Latest news with #RoxaneGay
CBS News
01-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Bay Area Book Festival holds Bookworm Block Party for second day in Berkeley
The 2025 Bay Area Book Festival kicked off its last day on Sunday in downtown Berkeley. Here's what to know The festival begins at 11 a.m. in downtown Berkeley and will have several free events for people to attend until 5 p.m. The two big events of the day, which will each have several things for attendees to see and do throughout the day, are the Bookworm Block Party and Inside Ideas. The Bookworm Block Party, formerly the outdoor fair, spreads across five areas, including three stages. There will be live presentations, local food trucks, and literary-themed exhibitors BART Plaza Stage, 2170 Shattuck Avenue Poetry Stage Kittredge, Street and Harold Way Family Stage Allston Way, and Milvia Street Health in Community Row, Allston Way Small Press Alley, Allston Way Inside Ideas has six indoor stages where there will be a variety of panels with topics such as fiction, essay discussions, tech, and romantasy. Brown Center, 2150 Allston Way. Two stages: the Goldman Theater and Tamalpais Room Hotel Shattuck Ballroom, Crystal Ballroom and Courtyard, 2086 Allston Way The Marsh Berkeley 2120 Allston Way. Also has two stages The headliners will speak at two ticketed events that take place at 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. Ticketed events Who's Afraid of Gender with Judith Butler, Micha Cardenas and MK Chavez takes place at 5:30 at Freight and Salvage, 2020 Addison Street. The 7:30 p.m. event, Portable Intersectionality: Roxane Gay in conversation with Alicia Garza, will also be at Freight and Salvage. How to get to the Bay Area Book Festival Taking BART to the Downtown Berkeley station will drop riders off right next to the festival. There are also other transit options, with the 51B, 79 , 67 and 7 line all near the festival.
RTÉ News
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
Dublin Literature Fest
From May 16th-25th, International Literature Festival Dublin brings over 200 events across fiction, nonfiction, poetry, film, music and performance to Dublin's Merrion Square. Below, we've selected 10 must-see events at the capital's premiere book bash... Headliners include trailblazing US writer, cultural critic and commentator Roxane Gay, who brings her unique brand of radical honesty to Dublin on Thursday 22nd May. Vincenzo Latronico and Naoise Dolan discuss why writing is about breaking things in order to put them back together again on Friday 16th. Seen through the eyes of two Berlin-based hipsters, Latronico's International Booker Prize 2025 shortlisted novel Perfection astutely skewers contemporary privilege and the disparity between social media and real life. Faith in globalisation has been fatally undermined by the pandemic, energy crisis, tariff and trade frictions and power rivalry. What if globalisation fails is the subject on Friday 16th, when journalist Ben Chu, Policy and Analysis Correspondent at BBC Verify, discusses his book Exile Economics with barrister Ingrid Miley, formerly RTÉ Industry and Employment Correspondent. The Mind Keeps the Score (Tuesday 20th) features ABC News Chief International Correspondent James Longman, whose experiences with depression prompted him to wonder if he had inherited mental illness, and specialist psychotherapist Owen O'Kane, one of the UK's leading mental health experts. They discuss their fascinating new books, The Inherited Mind (Longman) and Addicated to Anxiety (O'Kane). With the controversial relationship between AI and literature a major news topic, The Cost of Truth (Wednesday 21st) sees authors Jo Callaghan and Ian Green talking to Adrian Weckler, Irish Independent technology editor. AI researcher Callaghan's spellbinding mystery Human Remains features the world's first AI detective, while Green's novel Extremophile is a breakneck biohacking thriller set in climate-collapse London. Discover how the stories around Irish words reveal a unique perspective on Ireland's landscape, weather, relationships, feelings and the body on Friday 23rd when Hector Ó hEochagáin tells Patrick Freyne about his award-winning Irish Words You Should Know, described by Tommy Tiernan as "The best book on the Irish language I have ever read". Modern retellings can transform our understanding of a novel. On Sunday 25th, Aimée de Jongh, Xiaolu Guo and Clara Kumagai talk to Martina Devlin about finding inspiration in classic literature: respectively, Lord of the Flies, Moby Dick and Puccini's Madame Butterfly. Also on the 25th, Serhii Plokhy, Professor of History at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, discusses his gripping account of the chaos and disaster that unfolded at Ukraine's nuclear plant from the first day of Russia's 2022 invasion. A remarkable story of uncertainty and courage, Chernobyl Roulette sounds the alarm about the dangers of nuclear sites in these unprecedented times. In a packed programme of stories, songs, drawing, and writing for children of all ages, two highlights include The Ultimate Comic Creation Event with comic book artist Will Sliney on Sunday 18th May, where he'll get everyone drawing Spider-Man. On Saturday 24th May, author and illustrator Laura Ellen Anderson, creator of Amelia Fang, introduces Marnie Midnight the moon-loving moth in Make Your Own Minibeast on the Minibeast Mission!
