Do you work in the field of literacy or know someone who does? Consider applying for a Library of Congress Literacy Award.

Applications will be accepted from organizations that have made outstanding contributions to increasing literacy in the United States or abroad. You may apply on behalf of your own organization or for another organization.

The Literacy Awards are made possible through the generosity of David M. Rubenstein.

The deadline for applications is March 8, 2019.

Need more information? Go to http://read.gov/literacyawards/index to learn more.

• Call for Applications 2019.pdf

The Library of Congress launched By the People in the autumn of 2018. The application invites users to transcribe, review, and tag digitized images of manuscripts and typed materials from the Library’s collections. Everyone is welcome to take part! You don't even need to create an account, but if you do you'll have access to additional features such as tagging, and reviewing other people's transcriptions.

Spend an hour with Library experts and hear how all transcriptions are made and reviewed by volunteers before they are returned to loc.gov, the Library's website. Discuss the possibilities of using this tool in your work with students. The transcriptions will improve search, readability, and access to handwritten and typed documents for those who are not fully sighted or cannot read the handwriting of the original documents.

To register for the webinar see https://locgov.webex.com/locgov/onstage/g.php?MTID=efee8818158910ccb5d645c840b1d5e2a

For more information on By the People, please see the blog post Crowdsourcing Helps to Unlock the Mystery of Cursive

The Library of Congress is now accepting applications for several professional development opportunities that will be offered this summer in Washington, D.C.  One Week Long Summer Teacher Institutes

Immerse yourself in the practice of teaching with primary sources from the unparalleled collections of Library of Congress. Held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., our Summer Teacher Institutes provide educators of all disciplines with resources and strategies to effectively integrate primary sources into K-12 classroom teaching. Each session will focus on pedagogy, with an emphasis on supporting student engagement, critical thinking, and construction of knowledge. While practicing these teaching strategies, attendees will explore some of the millions of digitized historical artifacts and documents available in the Library’s collections. They will also conduct research to identify primary sources and develop an activity related to their classroom content.

The Library of Congress Summer Teacher Institutes are appropriate for K-12 educators across many disciplines, including: Social Studies/History, English Language Arts, Science, Art, Music, or any other educators who feel that primary sources could be used with their curricula. Librarians and Curriculum/Professional Development specialists are also encouraged to apply.

Three week-long Summer Teacher Institute sessions will be offered this summer:

General Focus – open to K-12 educators across all content areas:

• July 8-July 12, 2019
• July 29-August 2, 2019

Science, Technology, and Engineering Focus – recommended for K-12 educators who teach science, technology, or engineering, or collaborate with those who do:

• July 15-July 19, 2019

Institute and instructional materials are provided at no cost. Participants will be responsible for transportation to and from Washington, D.C., and any required overnight accommodations.

Applications for the Summer Teacher Institutes are due March 10, 2019 and require a letter of recommendation. Read more and apply now !

Two and ½ day Primary Sources Workshop for Library Media Specialists

This multi-day workshop is intended especially for K-12 Library / Media Specialists. Over the 2 ½ day, hands-on session, Library of Congress education specialists will model strategies for using primary sources to engage students, build critical thinking skills, and construct knowledge, with an emphasis on supporting inquiry and research. Participants will reflect on and discuss how these strategies apply to their school libraries, considering various subject areas. While the emphasis is on learning and applying teaching strategies, participants also have opportunities to meet experts from the Library and research in the Library's reading rooms.

The session will take place from June 19 – June 21, 2019.  Institute and instructional materials are provided at no cost. Participants will be responsible for transportation to and from Washington, D.C., and any required overnight accommodations.

Applications are due February 22, 2019 and require a letter of recommendation.  Read more and apply now !

Please contact teachinglcsummer@loc.gov with any questions.

The Library’s resolution for 2019 is to offer more opportunities to engage lifelong learners like you with our unique treasures and programs. Make your gift before we close the books on 2018!

Your gift supports FREE exhibitions, events, programs, and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with our unique collections, experts, and services.

The Library of Congress is your library, your gateway to understanding the world. There is so much to discover, not only the nation’s memory, but the world’s—information from all corners of the earth, in more than 470 languages. With millions of items available online, you can access the Library’s treasures from anywhere and connect with us in ways that are personally relevant and valuable.

