This week, we present a conversation with choreographer Alonzo King.  He’s the artistic director of LINES Ballet, a contemporary dance company in San Francisco.  He founded it in 1982, and has revolutionized the way we view dance.  King’s choreography includes a blend of powerful and tender emotion, and unbelievable feats of athleticism.  LINES Ballet looks and moves unlike any other ballet company, and King’s art has always spoken to the moment, politically and spiritually.  On April 14, 2021, Alonzo King spoke with Steven Winn about his artistic process and the inspiration he took from his parents, who were both civil rights activists.  

 Playwright Lauren Gunderson’s work is often based on the lives of historical figures – scientists like Marie Curie and Isaac Newton, and political figures such as the first woman elected to Congress.  Gunderson didn’t have to travel far to research her newest play, The Catastrophist – the one-man play centers on her husband, virologist Nathan Wolf. One of Wolf’s areas of expertise – biological threats that can lead to pandemics.  On April 8, 2021, Adam Savage talked to Gunderson and Wolf about the play, their respective careers, and the pandemic’s effect on theater.

This week, we’ll hear a conversation between two writers with unique perspectives on America.  Ocean Vuong is a poet and the author of the novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.  The story closely mirrors Vuong’s own life: born in Viet Nam, he was two years old when his family left a refugee camp in the Philippines to come to the US.   Tommy Orange published his debut novel, There There, in 2018; it’s about the complex and painful history of a multi-generational Native American family in Oakland.  On February 3, 2020, Ocean Vuong and Tommy Orange came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco.  It was a powerful evening – a few times you could hear members of the audience gasp as conversation literally took their breath away.  It was City Arts & Lectures’ last live event before the COVID-19 pandemic kept us from gathering – of course we didn’t know that at the time, but we’ve returned to this conversation for inspiration many times since then.

This week, our guests bring us unique perspectives on life during a pandemic.  Larry Brilliant is a renowned epidemiologist whose work with the World Health Organization helped eradicate smallpox, giving him keen insights into how governments can help tackle global disease. In a new book, Sometimes Brilliant, he reflects on his remarkable life and his extraordinary experiences as a doctor, innovator, philanthropist, and cultural revolutionary.  Jack Kornfield was one of the first people to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practices to the West over 40 years ago.  His many books include The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology, A Path with Heart, and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. On March 23, 2021, Larry Brilliant and Jack Kornfield joined us for a conversation about mindfulness and medicine.  The two talked about our individual and collective responses to the coronavirus pandemic, what it will take to move beyond it, and how we might promote well-being during this uncertain time.  

Jenny Offill is the author of the novels Last Things, Dept. of Speculation, and, most recently, Weather. One of the pleasures of reading Offill’s books is hearing the emotional struggles and ambivalent attitudes of very honest narrators.  In Weather, the concerns of daily life and parenting combine with the looming apocalypse of climate change. Both hilarious and heartbreaking, the novel asks readers to think about the mundane ways we live and grapple with our rapidly deteriorating environment.  Offill lives in upstate New York and teaches at Syracuse University and Queens University. On March 18, 2021, Jenny Offill talked via videoconference with Brit Marling, an actor and writer who has focused on creating projects that offer counter-narratives to the more common ones diminishing women’s worth. 

There are over 2 million people incarcerated in the United States – but tens of millions more who are living with criminal records.  This week, we’ll hear about the constraints and challenges faced by formerly incarcerated people.  Reuben Jonathan Miller is a sociologist, criminologist and a social worker who teaches at the University of Chicago in the School of Social Service Administration where he studies and writes about race, democracy, and the social life of the city. His book, Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration, shows that the American justice system was not created to rehabilitate, and how parole is structured to keep classes of Americans impoverished, unstable, and disenfranchised long after they’ve paid their debt to society. On March 8, 2021, Dr. Miller had a conversation with Terah Lawyer, an advocate for incarcerated people for more than a decade. Ms. Lawyer is herself a formerly incarcerated person, and that experience informs her commitment to improving the justice system.

In this City Arts & Lectures Podcast exclusive, Daniel Handler and Rebecca Handler talk about family and work in a uniquely familiar conversation that only siblings could have. Rebecca Handler is a writer who lives and works in San Francisco. Her debut novel Edie Richter Is Not Alone features a protagonist who moves with her family to Perth, Australia following the death of her father. There, she finds herself isolated and forced to confront a painful secret from her past. Daniel Handler is the author of many books, perhaps best known for A Series of Unfortunate Events, penned under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket.

Poet, memorist, and essayist Patricia Lockwood is perhaps best known for her memoir Priestdaddy, an extraordinarily funny account of growing up the daughter of the most singular Catholic priest in America. Lockwood has just published her first novel, No One is Talking About This, reckons with the feeling of being eternally online, unable to shut off the feed that keeps on scrolling, no matter what we do to stop it. She’s a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books, and has a vast following on Twitter, which regularly features her Internet-famous cat, Miette. Lockwood is the author of the two poetry collections Balloon Pop Outlaw Black and Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals.  On March 1, 2021, Patricia Lockwood spoke with author Sheila Heti about her new book.  The two writers also shared their perspectives on grief, creativity, and the ephemeral and addictive world of the internet.

This week, our guest is novelist Susan Choi.  She’s the author of five books, most recently “Trust Exercise”. It centers on a group of teenagers at a competitive art school in 1980s suburbia.  What starts out as something straightforward becomes more complex – and with an experimental narrative structure that concludes with a surprise twist.  The book won the 2019 National Book Award for fiction.  Choi teaches fiction writing at Yale and lives in Brooklyn. On February 16, 2021, Susan Choi spoke with Rachel Khong, the author of “Goodbye, Vitamin”. Choi described growing up as one of a few people of color in her Indiana town, and how teaching writing has made her a better writer.

Our guest is Lily King, the award-winning author of five novels.  Her 2014 novel “Euphoria” was inspired by the life of anthropologist Margaret Mead.  Last year, King published “Writers and Lovers”, the story of an aspiring author finding her way in the world.  Written with her trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, “Writers & Lovers” explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another. On February 18, 2021, Lily King talked with Isabel Duffy about her creative process and how she herself forged a literary path.