novel Morningside Heights, “a richly textured family portrait” (Wall Street Journal) about a marriage enduring hardship, cognitive decline, estrangement, and reconnection. Julie Orringer (The Invisible Bridge) engages Henkin in a conversation that delves deeply into questions of form, revision, and “killing your darlings” as a writer—one audience member describes the evening as a “mini-master class in craft.” (Recorded June 15, 2021)

Critically acclaimed author Kiese Laymon and Robert Jones Jr. (The Prophets) discuss and celebrate the newly revised and reissued Long Division, Laymon’s 2013 debut novel. Described by the New York Times as “a time-traveling metafictional romp set in Mississippi that probes fame, creativity and the toll of racism,” Long Division upends conventions of narrative time, genre, and the expectations and assumptions mantled on Black characters by what Laymon and Jones identify as a a culture “trying to get us to write ourselves out of existence.” Their brilliant conversation reflects upon and contributes to a watershed moment in literature by Black authors. (Recorded June 7, 2021)

Author Zakiya Dalila Harris alights at Greenlight to launch her debut novel The Other Black Girl, a whip-smart thriller and crackling social commentary on the trials of being a Black woman in an overwhelmingly white industry. Harris talks with Brit Bennett (bestselling author of The Mothers and The Vanishing Half) about navigating the whiteness of the publishing industry, crafting manifold timelines and perspectives, the real-life experiences that inform the story, and Bennett’s and Harris’s shared hopes and concerns regarding the future of recent movements in anti-racism and diversity. (Recorded June 1, 2021)

In his new book Films of Endearment, filmmaker and critic Michael Koresky revisits the important and popular female-driven films of the 1980s he grew up watching with his mother—9 to 5, Terms of Endearment, The Color Purple, and Aliens, to name a few—to trace out a poignant personal history of family, grief, and resilience. Mark Harris (Pictures at a Revolution) joined Koresky at Greenlight for a conversation that spanned women in film, queerness, the art of criticism, and the enigma of how we form our tastes and identities in relation to the characters we love on- and offscreen. (Recorded May 18, 2021)

Author Brandon Taylor interviews fellow novelist and travel writer Maggie Shipstead about her epic novel Great Circle, a world-spanning tale of women “navigating the ice floes of patriarchy.”  From evolving ways of defining (or not defining) gender through the past two centuries, to Hollywood gossip and the perennial challenge of writing reprehensible characters, the conversation spans the dark and light of Shipstead’s multifaceted 600-page novel (including fan demands for the extended director’s cut!) (Recorded May 17, 2021)