The Library’s resolution for 2019 is to offer more opportunities to engage lifelong learners like you with our unique treasures and programs. Make your gift before we close the books on 2018!

Your gift can:

• Inspire curiosity in children to read more books and reflect on the power of books to change their lives
• Ignite thoughtful conversation among current and future generations of students and scholars
• Illuminate the minds of people like you who use the resources of the nation's Library here in Washington or via the Internet in their own homes and communities

With the help of supporters like you, we can spark the imagination of people of all ages with programs that open the Library’s doors wide to all.

Join us TODAY by making your 2018 tax-deductible donation, and together we’ll spark a lifelong adventure of learning.

The day has arrived—#GivingTuesday—a day when your gift makes a difference and a statement.

The Library of Congress depends on donations from people like you to produce exhibitions, events, programs, and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with our unique collections, experts, and services.

Gifts bring the Library to life with music, dance, film, sound, culture, scholarship, research, discussions and ideas. Your gift, no matter the size, will support diverse programs that are entirely FREE for everyone to enjoy, and will make the Library’s treasures and services more accessible.

Help spread the word today and encourage your friends and family to make a gift to the nation’s library, your gateway to understanding the world!

#GivingTuesday is a global day of giving fueled by the power of social media and collaboration.

This year is the second year the Library of Congress is participating in #GivingTuesday—a global giving movement. On Tuesday, November 27, we are asking you to make a gift to spark a lifelong adventure of learning.

Your gift supports FREE exhibitions, events, programs, and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with our unique collections, experts, and services.

The Library of Congress is your library, your gateway to understanding the world. There is so much to discover, not only the nation’s memory, but the world’s—information from all corners of the earth, in more than 470 languages. With millions of items available online, you can access the Library’s treasures from anywhere and connect with us in ways that are personally relevant and valuable.

Save the Date to Make Your Gift!

Celebrated on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving (in the U.S.) and the widely recognized shopping events Black Friday and Cyber Monday, #GivingTuesday kicks off the charitable season, when many focus on their holiday and end-of-year giving.

Attention subscriber to bulletin services from the Library of Congress:

As you may be aware, on May 25, 2018, the EU General Data Protection Regulation EU (2016)/679 (GDPR) came into force in all EU member states. The GDPR applies to “personal data,” meaning any information relating to an identifiable person who can be directly or indirectly identified by reference to an identifier. It requires that personal data be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner, and that personal data be collected for specified and legitimate purposes.

For those who subscribe to the Library’s email and RSS bulletins, the Library of Congress collects email addresses which can include personal data. The Library of Congress relies on its legitimate interests to process this data so that we can keep you up to date with developments for the topics to which you subscribe. The Library does not make any other use of this data.

The Library respects your personal data and takes care to maintain its confidentiality. You have the right to unsubscribe from the Library’s e-mail newsletters and alerts at any time. You can manage your subscriptions by clicking “Subscriber Preferences” in the box at the bottom of this email.

If you have any questions about the Library’s data privacy policy, please email the Library: ogc@loc.gov

K-12 educators interested in attending one of the Library of Congress Summer Teacher Institute sessions have only one week – until March 21, 2018 – to apply. 

Held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., these professional development opportunities provide educators with resources and strategies to effectively integrate primary sources into K-12 classroom teaching.  Each session will focus on pedagogy, with an emphasis on supporting student engagement, critical thinking, and construction of knowledge.

While practicing these teaching strategies, attendees will explore some of the millions of digitized historical artifacts and documents available in the Library’s collections.  Finally, they will conduct research to identify primary sources and develop an activity related to their classroom content.

Five five-day sessions will be offered this summer:

General Focus – open to K-12 educators across all content areas:

• June 18-June 22
• June 25-June 29
• July 30-August 3

WWI Focus – recommended for K-12 educators who teach some aspect of WWI as part of their curriculum, or collaborate with those who do:

• July 9-July 13

Science, Technology, and Engineering Focus – recommended for K-12 educators who teach science, technology, or engineering, or collaborate with those who do: 

• July 16-July 20

Professional development and materials are provided at no cost. Participants will be responsible for transportation to and from Washington, D.C., and any required overnight accommodations.

