LIVE! From City Lights

A tribute to Diane di Prima, marking one year since her passing in October 2020, with Hanif Abdurraqib, Garrett Caples, Jeanne di Prima, Sheppard Powell, Cedar Sigo, Sunnylyn Thibodeaux, Wendy Trevino, and Jenny Jo Wennlund. This event was originally broadcast live via Zoom and hosted by Peter Maravelis. This event was sponsored by the City Lights Foundation and Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative. You can purchase copies of "Revolutionary Letters" directly from City Lights at a 30% discount here: https://citylights.com/beat-literature-poetry-history/revolutionary-letters-50th-anniver/ Other books by Diane di Prima can be purchased directly from the City Lights Bookstore here: citylights.com/author/diane-di-prima/ City Lights events calendar: https://citylights.com/events/

Christopher W. Shaw in conversation with Ralph Nader, discussing his newly released book "First Class: The U.S. Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat," published by City Lights Books. This event was originally broadcast live via Zoom, hosted by Peter Maravelis and moderated by Katherine Isaac. You can purchase copies of "First Class: The U.S. Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat" directly from City Lights at a 30% discount here: https://citylights.com/muckraking/1st-class-the-u-s-postal-service-d/ Christopher W. Shaw is an author, historian, and policy analyst. He has a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of "Money, Power, and the People: The American Struggle to Make Banking Democratic" (University of Chicago Press, 2019) and "Preserving the People’s Post Office" (Essential Books, 2006). His research on the history of banking, money, labor, agriculture, social movements, and the postal system has been published in the following academic journals: Journal of Policy History, Journal of Social History, Agricultural History, Enterprise & Society, Kansas History, and Journalism History. Shaw was formerly a project director at the Center for Study of Responsive Law. He has worked on a number of policy issues, including the privatization of government services, health and safety regulations, and electoral reform. He has appeared in such media outlets as the Associated Press, National Public Radio, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, Village Voice, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Buffalo News, among others. Shaw lives in Berkeley, CA. Named by The Atlantic as one of the hundred most influential figures in American history, and by Time and Life magazines as one of the most influential Americans of the twentieth century, Ralph Nader has helped us drive safer cars, eat healthier food, breathe better air, drink cleaner water, and work in safer environments for more than four decades. Nader’s recent books include "Breaking Through Power" with City Lights, "Unstoppable," and "The Good Fight." Nader writes a syndicated column, has his own radio show, and gives lectures and interviews year round. Katherine Isaac is the Executive Director of the Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute (DJDI) where she advocates for the public good, including a strong and expanded public Postal Service. Previously, Isaac coordinated the Campaign for Postal Banking and A Grand Alliance to Save Our Public Postal Service at the American Postal Workers Union. She currently serves as Board Treasurer of the Global Labor Justice/International Labor Rights Forum. Isaac is the author of "Civics for Democracy: A Journey for Teachers and Students." This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation

Steven Reigns in conversation with Jonny McGovern, discussing his new book "A Quilt for David," published by City Lights Books. This event was originally broadcast live via Zoom and hosted by Peter Maravelis. You can purchase copies of "A Quilt for David" directly from City Lights at a 30% discount here: https://citylights.com/poetry-published-by-city-lights/quilt-for-david/ Steven Reigns, Los Angeles poet and educator, was appointed the first Poet Laureate of West Hollywood. He has two previous collections, "Inheritance" and "Your Dead Body is My Welcome Mat," and over a dozen chapbooks. Reigns edited "My Life is Poetry," showcasing his students’ work from the first-ever autobiographical poetry workshop for LGBTQ seniors. Reigns has lectured and taught writing workshops around the country to LGBTQ youth and people living with HIV. He worked for a decade as an HIV test counselor in Florida and Los Angeles. Currently he is touring The Gay Rub, an exhibition of rubbings from LGBTQ landmarks around the world, and has a private practice as a psychotherapist. He lives in West Hollywood, CA. Jonny McGovern is a comedian, podcaster and the host/ executive producer of the long-running hit TV series “Hey Qween,” which showcases queer stories and performers. Editors Note: During this event, McGovern hosts a game called "Gaze Upon It," where he compiled a slideshow of images and has Reigns describe and elaborate on them. To see the images discussed, please visit the link below (segment begins approximately 26 minutes into the event): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-1u_jD3-co This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation

City Lights and YES! Magazine present Stan Cox in conversation with Sonali Kolhatkar, celebrating the launch of his new book, "The Path to a Livable Future: A New Politics to Fight Climate Change, Racism, and the Next Pandemic," published by City Lights Books. This event was originally broadcast live via Zoom and hosted by Peter Maravelis. You can purchase copies of "The Path to a Livable Future: A New Politics to Fight Climate Change, Racism, and the Next Pandemic" directly from City Lights at a 30% discount here: https://citylights.com/open-media-series/path-to-a-livable-future/ Stan Cox began his career in the U.S. Department of Agriculture and is now the Lead Scientist at The Land Institute. Cox is the author of "The Green New Deal and Beyond: Ending the Climate Emergency While We Still Can" (with City Lights), "Any Way You Slice It: The Past, Present, and Future of Rationing, Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer)" and "Sick Planet: Corporate Food and Medicine." His writing about the economic and political roots of the global ecological crisis have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Hartford Courant, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post, Kansas City Star, Arizona Republic, The New Republic, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Salon, and Dissent, and in local publications spanning 43 U.S. states. In 2012, The Atlantic named Cox their “Readers’ Choice Brave Thinker” for his critique of air conditioning. He is based in Salina, Kansas. Sonali Kolhatkar is YES! Magazine’s Racial Justice Editor. She is also the host and creator of "Rising Up with Sonali," a nationally syndicated television and radio program. YES! Media is a nonprofit, independent organization that publishes solutions journalism daily online and a quarterly print magazine. To learn more visit: www.yesmagazine.org This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation

David Talbot and Margaret Talbot celebrating the launch of their new book, "By the Light of Burning Dreams: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Second American Revolution," published by Harper Collins. This event was originally broadcast live via Zoom and hosted by Peter Maravelis. You can purchase copies of "By the Light of Burning Dreams: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Second American Revolution" directly from City Lights here: https://citylights.com/new-nonfiction-in-hardcover/by-the-light-of-burning-dreams/ David Talbot is the author of the New York Times bestseller "Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years" and the acclaimed national bestseller "Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love." He is the founder and former editor in chief of Salon, and was a senior editor at Mother Jones and the features editor at the San Francisco Examiner. He has written for The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Time, The Guardian, and other major publications. Talbot lives in San Francisco, California. Margaret Talbot joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2004. Previously, she was a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and, from 1995 to 1999, an editor at The New Republic. Her stories, covering legal issues, social policy, and popular culture, have appeared, in addition to in the Times Magazine and The New Republic, in The Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic, and the Times Book Review. She was one of the founding editors of Lingua Franca and was a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. In 1999, she received a Whiting Writer's Award. She is the author of "The Entertainer: Movies, Magic and My Father’s Twentieth Century," about Lyle Talbot, her father. This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation

Chet'la Sebree in conversation with Dantiel W. Moniz, celebrating the release of Chet'la Sebree's new book, "Field Study," published by FSG Originals. This event was originally broadcast via Zoom and hosted by Josiah Luis Alderete. You can purchase copies of "Field Study" directly from City Lights here: https://citylights.com/general-poetry/field-study/ Chet'la Sebree is the director of the Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts at Bucknell University and the author of "Mistress," winner of the 2018 New Issues Poetry Prize and nominated for a 2020 NAACP Image Award. She earned an MFA in creative writing, with a focus in poetry, from American University, and has received fellowships from the Delaware Division of the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook, Yaddo, Vermont Studio Center, and Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. Her poetry has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Guernica, Pleiades, and elsewhere. Dantiel W. Moniz is the recipient of the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction, the Cecelia Joyce Johnson Emerging Writer Award by the Key West Literary Seminar, a Tin House Scholarship, and has been named a "Writer to Watch" by Publishers Weekly and Apple Books. Her debut collection, "Milk Blood Heat," is an Indie Next Pick, an Amazon "Best Book of the Month" selection, a Roxane Gay Audacious Book Club pick, and has been hailed as "must-read" by TIME, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzefeed, Elle, and O, The Oprah Magazine, among others. Her work has appeared in the Paris Review, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, One Story, American Short Fiction, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and elsewhere. She lives in Northeast Florida and currently teaches fiction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation

New Directions at 85: The Anniversary Celebration with Forrest Gander as MC and Rosmarie Waldrop, Susan Howe, Nathaniel Tarn, Nathaniel Mackey, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Sylvia Legris, Michael Palmer, Will Alexander, Eliot Weinberger, and other surprise guests. This event was originally broadcast live via zoom on Thursday, June 3, 2021 and was introduced by City Lights' Peter Maravelis and hosted by Forrest Gander. New Directions was founded in 1936 by James Laughlin, then a Harvard University sophomore, via advice from Ezra Pound to "do something useful" after finishing his studies at Harvard. The first projects to come out of New Directions were anthologies of new writing, each titled "New Directions in Poetry and Prose" (until 1966's NDPP 19). Early writers incorporated in these anthologies include Dylan Thomas, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Thomas Merton, Denise Levertov, James Agee, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. New Directions publishing program includes writing of all genres, representing not only American writing, but also a considerable amount of literature in translation from modernist authors around the world. Among some of the writers they have published are Nobel Prize Winners: Andre Gide, Pablo Neruda, Boris Pasternak, Octavio Paz, Pulitzer Prize Winners: Hilton Als, George Oppen, Gary Snyder, Williams Carlos Williams, National Book Award Winners: Yoko Tawada, Nathaniel Mackey, Man Booker Prize Winner László Krasznahorkai, as well as many others. The current focus of New Directions is threefold: discovering and introducing to the US contemporary international writers; publishing new and experimental American poetry and prose; and reissuing New Directions' classic titles in new editions. Drawing from the tradition of the early anthologies and series, New Directions launched the Pearl series, which presents short works by New Directions writers in slim, minimalist volumes designed by Rodrigo Corral. You can learn more about New Directions by visiting their website: https://www.ndbooks.com/

