Episodes
-
AI and Inequality: How Machines Keep Us Poor, Sick, and Discriminated Against
This third program in our AI series focused on the critical issue of inherent biases in AI technologies, especially as they are deployed in law enforcement, healthcare, government, and education. We took a look at how these biases manifest and their profound implications.
-
AI in the Spotlight: Revolutionizing Creativity and Industry in the Arts
From generating new forms of artistic expression to transforming industry practices, artificial intelligence is redefining the boundaries of creativity. This event brought together creatives from diverse backgrounds and industry experts to discuss the opportunities and challenges presented by AI…
more -
Wandering Stars
Tommy Orange, the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There, returns to ALOUD with one of TIME Magazine’s most anticipated books of 2024, Wandering Stars, which traces the legacies of the Colorado Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial…
more -
Mind and Machine: Understanding AI’s Impact on Youth Mental Health
Join us for the first of a special ALOUD series on AI, where we take a compelling look into the interaction between young people and AI systems, exploring subconscious perceptions and the significant effects of AI on youth mental health and development. ALOUD on Ideas is an ongoing series that…
more -
Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story
Leslie Jamison has become one of our most beloved contemporary voices, a scribe of the real, the true, and the complex. The New York Times best-selling author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams joins us in a program exclusive to ALOUD about her new memoir, Splinters, the riveting story of...
-
Alphabetical Diaries
The award-winning, beloved author of Pure Colour, Sheila Heti returns to ALOUD with her new thrilling confessional Alphabetical Diaries. Over ten years, Heti kept a record of her thoughts, then arranged the sentences from A to Z. Known for her experimental literary works—passionate and…
more -
The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World
Join us for a conversation with one of our country’s most prominent rabbis, Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR, discussing her new book, The Amen Effect, which explores what it will take, in a time of loneliness and isolation, social rupture and alienation, to rebuild our society. Rabbi Brous was in...
-
Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice
In 2019, Cristina Rivera Garza traveled from her home in Texas to Mexico City in search of an old unresolved criminal file. "My name is Cristina Rivera Garza," she wrote in her request to the attorney general, "and I am writing to you as a relative of Liliana Rivera, who was murdered on July 16,...
-
To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul
ALOUD welcomes two-time Poet Laureate of the United States and Pulitzer Prize–winner Tracy K. Smith with her remarkable book To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul. In 2020, heartsick from consistent assaults on Black life, Tracy K. Smith found herself soul-searching and digging into...
-
Dwell Time: A Memoir of Art, Exile, and Repair
Renowned art conservator Rosa Lowinger reveals in her beautiful memoir Dwell Time a journey of her difficult childhood in Miami growing up among people whose losses in the Cuban revolution, and earlier by the decimation of family in the Holocaust, clouded all family life. Through Lowinger’s...
-
An Amerikan Family: The Shakurs and the Nation They Created
Award-winning journalist Santi Elijah Holley brings us a long overdue look at the Shakur family, who, for over fifty years, have inspired generations of activists, scholars, and music fans. An Amerikan Family is the history of the fight for Black liberation in the United States, as experienced by...
-
First Gen: A Memoir
From former White House aide to President Obama and Harvard graduate Alejandra Campoverdi comes a riveting, unflinching memoir on navigating social mobility as a first gen Latina. She offers a broad examination of the unacknowledged emotional tolls of being a trailblazer. Join us as we follow...
-
Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World
In her bestselling books, celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein documents the effects of branding, austerity, and climate profiteering on our societies and our souls. Using her own story of an antithetical doppelganger, she looks at what she refers to as the "Mirror World" of…
more -
The Rabbit Hutch
Join Tess Gunty to discuss her debut novel The Rabbit Hutch, the winner of this year’s National Book Award. In her darkly funny and remarkable novel, we’re introduced to a string of overlapping characters and plots mostly centered around La Lapinière, otherwise known as "The Rabbit Hutch," a...
-
Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino” Héctor Tobar
"'Stories about empire,' Tobar writes, 'move us because they're echoes of the memories that reside deep in our collective consciousness.' Latinos, after all, are people' living with the hurt caused by war and politics, conquest and surrender, revolution and dictatorship.'" —The New York Times...
-
Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist
“This surprising look at the nature of primates has a lot to say about what it means to be human.”―Publishers Weekly Renowned primatologist and bestselling author Frans de Waal has spent thousands of hours observing apes and monkeys both in the wild and in captivity. In his new book (now out in...
-
Writer/Scholar/Target: Online Harassment and the Threat to Free Expression
Around the world, writers and journalists have been increasingly targeted for their work by waves of online harassment. From the missives of QAnon, to the rise of hate speech on Twitter, and the use of doxxing to weaponize an adversary’s personal information, our political context is building a...