Applications are due March 21 and require a letter of recommendation. Read more and apply now:

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/professionaldevelopment/teacherinstitute/

Greetings from the Library of Congress!

We are requesting your valuable input as part of our research in envisioning the Library of Congress’ future. Please take a few moments to complete a survey about your work with K-12 students. The information you provide will help us to improve services and deliver high-quality experiences for K-12 students, librarians, and teachers.

Please begin the survey by clicking here.

If the link above does not work, copy and paste this into your browser: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Envisioning_K12.

If you know other K-12 educators interested in sharing their thoughts with the Library of Congress, please feel free to share the survey link.

Thank you in advance for your time and input. We will read every comment we receive.

The Library of Congress Educational Outreach Division is looking for a Performing or Visual Arts teacher to serve as the 2018-2019 Teacher in Residence. This is the first time the Library has specifically recruited a performing arts or visual arts teacher for this opportunity.

The selected teacher will participate in this program via an intergovernmental personnel agreement between the Library and his or her home school district. The Library will reimburse the district for salary and benefits paid to the teacher during the school year, and will release the Teacher-in-Residence for all district holidays and vacations. The term of the appointment will match the dates of the teacher's home school district's school year.

The selected teacher will receive a monthly housing stipend if he or she teaches outside of the Washington DC metropolitan area. The Library cannot pay for travel or moving expenses.

Qualifications of successful candidates include:

• knowledge about the Library's digitized primary sources with experience using them in instruction
• leadership experience, especially in designing and delivering professional development
• an innovative, flexible and collaborative work style, able to work on a team in an office environment
• excellent communication skills
• the ability to live and work in the Washington, DC, metro area for the duration of the school year

The deadline for applications is Monday, April 9, 2018. Direct any questions to edoutreach [at] loc.gov

K-12 educators interested in attending one of the Library of Congress Summer Teacher Institute sessions still have one month – until March 21, 2018 – to apply. 

Held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., these professional development opportunities provide educators with resources and strategies to effectively integrate primary sources into K-12 classroom teaching.  Each session will focus on pedagogy, with an emphasis on supporting student engagement, critical thinking, and construction of knowledge.

While practicing these teaching strategies, attendees will explore some of the millions of digitized historical artifacts and documents available in the Library’s collections.  Finally, they will conduct research to identify primary sources and develop an activity related to their classroom content.

Five five-day sessions will be offered this summer:

General Focus – open to K-12 educators across all content areas:

• June 18-June 22
• June 25-June 29
• July 30-August 3

WWI Focus – recommended for K-12 educators who teach some aspect of WWI as part of their curriculum, or collaborate with those who do:

• July 9-July 13

Science, Technology, and Engineering Focus – recommended for K-12 educators who teach science, technology, or engineering, or collaborate with those who do: 

• July 16-July 20

Professional development and materials are provided at no cost. Participants will be responsible for transportation to and from Washington, D.C., and any required overnight accommodations.

Applications are due March 21 and require a letter of recommendation. Read more and apply now:

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/professionaldevelopment/teacherinstitute/

This spring, the Library of Congress will host two free, one-day workshops for K-12 educators interested in incorporating WWI-related primary sources into their classroom instruction.

In each session, Library of Congress education specialists will model a variety of strategies for using primary sources to engage students, build critical thinking skills, and construct knowledge. Through a series of inquiry-based classroom activities, participants will work with historic photographs, prints, manuscripts, maps, multimedia, and other resources from the Library’s collections. All of these items are digitized and freely available online for teachers to use with their students after the session. Certificates are available for teachers completing the workshop.

Additional Information: 

Audience:  K-12 educators of all disciplines interested in incorporating primary sources into their classroom instruction.

When:  Two separate one-day sessions will be offered.

·         Tuesday, March 27, 2018, and

·         Thursday, April 5, 2018.

Each session will run from 9:00 am – 3:00 pm; building opens at 8:30 am.

Where:  Library of Congress; Washington, D.C.

How to register:  Register online here! Apply now, as space is limited.