Irish Independent
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Roxane Gay: ‘The level of harassment that you get, and the death threats and the rape threats… that part is really hard'
From trans rights to Trump, American writer and social commentator is not afraid to say what she thinks. Here she talks about treated like an 'opinion vending machine', dealing with death threats and why her book about living in a larger body connected with people of all sizes I hadn't planned to, but as I talk with Roxane Gay ahead of her forthcoming appearance in Dublin, I find myself admitting to her that I was a little nervous beforehand about this interview. 'It's just that you're terrifyingly no-bullshit,' I tell her, as she raises an eyebrow. And it's this forthright quality that has become her stock-in-trade. Not just that, it has made Gay one of the most renowned American writers and commentators of her generation. Though she has dialled down her Twitter use — more on which later — she still has over 780k followers on the social media platform (and 341k on Instagram).
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
What's Next for America's Largest Creative-Writing Conference
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors' weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. Last week in Los Angeles, the author Roxane Gay gave the keynote address at the AWP Conference & Bookfair, the U.S.'s largest annual gathering of creative writers. Much of Gay's speech focused on what she called 'the abhorrent path that this country is on,' but the evening began with a tentative note of optimism: A board member for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs announced that the fair had registered 10,000 guests for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began. As she exhorted the audience to celebrate, one woman behind me said, 'Before they make it illegal.' First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic's books section: The best American poetry of the 21st century (so far) What to make of miracles Why we're still talking about the 'trauma plot' Who needs intimacy? The friendly heckler was not being entirely hyperbolic. This group of professors, students, and MFA-program directors have plenty of reason to worry: According to its mission statement, AWP takes pride in 'championing diversity and excellence in creative writing.' The conference's panels feature land acknowledgments and names such as 'Queering Form' and 'Postcolonial Prosodies.' You'll find no evidence here of a 'post-woke' era. Yet AWP also serves a constituency of university-affiliated writers who depend on a substantial amount of funding from government agencies such as the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)—whether through individual grants or via the federal money that goes to their institutions. Receiving that cash is now conditional on compliance with the Trump administration's flurry of executive orders forbidding the mention of DEI. Just a week before the conference, Columbia University, which hosts a well-known writing program and was at risk of losing $400 million, capitulated to government demands that it curtail campus protests and place an entire department under receivership. And across the MFA landscape, academics are facing stark choices between free speech and government support as many universities purge references to race, gender, and disability from their websites and public materials. To observe the chilling effect, all you had to do was walk the expansive floor of the West Exhibit Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center, where program directors were hawking literary journals and MFA brochures. At the spacious University of Iowa booth, Loren Glass, the chair of the university's English department, told me that conferences are drawing more scrutiny this year. 'We've all been encouraged to render generic our travel plans—let me put it that way,' he said. 'Like, if you're going to a queer-studies or African American–history conference, try and call it just the AHA or the Literature Association.' A couple of aisles over, Heather Scott Partington, the president of the National Book Critics Circle, had lost her voice after pulling triple duty at her booth; Partington said two of the NBCC's board members had canceled plans to attend the convention after their universities advised against expenditures that a government audit might later deem wasteful. (AWP's executive director, Michelle Aielli, confirmed to me that a number of members had canceled plans to attend.) Glass was at the fair with Christopher Merrill, the head of Iowa's prestigious International Writing Program, which had just lost nearly $1 million in funding—or roughly half of its budget. Launched in 1967 with help from the State Department, the program has hosted authors from abroad, including the Nobel laureates Orhan Pamuk and Han Kang, and advanced American soft power. Merrill spoke with me at the fair about a new aspect of his job: frantically asking donors to close the gap. 