ALOUD @ Los Angeles Public Library

A veteran of twenty years of human rights research and activism and recent recipient of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Bennoune offers an eye-opening chronicle of peaceful resistance to extremism in her recent book. Scouring the globe for stories of heroic individuals—artists, doctors, lawyers, and educators— who challenge stereotypes of Islamist fundamentalism, Bennoune shares these vivid portraits that offer an uplifting look at our best hopes for ending fundamentalist oppression worldwide.

In his first collection in nine years, McGuane confirms his status as a modern master of Big Sky country. With a comic genius that recalls Mark Twain, and his own beautiful way with words, McGuane, The Bushwacked Piano, Gallatin Canyon, Ninety-two in the Shade, offers a jubilant and thunderous new batch of stories about life’s complicated nature from the wilds of Montana. Join us for a reading and conversation with one of America’s most deeply admired storytellers.

Coming together for the first time on stage, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Adam Johnson and bestselling nonfiction author Blaine Harden explore how their different paths of storytelling led them to similar truths about illusive North Korea. Join Johnson, author of the spellbinding novel The Orphan Master’s Son, and Harden, author of the new historical exposé The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and the Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom, for a fascinating discussion about the world’s longest-lasting totalitarian regime.

A year ago, Russia invaded Ukraine, destroying a peaceful order in Europe and placing its own regime at risk. We in the West have experienced this historical turning point through a haze of propaganda. According to Snyder, the Kremlin was perhaps wrong about the political weakness of Ukraine but likely right about some intellectual weaknesses of Americans and Europeans. When will the war end? This rare pairing of two essential thinkers on Eastern European politics offers a revelatory look at why what happens in Ukraine is of significant international importance.

The multi-talented dancer, choreographer, and director Bill T. Jones presents a provocative collage of movement, music, and personal narrative from Story/Time, a recent dance work produced by his company and inspired by the legendary composer John Cage. This program coincides with the publication of a new book based on Jones’ brilliant hybrid work and meditations as an African American artist struggling to find a place in a white-dominated dance world. Jones and two extraordinary dancers from his company will perform and then discuss this powerful experiment in storytelling.Co-presented with Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and consultant on the Academy Award-winning film 12 Years a Slave discusses his latest book, which unearths extraordinary findings from Columbia University’s archives to shed new light on the Underground Railroad. Join Foner in conversation with Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy for an illuminating look at the fraught history of American slavery and the courageous acts of individuals who defied the law in the fight for freedom decades before the Civil War.

David Axelrod, the great strategist who masterminded President Barack Obama’s historic election campaigns, sits down with Emmy Award-winning NPR host Michel Martin to discuss his years as a young journalist, political consultant, and ultimately senior adviser to the president. From a young journalist in 1970s and 80s Chicago—where he reported on the dissolution of the last of the big city political machines—to his twenty-year friendship with Obama, to serving during two wars and an economic disaster, Axelrod offers a rich account of the man and the mind behind some of the greatest political changes of the last decade. This event took place at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.

The work of Wendy L. Freedman, one of the world’s most influential astronomers, is based on being an observer, while that of Caltech cosmologist Sean Carroll is based on his role as theorist. In a phenomenal period of discovery in which the view of the universe has expanded enormously, what fundamental discoveries might yet be uncovered? Join us for a conversation with these two experts about what could literally be on the horizon.

Internationally recognized authority on comics and visual communication, Scott McCloud wrote the book on how comics work, Understanding Comics. Now he vaults into fiction with a breathtaking, funny, and unforgettable new work. In The Sculptor, McCloud delivers a spellbinding adult urban fable about a wish, a deal with death, the price of art, and the value of life. Join KCRW’s Elvis Mitchell for a conversation with McCloud on his long-awaited magnum opus and the power of storytelling.

Ghettoside tells the kaleidoscopic story of one American murder—one young black man slaying another—and a driven crew of detectives whose creed is to pursue justice for forgotten victims at all costs. This fast-paced narrative of a devastating crime in South Los Angeles provides a new lens into the great subject of why murder happens in America—and how the plague of killings might yet be stopped. KCRW’s Warren Olney sits down with award-winning reporter Leovy to discuss this master work of literary journalism that is equal parts gripping detective story and provocative social critique.