Questions? Please contact teachinglcsummer@loc.gov

The Library of Congress is now accepting applications for its week-long summer institutes for K-12 educators. Held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., this professional development opportunity provides educators of all disciplines with resources and strategies to effectively integrate primary sources into K-12 classroom teaching.  Each session will focus on pedagogy, with an emphasis on supporting student engagement, critical thinking, and construction of knowledge.

While practicing these teaching strategies, attendees will explore some of the millions of digitized historical artifacts and documents available in the Library’s collections.  They will also conduct research to identify primary sources and develop an activity related to their classroom content.

Five week-long sessions will be offered this summer:

General Focus – open to K-12 educators across all content areas:

• June 18-June 22
• June 25-June 29
• July 30-August 3

WWI Focus – recommended for K-12 educators who teach some aspect of WWI as part of their curriculum, or collaborate with those who do:

• July 9-July 13

Science, Technology, and Engineering Focus – recommended for K-12 educators who teach science, technology, or engineering, or collaborate with those who do: 

• July 16-20

Institute and course materials are provided at no cost. Participants will be responsible for transportation to and from Washington, D.C., and any required overnight accommodations.

Applications are due March 21 and require a letter of recommendation. Read more and apply now!

There are still a few slots available for the Teaching with Primary Sources Face to Face workshop, scheduled for November 4,  from 9 am – 4 pm, in the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building.

In this free workshop for K-12 educators of all disciplines, Library of Congress education specialists will model a variety of strategies for using music-related primary sources to engage students, build critical thinking skills, and construct knowledge. 

Additional activities and presentations will also be led by staff from the National Association for Music Education (NAfME), as well as reference specialists from the Library’s Music Division. 

For more information and to apply, visit:  http://www.loc.gov/teachers/professionaldevelopment/webinar/musicworkshop/?rssloc=eanft
Register TODAY!!! 

On Saturday, November 4, 2017, the Library of Congress will host a free, one-day workshop for K-12 educators interested in incorporating music-related primary sources into their classroom instruction.

In this hands-on, collaborative session, education specialists from the Library of Congress will model a variety of strategies for using music-related primary sources to engage students, build critical thinking skills, and construct knowledge. Through a series of inquiry-based classroom activities, educators will experience historic audio files, sheet music, song sheets, prints and photographs, and other resources from the Library’s collections. Most of these items are digitized and will be freely available online for teachers to use with their students.

Certificates are available for teachers completing the workshop.

Additional Information:

Audience: K-12 music educators and teachers of other disciplines interested in incorporating music-related primary sources into their classroom instruction.

When: Saturday, November 4, 2017, from 9 am – 4:00 pm. Where: Whittall Pavilion, Ground Floor, Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress, 10 First St. SE, Washington, DC 20540 Directions here. The room will be open at 8:30 am. Attendees are encouraged to leave plenty of time for travel and to arrive early.

How to register: Register online here! Apply now, as space is limited.

Questions?  Please contact: teachinglcsummer@loc.gov

Teachers familiar with the instructional power of primary sources might also be interested in the opportunity to teach using authentic data and activities from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The recently updated Statistics in Schools program offers free activities and resources that can help you bring statistics into any K-12 classroom.

Statistics in Schools activities use real-life census data to help students understand statistical concepts and gain data analysis skills.

The geography, history, math and sociology activities were created by teachers and correspond with relevant education standards.

Visit census.gov/schools to explore the program and download activities you can start using in your classroom.

Sign Up and Learn More

The Library of Congress invites you and your students to join in a virtual program to celebrate El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children’s Day/Book Day), an official literacy celebration of the American Library Association.

Author, illustrator Lulu Delacre, will lead this bilingual celebration by reading and presenting her award-winning book, “Olinguito From A- Z !” in both English and Spanish.

“Olinguito From A- Z !” will take place on Thursday, April 27 at 10:30 AM EDT, and will be streamed live at this URL: https://youtu.be/vvSRinFRAQ8

We hope you enjoy the program!

In this one-day workshop for K-2 educators, Library of Congress education staff and our current Teacher in Residence, will model a variety of strategies for using primary sources to engage young learners, build critical thinking skills, and construct knowledge. This hands-on, collaborative session will feature maps, prints and photographs, historic audio and film recordings, and other resources from the Library’s collections, all of which are digitized and readily available to teachers after the session. Participants will learn about unique children’s books from the past and ways the Library is making them more accessible. In addition, a specialist from the Young Readers Center will explain resources and non-fiction books that support the K-2 learner.