'I have to let about half my staff go, and we have to figure out an alternate means of revenue,' Merrill said, calling his curtailed program 'just one of the many canaries in the coal mine.' When I asked who else in the hall might be in a similar position, Merrill said, 'Actually, every one of us is a canary now.' With universities, law firms, and corporations already backing down from Donald Trump's challenges, Aielli, reached by phone after the fair, insisted that AWP will not do the same. 'As of right now, the plan is not to scrub our website, not to change words, and, more importantly, not to change our mission,' she told me. Anticipating the loss of a sizable NEA grant, she is working to hire a development specialist: 'Our goal is to try to focus on other areas of fundraising.' If AWP loses the government money, can the organization and its conference survive at their current level? 'I feel confident that we can,' she said. 'Can I say with certainty? I cannot, not at this time.' She expects to hear more from the NEA next month. , by Patricia Highsmith The suave serial murderer Tom Ripley's actions can be notoriously hard for readers to predict—but in Highsmith's third novel about the con man, Ripley surprises himself. No longer the youthful compulsive killer of The Talented Mr. Ripley, the character is aging and getting bored. So when a poor man named Jonathan responds coolly to him at a party, Ripley fashions an elaborate drama for his own amusement: He cons the mild-mannered and entirely inexperienced Jonathan into taking a job as a freelance assassin targeting Mafia members, but the more Ripley watches Jonathan struggle with the task and his morals, the more Ripley itches to get his own hands dirty again. When I revisited Highsmith's books ahead of their (rather dour) Netflix adaptation, I found myself unexpectedly drawn most to Ripley's Game and its absurd humor. The novel explores a classic Highsmith preoccupation: how reducing strangers to archetypes can feel irresistible. Ripley is as much a petty meddler as he is a cold-blooded murderer—and that makes him endlessly fun to follow. — Shirley Li From our list: The 2024 summer reading guide 📚 The Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West, by Amitav Acharya 📚 Authority, by Andrea Long Chu 📚 Audition, by Katie Kitamura Quaker Parents Were Ahead of Their Time By Gail Cornwall It can be scary to trust children with independence. But kids are better problem-solvers than some people might think. When my son, at age 10, asked me if he could play laser tag with friends, I asked him how he could avoid pulling a trigger (in deference to the Quaker value of pacifism). He decided to serve as referee. I was proud of him for exercising 'discernment,' another Quaker value, all on his own, for listening to his 'still, small voice within' and letting it guide him to a solution that satisfied his need for belonging. He is now 13 and recently couldn't decide whether to accept a babysitting job or relax at home. I asked him, 'What do you think tomorrow-you will wish today-you had done?' He picked out stuffed animals to give his charges, spent the evening feeling needed, and had cash the next day when he wanted to buy boba for a friend. Read the full article. When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic. Sign up for The Wonder Reader, a Saturday newsletter in which our editors recommend stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Explore all of our newsletters. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
04-04-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
What's Next for America's Largest Creative-Writing Conference
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors' weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. Last week in Los Angeles, the author Roxane Gay gave the keynote address at the AWP Conference & Bookfair, the U.S.'s largest annual gathering of creative writers. Much of Gay's speech focused on what she called 'the abhorrent path that this country is on,' but the evening began with a tentative note of optimism: A board member for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs announced that the fair had registered 10,000 guests for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began. As she exhorted the audience to celebrate, one woman behind me said, 'Before they make it illegal.' First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic 's books section: The best American poetry of the 21st century (so far) What to make of miracles Why we're still talking about the 'trauma plot' Who needs intimacy? The friendly heckler was not being entirely hyperbolic. This group of professors, students, and MFA-program directors have plenty of reason to worry: According to its mission statement, AWP takes pride in 'championing diversity and excellence in creative writing.' The conference's panels feature land acknowledgments and names such as 'Queering Form' and 'Postcolonial Prosodies.' You'll find no evidence here of a 'post-woke' era. Yet AWP also serves a constituency of university-affiliated writers who depend on a substantial amount of funding from government agencies such as the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)—whether through individual grants or via the federal money that goes to their institutions. Receiving that cash is now conditional on compliance with the Trump administration's flurry of executive orders forbidding the mention of DEI. Just a week before the conference, Columbia University, which hosts a well-known writing program and was at risk of losing $400 million, capitulated to government demands that it curtail campus protests and place an entire department under receivership. And across the MFA landscape, academics are facing stark choices between free speech and government support as many universities purge references to race, gender, and disability from their websites and public materials. To observe the chilling effect, all you had to do was walk the expansive floor of the West Exhibit Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center, where program directors were hawking literary journals and MFA brochures. At the spacious University of Iowa booth, Loren Glass, the chair of the university's English department, told me that conferences are drawing more scrutiny this year. 'We've all been encouraged to render generic our travel plans—let me put it that way,' he said. 'Like, if you're going to a queer-studies or African American–history conference, try and call it just the AHA or the Literature Association.' A couple of aisles over, Heather Scott Partington, the president of the National Book Critics Circle, had lost her voice after pulling triple duty at her booth; Partington said two of the NBCC's board members had canceled plans to attend the convention after their universities advised against expenditures that a government audit might later deem wasteful. (AWP's executive director, Michelle Aielli, confirmed to me that a number of members had canceled plans to attend.) Glass was at the fair with Christopher Merrill, the head of Iowa's prestigious International Writing Program, which had just lost nearly $1 million in funding —or roughly half of its budget. Launched in 1967 with help from the State Department, the program has hosted authors from abroad, including the Nobel laureates Orhan Pamuk and Han Kang, and advanced American soft power. Merrill spoke with me at the fair about a new aspect of his job: frantically asking donors to close the gap. 'I have to let about half my staff go, and we have to figure out an alternate means of revenue,' Merrill said, calling his curtailed program 'just one of the many canaries in the coal mine.' When I asked who else in the hall might be in a similar position, Merrill said, 'Actually, every one of us is a canary now.' With universities, law firms, and corporations already backing down from Donald Trump's challenges, Aielli, reached by phone after the fair, insisted that AWP will not do the same. 'As of right now, the plan is not to scrub our website, not to change words, and, more importantly, not to change our mission,' she told me. Anticipating the loss of a sizable NEA grant, she is working to hire a development specialist: 'Our goal is to try to focus on other areas of fundraising.' If AWP loses the government money, can the organization and its conference survive at their current level? 'I feel confident that we can,' she said. 'Can I say with certainty? I cannot, not at this time.' She expects to hear more from the NEA next month. What to Read Ripley's Game, by Patricia Highsmith The suave serial murderer Tom Ripley's actions can be notoriously hard for readers to predict—but in Highsmith's third novel about the con man, Ripley surprises himself. No longer the youthful compulsive killer of The Talented Mr. Ripley, the character is aging and getting bored. So when a poor man named Jonathan responds coolly to him at a party, Ripley fashions an elaborate drama for his own amusement: He cons the mild-mannered and entirely inexperienced Jonathan into taking a job as a freelance assassin targeting Mafia members, but the more Ripley watches Jonathan struggle with the task and his morals, the more Ripley itches to get his own hands dirty again. When I revisited Highsmith's books ahead of their (rather dour) Netflix adaptation, I found myself unexpectedly drawn most to Ripley's Game and its absurd humor. The novel explores a classic Highsmith preoccupation: how reducing strangers to archetypes can feel irresistible. Ripley is as much a petty meddler as he is a cold-blooded murderer—and that makes him endlessly fun to follow. — Shirley Li Out Next Week 📚 The Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West, by Amitav Acharya 📚 Authority, by Andrea Long Chu 📚 Audition, by Katie Kitamura Your Weekend Read Quaker Parents Were Ahead of Their Time By Gail Cornwall It can be scary to trust children with independence. But kids are better problem-solvers than some people might think. When my son, at age 10, asked me if he could play laser tag with friends, I asked him how he could avoid pulling a trigger (in deference to the Quaker value of pacifism). He decided to serve as referee. I was proud of him for exercising ' discernment,' another Quaker value, all on his own, for listening to his 'still, small voice within' and letting it guide him to a solution that satisfied his need for belonging. He is now 13 and recently couldn't decide whether to accept a babysitting job or relax at home. I asked him, 'What do you think tomorrow-you will wish today-you had done?' He picked out stuffed animals to give his charges, spent the evening feeling needed, and had cash the next day when he wanted to buy boba for a friend.
