All the Authors, Thinkers, and Artists Coming to LIVE from the NYPL This Year
The New York Public Library’s premiere conversation series is back, and our fall lineup of guests ranges from luminary authors like Salman Rushdie and Tony Kushner to influential thinkers like Muhammad Yunus and Van Jones. See below for all our upcoming LIVE events, and buy tickets today.
9/6: Salman Rushdie with Paul Holdengraber: The Golden House: Salman Rushdie, the Booker Prize-winning author of Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses, returns with his most overtly political novel in over a decade: The Golden House. 7 PM.
9/7: Atul Gawande with Elizabeth Alexander: A Good Life—To The Very End: The writer of Being Mortal joins President Obama’s Inaugural poet to discuss mortality, loss, and the limits of modern medicine. 7 PM.
9/11: Nicole Krauss with Ruth Franklin: Curious Crossroads: Esteemed novelist Nicole Krauss talks about her new novel Forest Dark, her first since 2010’s Great House. She will be joined by Ruth Franklin, author of the recent biography Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life. 7 PM.
9/14: Frederick Wiseman with Errol Morris: Masters of Documentary: Two Academy Award-winning documentarians, each considered a master of the craft, join together to discuss Wiseman’s new film, Ex Libris - The New York Public Library—in the heart of the Library itself. 7 PM.
9/21: Olafur Eliasson: Arctic Imagination: In conjunction with major libraries on the Atlantic Ocean, NYPL presents speakers from the Arctic Imagination project, a collective of artists working to raise awareness of the devastating impact of rising temperatures in the Arctic. In the name of this vital initiative, sculptor and installation artist Olafur Eliasson comes to the Library to discuss how his work explores the tension between man and nature. 7 PM.
9/25: Muhammad Yunus: The New Economics of Selflessness: The Nobel Prize-winning founder of microlending presents his next big economic idea: capitalism is broken, and what must replace it is an economic system in which altruism can thrive just as much as self-interest. 7 PM.
9/28: Stephen Greenblatt with Tony Kushner: The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: The author of The Swerve traces the impact of the western world’s best-known origin story: that of Adam and Eve. Greenblatt will explore the resonance of humanity’s fictional first parents with beloved playwright Tony Kushner. 7 PM.
10/10: Van Jones: Beyond the Messy Truth: CNN political contributor Van Jones has never been one to shy away from a fight—or refuse to engage with the opposition. Looking to bridge the divisive political gap in America, Jones will lay out his blueprint for how to solve the biggest challenges our nation faces, regardless of ideology. 7 PM.
10/11: Casey Neistat with Paul Holdengraber: Creativity and Commerce: In the social media era, businesses looking to make an impact and build a brand are looking for one thing: storytelling. Hear from Casey Neistat, a director, producer, and YouTube celebrity, on what creativity, commerce, and advertising have become in the modern day. 7 PM.
11/15: Daniel Mendelsohn with Rebecca Mead: Fathers, Heroes, Sons: The critic Daniel Mendelsohn unpacks his family history in An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, And An Epic, a memoir about his father Jay who, at eighty-one, enrolled in his son’s college seminar on Homer’s Odyssey and then joined him on a real-life voyage to Ithaca. Mendelsohn will be joined by Rebecca Mead, staff writer at The New Yorker. 7 PM.
11/16: Jonathan Tiplin with Franklin Foer: Our Cornered Culture: Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon: these ubiquitous giants of technology are racing towards the future, and seem to grow more powerful and influential everyday. In his new history of computer science, World Without Mind, Franklin Foer explores the conflict between tech behemoths and democracy, and the sacrifices consumers have made in the name of convenience. He will be joined by Jonathan Tiplin, author of Move Fast and Break Things. 7 PM.
12/5: Naomi Klein: Arctic Imagination: For the second LIVE program on the Arctic Imagination project, the Library welcomes writer and critic Naomi Klein. Klein is the author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, which argued that curbing climate change will not only save the environment, but will also reduce global inequality. 7 PM.
12/18: Masha Gessen: Stories of a Life: The Robert B. Silvers Lecture: Masha Gessen has spent her life between two worlds: Russia and the U.S.A. At 14, she immigrated to the United States, and then returned to Moscow ten years later, where she became a journalist and sat on the board of LGBT rights organization Triangle in the 1990’s. Targeted by President Putin’s anti-gay policies, Gessen came back to the United States, where she now writes for The New York Times and The New York Review of Books. 7 PM.
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