Attendees will receive a personalized certificate for professional development hours.

Audience:  K- 2 educators interested in incorporating primary sources into their classroom instruction.

When: Saturday, May 6, 2017, from 9:00 am – 1:00 pm.

Where: Room 119 in the Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress, 10 First St. SE, Washington, DC 20540. (For directions, go here:  https://www.loc.gov/visit/directions/)

Deadline to apply: April 28, 2017

Questions? Please contact: teachinglcsummer@loc.gov

Interested in attending?  Please fill out the registration form on the page following and email it to teachinglcsummer@loc.gov

• K-2+Workshop+-+Application.docx

The deadline is rapidly approaching to apply for one of the five week-long Summer Teacher Institutes being held at the Library of Congress between June and August this year.  Educators will have until March 17 at midnight Pacific Time to apply online.

Held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., these unique professional development opportunities provide educators of all disciplines with a host of resources and strategies to successfully use primary sources with their students. Each session will focus on practical teaching strategies, with an emphasis on supporting student engagement, critical thinking, and construction of knowledge.

While practicing these core strategies, attendees will also explore some of the millions of digitized historical artifacts and documents available in the Library’s collections. They will meet library experts and conduct research to identify primary sources related to their teaching, with the goal of developing an activity to use with their students in the coming school year.  See what some of our previous Institute’s participants have to say about their experience!

Five week-long sessions will be offered this summer:

General Focus – open to K-12 educators across all content areas:

• June 19-23
• June 26-30
• July 10-14

Science, Technology, and Engineering Focus – recommended for K-12 educators who teach science, technology, or engineering, or collaborate with those who do:

• July 17-21

World War I Focus – recommended for K-12 educators who teach some aspect of WWI as part of their curriculum, or collaborate with those who do:

• July 31-August 4

Institute and course materials are provided at no cost. Participants will be responsible for transportation to and from Washington, D.C., and any required overnight accommodations.

Apply by March 17!  Note that a letter of recommendation will be required.  Learn more about the program and fill out the application here.

At your computer, sit and observe this picture for 60 seconds. 

Now describe what you see.  What do you notice first? What do you think is happening? Who do you suppose took the picture and for what purpose? Is there anything you wonder about?

Asking and responding to such questions is the cornerstone of students’ learning to think critically and construct their own knowledge. It is also the cornerstone of the Library of Congress’ Summer Teacher Institutes, where educators from across the United States learn how to use primary sources with their students, building skills in observing, reflecting, questioning, determining point of view and more.

The image you’ve just inspected is captioned: “A small French boy sitting next to his plan for a trench sector, constructed in miniature form. A U.S. soldier is touching an American flag sticking out of miniature sandbags.” It is one of the thousands of primary sources resources in the Library’s collections related to WWI.    

From July 31-August 4, the Library of Congress will host a special 5-day WWI-themed Summer Teacher Institute. The session is open to any K-12 educator interested in teaching with primary sources.  Tuition and materials for this special event are provided at no cost to participants; participants are responsible for transportation and housing. Applications are due on March 17, 2017. For more information and to apply, go here.

The WWI-themed Summer Teacher Institute coincides with a major new exhibit scheduled to open at the Library of Congress this spring:  Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I. 2017 is the 100 year anniversary of the United States’ entry into World War I.  As such, WWI Summer Teacher Institute attendees will receive a special tour of this exhibit, viewing hundreds of WWI artifacts, and talk with Library experts to bring them to life. 

The WWI Summer Teacher institute is one of five Summer Teacher Institutes being offered this summer, between June 19 and August 4.  Three of those institutes will be general for all educators, one will be on science, and the final one will focus on WWI.     If you are an educator interested in using primary sources with your students, we invite you to apply today!

The Library of Congress is now accepting applications for its week-long summer institutes for K-12 educators. Held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., this professional development opportunity provides educators of all disciplines with resources and strategies to effectively integrate primary sources into K-12 classroom teaching.  Each session will focus on pedagogy, with an emphasis on supporting student engagement, critical thinking, and construction of knowledge.