-
Surviving Homelessness & Foster Care
David Ambroz, best-selling author of A Place Called Home, shares his story of survival on the streets of New York City and later through violence in foster care, always with the goal of moving people from empathy to action. He lays out his ideas, informed through lived experience and policy...
-
The Power of Trees—Exclusive L.A. Appearance!
In 2016, The Hidden Life of Trees began the conversation that trees can communicate with each other. Peter Wohlleben’s bestselling book changed the way we looked at ourselves and our environment. Now, after eight years, he follows up his groundbreaking work with The Power of Trees: How Ancient...
-
Tiny Beautiful Things From the Page to the Screen
Bestselling author Cheryl Strayed takes the ALOUD stage to discuss the transformation of her popular book, Tiny Beautiful Things, to the television screen with show creator and executive producer Liz Tigelaar. Tiny Beautiful Things tells the story of Dear Sugar, a respected advice columnist whose...
-
Sea of Tranquility
Award-winning and bestselling author Emily St. John Mandel comes to the ALOUD stage to discuss her latest novel, Sea of Tranquility, with National Book Award Winner Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown). A genre-bending work of speculative fiction exploring the nature of time and reality through the…
more -
Dust Child
Join international bestselling author and poet Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai in conversation with a host of The Vietnamese podcast Kenneth Nguyen to discuss her second novel written in English, Dust Child. Described by Viet Thanh Nguyen as “powerful and deeply empathetic… A heartbreaking tale of lost…
more -
Finding the Words
"I wrote this book in the hopes of making grief less frightening, mysterious, and lonely for those of us who suddenly find ourselves on this difficult journey."—Colin Campbell When film and theater writer/director Colin Campbell’s two teenage children were killed by a drunk driver, Campbell was...
-
A Guest at the Feast
Celebrated Irish writer Colm Tóibín (Brooklyn, The Master) returns with a new book of scintillating essays, A Guest at the Feast. This collection blends both the personal with the provocative giving us an intimate look at Tóibín’s experiences and his growing understanding of Catholicism. Again we...
-
How P-22 United Our City: Love Letters to LA’s Favorite Cat
This program features personal stories by various individuals who made a connection with P-22 and understand the immediate need for wildlife protection, along with guests who answered an open mic call to share their knowledge and admiration for P-22. The evening features California Regional...
-
The Auntie Sewing Squad Guide to Mask Making, Radical Care, and Racial Justice
Performance artist, comedian, activist, and local elected official Kristina Wong began sewing masks three days into the COVID-19 shutdown and spreading the word through her social media. Due to the overwhelming response, she enlisted friends and strangers to form the Auntie Sewing Squad to…
more -
An Evening With George Saunders
Called the "best short-story writer in English," (Time) George Saunders is back with a masterful collection that explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. With his trademark prose, Saunders continues to...
-
Something in Common
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy and renowned author and social scientist Dr. Robert D. Putnam join ALOUD for a wide-ranging conversation about the past and future of the community in America. In this exclusive conversation, Dr. Murthy and Dr. Putnam will discuss how we can begin to…
more -
Creators in Residence Showcase
This event marks the culmination of the inaugural Los Angeles Public Library Creators in Residence, highlighting new original work by photographer Kwasi Boyd-Bouldin and visual artist River Garza. Rooted in the Black community and Indigenous Tongva community respectively, Boyd-Bouldin and Garza...
-
An Evening with Cody Keenan
Join Cody Keenan, President Obama’s chief speechwriter, and Jon Favreau, co-host of Pod Save America and founder of Crooked Media, to discuss Keenan’s new book Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America. Through the behind-the-scenes moments, from Obama’s suggestion that Keenan...
-
Dramatizing the Black Experience
In the wake of the pandemic, the George Floyd protests, and the country’s ongoing efforts to reconcile its racist past and address ongoing racial injustice, Black playwrights have pushed the boundaries of style and form, exploring absurdism, lyricism, and other genre-bending experiments to try to...
-
Una noche con Yesika Salgado / An Evening With Yesika Salgado
La emergente superestrella literaria y activista de la positividad corporal se está ganando al mundo por su forma poco convencional de interpretar el amor y el cuerpo. Seguida por un dedicado club de fans en Instagram llamado Mango Mafia, Salgado es una poeta salvadoreña nacida en Los Ángeles y...
-
Tracy Flick Can’t Win: A Novel
Fans of best-selling author Tom Perrotta’s Election will remember the signature character Tracy Flick—Reese Witherspoon’s character from the classic movie adaptation. She is back, and, once again, the iconic protagonist is determined to take high school politics by storm. In classic Perrotta…
more -
Cult Classic: A Novel
Described as “Hilariously insightful and delightfully suspenseful,” Cult Classic, by acclaimed author Sloane Crosley, takes the reader on a journey of past love, memory, and through the philosophy of romance. One night in New York City’s Chinatown, a woman is at a work reunion dinner with former...