Nathaniel Mackey in conversation with Fred Moten, celebrating the launch of his new poetry collection, "Double Trio," published by New Directions. This event was originally broadcast via Zoom and hosted by Josiah Luis Alderete. You can purchase copies of "Double Trio" directly from City Lights here: https://citylights.com/staff-picks/double-trio-tej-bet-sos-notice-nerv/ Nathaniel Mackey was born in Miami, Florida, in 1947. He is the author of several books of fiction of "exquisite rhythmic lyricism" (Bookforum), poetry, and criticism and has received many awards for his work, including the National Book Award in poetry for Splay Anthem, the Stephen Henderson Award from the African American Literature and Culture Society, the Bollingen Prize, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Mackey is the Reynolds Price Professor of English at Duke University. Fred Moten is an American cultural theorist, poet, and scholar whose work explores critical studies, black studies, and performance studies. Moten is Professor of Performance Studies at New York University and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of California, Riverside and the University of Iowa. His scholarly texts include "The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study" which was co-authored with Stefano Harney, "In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition," and "The Universal Machine" (Duke University Press, 2018). He has published numerous poetry collections, including The Little Edges, The Feel Trio, B Jenkins, and Hughson's Tavern. In 2020, Moten was awarded a for "[c]reating new conceptual spaces to accommodate emerging forms of Black aesthetics, cultural production, and social life." This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation

Cynthia Kaufman in conversation with Francesca Caparas, discussing her new book, "The Sea is Rising and So Are We: A Climate Justice Handbook," published by PM Press. This event was originally broadcast live via Zoom and hosted by Peter Maravelis. You can purchase copies of "The Sea is Rising and So Are We: A Climate Justice Handbook" directly from City Lights here: https://citylights.com/staff-picks-archive/sea-is-rising-so-are-we/ Cynthia Kaufman is the director of the Vasconcellos Institute for Democracy in Action, where she also teaches community organizing and philosophy. The author of "Getting Past Capitalism: History, Vision, Hope" (Lexington Books, 2012), she is a lifelong social change activist, having worked on issues such as tenants' rights, police abuse, union organizing, international politics, and most recently climate change. Francesca Caparas teaches English and Asian American Studies at De Anza College and she is the Faculty Coordinator of the Jean Miller Resource Room for Women, Gender, and Sexuality. She is the 2020-21 Fulbright Scholar to the Philippines where she will be researching discourses of digital literacy. Her interests and community work include international human rights, intersectional feminism, digital culture, and decolonization. This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation

Aminatta Forna in conversation with Eula Biss, discussing her new book, “The Window Seat: Notes From a Life in Motion,” published by Grove Press. This event was originally broadcast via Zoom and hosted by Josiah Luis Alderete. You can purchase copies of "The Window Seat: Notes From a Life in Motion" in hardcover or paperback directly from City Lights here: Hardcover - https://citylights.com/new-nonfiction-in-hardcover/window-seat-notes-from-a-life-in-motio/ Paperback - https://citylights.com/belles-lettres-essays/window-seat-notes-from-a-life-in-motio-2/ Aminatta Forna is the author of the novels “Ancestor Stones,” “The Memory of Love,” and “The Hired Man,” as well as the memoir “The Devil That Danced on the Water.” Forna's books have been translated into sixteen languages. Her essays have appeared in Granta, The Guardian, The Observer, and Vogue. She is currently the Lannan Visiting Chair of Poetics at Georgetown University. Eula Biss is the author of four books, most recently “Having and Being Had.” Her book “On Immunity” was named one of the Ten Best Books of 2014 by the New York Times Book Review, and “Notes from No Man's Land” won the National Book Critics Circle award for criticism in 2009. Her essays and prose poems have recently appeared in the Guardian, the New York Review of Books, The Believer, Freeman’s, Jubilat, the Baffler, Harper’s, and the New York Times Magazine. She teaches nonfiction writing at Northwestern University. This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation