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Steve Lopez | Independence Day: What I Learned about Retirement from Some Who’ve Done it and Some Who Never Will
Wed, February 8, 2023
7:30 P.M.
Parkway Central Library
Cost: FREE
REGISTER In conversation with Mark Bowden A Los Angeles Times columnist for the past 22 years and former columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer , Steve Lopez is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, and is the winner of the H.L. Mencken, the Ernie…
Sadeqa Johnson | The House of Eve
Thu, February 9, 2023
7:30 P.M.
Parkway Central Library
Cost: FREE
REGISTER In conversation with Jennifer Weiner Acclaimed for their explorations of marital fidelity, friendship, and the difficulties of connecting in modern life, Sadeqa Johnson ’s novels include And Then There Was Me , Second House from the Corner , and Yellow…
Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. | Who Hears Here: On Black Music, Pasts, & Present
Wed, February 15, 2023
7:30 P.M.
Parkway Central Library
Cost: FREE
Register Join us for an evening of music and history. Professor emeritus of Music at the University of Pennsylvania, Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. is a celebrated musicologist, composer, pianist, and music historian. He is the author of Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop and The Amazing…
Joseph Earl Thomas | Sink: A Memoir
Tue, February 21, 2023
7:30 P.M.
Parkway Central Library
Cost: FREE
REGISTER In conversation with Elias Rodriques Referred to by Carmen Maria Machado as “all blood and nerve and near-unbearable beauty,” Joseph Earl Thomas ’ Sink is a coming-of-age memoir that chronicles the author’s escape from an upbringing of deprivation and…
Jamila Minnicks | Moonrise Over New Jessup
Wed, February 22, 2023
7:30 P.M.
Parkway Central Library
Cost: FREE
REGISTER Jamila Minnicks’ debut novel Moonrise Over New Jessup tells the story of a 1950s-era, all-Black Alabama town that is resistant to desegregation and the opposing political viewpoints that threaten a young couple’s burgeoning romance. Praised by Barbara Kingsolver for its dive…
Paul Harding | This Other Eden with Hanna Pylväinen | The End of Drum-Time
Thu, February 23, 2023
7:30 P.M.
Parkway Central Library
Cost: FREE
REGISTER Paul Harding won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Tinkers , “an astringent meditation on loss, family ties, and the presence of the past” ( The Guardian ) in which a dying elderly man wanders through the rooms of his life’s large and quiet moments.…
Reginald Dwayne Betts | Redaction
Mon, February 27, 2023
7:30 P.M.
Parkway Central Library
Cost: FREE
REGISTER In conversation with Airea D. Matthews A “powerful work of lyric art” and “tour de force indictment of the carceral industrial state” ( The New York Times Book Review ), Reginald Dwayne Betts ’ poetry collection Felon won the NAACP Image…
Leth Oun and Joe Samuel Starnes | A Refugee’s American Dream: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the U.S. Secret Service
Tue, February 28, 2023
7:30 P.M.
Parkway Central Library
Cost: FREE
REGISTER Veteran United States Secret Service Officer Leth Oun has protected presidents and vice presidents in four administrations in almost every state and more than a dozen countries. A political refugee who survived the genocidal Killing Fields of Cambodia, he arrived in America…
Camonghne Felix | Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation
Wed, March 1, 2023
7:30 P.M.
Parkway Central Library
Cost: FREE
REGISTER In conversation with Sharon G. Flake Camonghne Felix is the author of Build Yourself a Boat , “an exquisite and thoughtful” ( Bustle ) poetry collection that was longlisted for the National Book Award in poetry and shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award, among other…
Heather McGhee | The Sum of Us (Adapted for Young Readers): How Racism Hurts Everyone
Tue, March 7, 2023
7:30 P.M.
Parkway Central Library
Cost: FREE
REGISTER Sandra Shaber Memorial Lecture In conversation with award-winning journalist and broadcaster Tracey Matisak The Sum of Us , Heather McGhee’s 2021 odyssey across the American landscape of inequality, won wide acclaim for its empathetic and incisive imagining of a future that could…
Connie Briscoe | You Never Know: A Novel of Domestic Suspense
Mon, March 20, 2023
7:30 P.M.
Parkway Central Library
Cost: Free
REGISTER Acclaimed for her literary portrayals of Black women’s relationships, Connie Briscoe's historical and romance novels have found acclaim and a wide readership for nearly three decades. Sisters and Lovers , her first novel, sold 500,000 copies and her second novel, Big Girls…
Angela Saini | The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality
Wed, March 29, 2023
7:30 P.M.
Parkway Central Library
Cost: FREE
REGISTER Angela Saini is the author of Superior , an “easy-to-read blend of science reporting, cultural criticism, and personal reflection” ( Slate ) that explores the resurgence of the harmful and faulty study of race science. She is also the author of the critically acclaimed…
Vanessa Hua | Forbidden City
Mon, April 3, 2023
7:30 P.M.
Parkway Central Library
Cost: Free
REGISTER A former longtime columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle , Vanessa Hua has written about Asia and the diaspora from countries such as China, Burma, and South Korea, and has contributed articles to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic . She is the author of the…
Neil King Jr. | American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal
Tue, April 18, 2023
7:30 P.M.
Parkway Central Library
Cost: Free
REGISTER In conversation with Signe Wilkinson A Wall Street Journal correspondent for two decades, Neil King Jr. reported from more than 50 countries, served as the newspaper’s chief diplomatic correspondent, national political reporter, and global economics editor in Washington, D.C., and…
Daniel Torday | The 12th Commandment with Nana Kwame Adjie-Brenyah | Chain Gang All-Stars
Mon, May 8, 2023
7:30 P.M.
Parkway Central Library
Cost: Free or add The 12th Commandment $27.99 and/or Chain Gang All-Stars $27
REGISTER/TICKETS With characters situated in surreal, Twilight Zone -esque, yet all-too-familiar positions of oppression within our most venerable institutions, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah ’s 2018 debut fiction collection, Friday Black , was praised as a…
Airea D. Matthews | Bread and Circus
Thu, June 1, 2023
7:30 P.M.
Parkway Central Library
Cost: Free
REGISTER Airea D. Matthews is the 2022–23 Philadelphia Poet Laureate and directs the poetry program at Bryn Mawr College. Her collection Simulacra won the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Best American Poets, Gulf Coast, Harvard…