-
Let the Record Show: A Conversation With Sarah Schulman
In conjunction with the orchestra’s performance of John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1, a memorial to those he lost to AIDS at the height of the epidemic, the LA Phil welcomes Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993. Twenty years in the…
more -
The Candy House: A Novel
From the daring Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist Jennifer Egan, this program will enter the world of The Candy House, her "sibling novel" to A Visit from the Goon Squad. In spellbinding interlocking narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of "Own Your Unconscious," a fictional foray...
-
How The Handmaid’s Tale Changed the Conversation About Women
Since Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was adopted for television by creator Bruce Miller, the conversation about women in society has shifted. In some ways, women have made great strides to break that glass ceiling, and in other ways, the progress for American women has taken a retroactive...
-
Evoke LA
Join MacArthur Fellow and USC Annenberg Professor Josh Kun with the series historians—the Autry associate curator Tyree Boyd-Pates, Pitzer professor Suyapa Portillo Villeda, and USC professor Natalia Molina—to discuss this new collaboration with KPCC & LAist that blends live music, live...
-
Secret Identity: A Novel
The bestselling and award-winning writer Alex Segura, the author of five Pete Fernandez Miami Mystery novels and the acclaimed Archie Meets Kiss storyline comics, offers a rollicking new literary mystery set in the world of comic books. Segura’s latest novel, Secret Identity, takes an look at the...
-
Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times
The New York Times bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran returns with a guide for our times, arming readers with a resistance reading list, including selections from James Baldwin to Zora Neale Hurston to Margaret Atwood. How can literature, through its free exchange, affect politics?...
-
Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City
What if leaving poverty means abandoning your family, and yourself? Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Andrea Elliott of The New York Times shares an unforgettable story of a girl whose indomitable spirit is tested by homelessness, poverty, and racism in an unequal America. Elliott’s latest work,...
-
ALOUD Cooks
Food connects us to our past, to our family, our communities and to each other. As we reflect on the past year, we see how food has brought us strength in the face of adversity. Cooking and sharing a meal is an act of resilience--a promise to gather and share comfort, loss, and joy. Likewise...
-
The Sentence
In her stunning and timely new novel, Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman’s resiliency through her relentless errors. Louise Erdrich’s latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, the reader, and to...
-
The Matter of Black Lives: Writing from The New Yorker
Historian and writer Jelani Cobb will present a collection of The New Yorker‘s groundbreaking writing on race in America, from stories of endurance and resilience to strength and pain—including work by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hilton Als, Zadie Smith, and more. This…
more -
Freeman’s: Change
A celebration of the latest installment of John Freeman’s acclaimed literary journal, featuring some of today’s top writers on the hope and pain of the ever-changing present. Writer and Editor Extraordinaire, John Freeman returns to ALOUD in celebration of the latest installment of his acclaimed...
-
The Book of Form and Emptiness
Novelist and filmmaker Ruth Ozeki will discuss her brilliantly inventive new novel about loss, growing up, and the resiliency of our relationships to all things with author Aimee Bender. With its blend of sympathetic characters, a riveting plot, and vibrant engagement with everything from jazz to...
-
Better not Bitter, Living in Pursuit of Racial Justice
Writer and activist Yusef Salaam, a member of the Exonerated Five, will join ALOUD with his memoir Better, Not Bitter, whose story of resilience and strength is an inspiring call to action. Better Not Bitter is the first time that one of the now Exonerated Five is telling his individual story in...
-
Ian Manuel on the Power of Poetry
To kick off our fall season and our theme of resilience, author Ian Manuel will return to ALOUD to discuss the power of poetry. ALOUD on Resilience: This coming year ALOUD will look at the theme of resilience. How do we manage to survive and blossom in the face of tragedy, controversy, and…
more -
Notes From the Bathroom Line: Humor, Art, and Low-grade Panic from 150 of the Funniest Women in Comedy
In this "much-needed dose of delight," Amy Solomon, a producer of the hit HBO shows Silicon Valley and Barry, shares from her new collection of never-before-seen humor pieces. Inspired by the groundbreaking book Titters: The First Collection of Humor by Women, a showcase of some of the leading...
-
Erosion: Essays of Undoing
"Each of us finds our identity within the communities we call home," writes Terry Tempest Williams in Erosion, a galvanizing new collection of essays that navigates the emotional, geographical, and communal territories of home. Sizing up the assaults on America’s public lands and the erosion of…
more
About this show
ALOUD is the Library Foundation of Los Angeles' award-winning literary series of live conversations, readings and performances at the historic Central Library and locations throughout Los Angeles.
Hosted by
Los Angeles Public Library
Categories