ALOUD @ Los Angeles Public Library

From the intellectuals who remade China, Turkey and Iran, to East-West encounters in Benares to the footprints of the Buddha in the small towns of India, Pankaj Mishra takes us on a historical journey through Asia, with detours to explore his own fiction and non-fiction.

Play is an inherent part of life. How are games revolutionizing the way we educate our children, think about the future, and engage with each other? Game designers Essen and Fullerton bridge the gap between art and education with their approach to play, and show us how reality is really just one big game we should all be playing.

Rushdie, recipient of the 2012 Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award, honoring his commitment to public libraries and literature, discusses Joseph Anton, his provocative new memoir—a frank depiction of how he and his family lived with the threat of murder for nine years after being condemned for his writing, and how he struggled for the freedom of speech.

Imagine a world where kids got gold stars for grit and curiosity. Paul Tough introduces us to a new generation of scientists and educators who are radically rethinking our understanding of how children develop character, how they learn to think, and how they overcome adversity.

Hass, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and former U.S. Poet Laureate, is also a luminous essayist. In this talk and discussion with poet Carol Muske-Dukes, he considers the claims on a poet’s attention as he explores art, imagination, and the natural world.

The seventeenth annual newer poets program is guest curated by three acclaimed poets: Eloise Klein Healy, Arktoi Press; Suzanne Lummis, Los Angeles Poetry Festival; and Gail Wronsky, professor, Loyola Marymount University and member, Glass Table Collective.

How are downtown chefs curating our cultural palate? New culinary projects are stirring up a neighborhood renaissance as the city’s best chefs are blending their ethnic and cultural traditions with the contemporary taste of eclectic Los Angeles. Join us to explore this diverse panel of chefs who are pushing downtown’s flavor forward. Stay for a post-panel tasting reception in the library courtyard, complements of participanting restaurants.

In her new memoir, Harjo, an internationally known performer and writer of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation, explores her own journey to becoming an award-winning poet. From growing up in Oklahoma, the end place of the Trail of Tears, and learning to escape her abusive stepfather through her imagination, to attending an Indian arts boarding school, to becoming a teenage single mother, Harjo eventually finds her poetic voice.

Bestselling author Sapphire tells the electrifying story of Abdul Jones, the son of Precious, the unforgettable heroine of her novel Push. This generational story—which moves from a Mississippi dirt farm to Harlem in its heyday—tells of a twenty-first century young man’s fight to find a way toward the future.

The struggles of an artist’s life are re-examined through a modern urban lens by these two critically acclaimed novelists. In Spiotta’s Stone Arabia, a fifty-year-old musician sinks away from public life until his niece begins to make a film about him, bringing many vulnerabilities to the surface. Fitch’s Paint it Black unravels the painful aftermath of the suicide of the son of a renowned pianist. Both novels, set in Los Angeles, vibrantly depict characters who are inspired and destroyed by music—and question the consequences of being an artist.