ALOUD @ Los Angeles Public Library

Acclaimed poet and Pulitzer Prize finalist Elizabeth Alexander, who composed and delivered the 2009 inauguration poem for President Obama, offers a deeply felt meditation on the blessings of family, art and community following the death of her husband in her memoir, The Light of the World. Poet Kevin Young, author of ten books of poetry, winner of the Lenore Marshall Award and a finalist for the National Book Award, gathers twenty years of highlights from his extraordinary career in his new compilation Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995-2015. Longtime friends Alexander and Young share the stage for poetry, companionship, and to discuss their newest works: lyrical forays into life’s passages through grief and joy.

Allen Ginsberg spoke of "the voice in the burning bush," that illuminates as in a fire, yet never destroys even as it burns. Luis Rodriguez, L.A. Poet Laureate; Michael Meade, author, storyteller, and mythologist; and John Densmore, musician and author, have all been at the forefront of sparking social and cultural change, seeking to push the boundaries of their disciplines in order to open greater possibility for human connectivity and healing. In a world of turmoil and destruction, how can we learn to speak to each other? Share in an illuminating evening of readings, stories and performance to fuel our minds and souls.

Brian Seibert, a dance critic for The New York Times, offers an authoritative account of the great American art of tap dancing in his new book, What the Eye Hears. Seibert’s entertaining history illuminates tap’s complex origins—from the jig and clog influences brought from Africa by slaves, to its growth as a cousin to jazz in the vaudeville circuits, to its ubiquity on Broadway and in Hollywood, and finally its post-World War II decline and more recent reinvention. Seibert, born and raised in Los Angeles, will take the ALOUD stage to discuss tap’s influence on American culture, including the legacy of L.A.’s thriving tap scene. With archival film footage and special performances by the young L.A. choreographer Sarah Reich, acclaimed as one of the new leaders in tap, this program will be sure to move you.

A poisoned apple and a monkey’s paw with the power to change fate; a girl whose extraordinarily long hair causes catastrophe; a man with one human arm and one swan’s wing; and a house deep in the forest, constructed of gumdrops and gingerbread, vanilla frosting and boiled sugar. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours transforms the mythic figures of our childhood in his newest work, A Wild Swan and Other Tales. Cunningham discusses bringing to life these never-before-told moments of beloved fairy tales with the ever-imaginative novelist Aimee Bender. Join us for an enchanting evening of reimagined—and sometimes darkly perverse—bedtime stories with two of today’s most gifted storytellers.

The acclaimed author and passionate explorer of subjects from the Oxford English Dictionary to earthquakes to the Atlantic Ocean, offers an enthralling new biography of the Pacific Ocean. In his latest journey, Winchester travels from the Bering Strait to Cape Horn, the Yangtze River to the Panama Canal, and to the many small islands and archipelagos that lie in between. From the dying coral reefs to climate change to the military rise of China, Winchester explores our relationship to this imposing force of nature and its role in our modern world. ALOUD welcomes Winchester to the Pacific coast for a paean to this magnificent sea of beauty, myth, and imagination.

The panic began in 1692, when a minister’s daughter began to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before 19 men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) and Cleopatra unpacks the fantastical story of the Salem Witch Trials in her latest seminal work, The Witches. Aside from suffrage, the Salem Witch Trials represent the only moment in the shaping of the future republic when women played a central role in American history. Hear from one of our most acclaimed historians as she unveils one of the first great American mysteries.

In a new memoir, the award-winning novelist, poet, and beloved author of The House on Mango Street, shares over three decades of true stories, essays, talks, and poems to offer a richly illustrated compilation of her storied life and career. Opening doors onto the Chicago neighborhoods where she grew up, her abode in Mexico haunted by her ancestors, a Greek white-washed island, a borrowed guest room, her purple house in San Antonio, and more, Cisneros sheds light on the real and imagined places that inspired her writing even as she struggled to define her own idea of home. Reflecting on the private journey of a life in writing, ALOUD welcomes Cisneros to the stage for a reading and conversation.

In a revelatory testament of what it means to be black in America today, this timely new memoir solidifies Coates as one of today’s most important writers on the subject of race. Composed as letters to his teenage son, Coates bears witness to his own experiences as a young black man while moving between emotionally charged reportage of the recent shootings of unarmed black men by police. Coates—a national correspondent for The Atlantic, which published his landmark 2014 essay, "The Case for Reparations," and author of the previous memoir, The Beautiful Struggle—arrives at a transcendent vision of the past and present to offer hope for his son’s future. Join us for a momentous conversation with Coates and historian Robin D.G. Kelley about America’s way forward.

Roberta Kaplan, the renowned litigator who recently won the defining United States v. Windsor case to defeat the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), takes us behind the scenes of this gripping legal journey in her new book, Then Comes Marriage. Award-winning activist and scholar Lillian Faderman’s latest book, The Gay Revolution, begins in the 1950s, when the law classified gays and lesbians as criminals, then moves to the present to offer a sweeping account of the modern struggle for gay, lesbian, and trans rights. Following this summer’s landmark Supreme Court decision supporting gay marriage, hear from two of today’s most influential champions for equality.

Award-winning Egyptian American feminist writer and commentator Mona Eltahawy is no stranger to controversy. Through her articles in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and more, she has fought for the autonomy, security, and dignity of Muslim women, drawing widespread supporters and detractors. Now, in her first book, she offers an illuminating and incendiary manifesto on the repressive forces—political, cultural, and religious—that reduce millions of women to second-class citizens. Hear from Eltahawy—a woman motivated by hope and fury—about her revolutionary new book and this bold call to action for equal rights in the Middle East.