While practicing these teaching strategies, attendees will explore some of the millions of digitized historical artifacts and documents available in the Library’s collections.  They will also conduct research to identify primary sources and develop an activity related to their classroom content.

Five week-long sessions will be offered this summer:

General Focus – open to K-12 educators across all content areas:

• June 19-23
• June 26-30
• July 10-14

Science, Technology, and Engineering Focus – recommended for K-12 educators who teach science, technology, or engineering, or collaborate with those who do: 

• July 17-21

WWI Focus – recommended for K-12 educators who teach some aspect of WWI as part of their curriculum, or collaborate with those who do:

• July 31-August 4

The institute and course materials are provided at no cost. Participants will be responsible for transportation to and from Washington, D.C., and any required overnight accommodations.

Applications are due March 17 and require a letter of recommendation. Learn more and apply here:

Join reference specialist Abby Yochelson, of the Library of Congress Humanities and Social Sciences Division, as she discusses “Books Go to War: Armed Services Editions in World War II” based on the Library’s America Reads exhibition.

When the United States entered World War II in 1941, it opposed nations that had banned and burned books. In 1943, the Council on Books in Wartime, working with the War Department, began distributing pocket-size volumes to every theater of war. Approximately 123 million copies of 1,300 titles in every genre were printed and distributed. The program rescued from obscurity such now-classic books as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn became a national favorite.

Today, the books are loved by collectors, and the Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division has the only complete set. Join us to learn more about this fascinating collection. Register here .

Individuals requiring accommodations for this event are requested to submit a request at least five business days in advance by contacting (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

Today’s Thanksgiving holiday has roots in a number of celebrations that occurred centuries ago in different regions of North America. Over time, the United States has come to observe a holiday that has taken many forms and has been observed in many different ways. Students can broaden their perspectives on Thanksgiving – a holiday that is “peculiar to the nation” – with our recently-updated Thanksgiving Primary Source Set.

In addition to exploring a variety of holiday traditions, students can also explore Thanksgiving proclamations and read Sarah Hale’s letter to President Lincoln lobbying for the day to become an official national holiday.

As with all of the Library’s Primary Source Sets, a Teacher’s Guide is available with background information, teaching ideas and additional resources.

Please direct questions to the Resources for Teachers Ask a Librarian page. 

From hiding from a copy of The Exorcist to being unnerved by the likes of Shirley Jackson, Stephen King and Iain Banks, here are your most alarming reading experiences

Last week we asked you to share the books that have most shocked or disturbed you – and boy, you guys responded with a passion. Over the 1,200 comments, the winning book – if that’s the right word – was:

Stephen King seconds call for Fox News head-to-head, offering $10,000 to make it happen

Crime novelist Don Winslow has issued a challenge to Donald Trump to debate his plans for a border wall on Fox News – a provocation that horror author Stephen King has offered to fund.

Winslow, whose latest book is called The Border, the third novel in his Cartel trilogy, made the offer on Twitter: “Dear @realDonaldTrump. Let’s debate the Trump wall and let the people decide. I’ll even do it on your own network – @FoxNews. Any show. Any anchor. Any time. You debated 18 Republicans during your presidential campaign, I am sure you can handle one writer. Let me know.”

Proposals for a £250,000 memorial to add to her gravestone and the nearby museum prompt fierce local opposition

Plans to erect a statue of Jane Austen in the grounds of Winchester Cathedral have been shelved after residents baulked at the idea of another memorial to the novelist in the city.

The cathedral had commissioned the sculptor Martin Jennings to create a statue of Austen for its inner close, planning for it to “seal her place in the rich and complex identity of Winchester and create a lasting memorial to her literary genius” and setting out to raise £250,000 to make the proposals a reality. The project was supported by Hampshire county council and Winchester city council.

An in-depth investigation of gay life in the Vatican takes in guilt, secrets, deception and fear

Some years ago a well-placed German Catholic priest sent me a long letter denouncing a network of gay clergy supposedly centred around Pope Benedict XVI’s private secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein. In official Catholic teaching it is not a sin to be gay, although the inclination is “an objective moral disorder”; but it is sinful to act on this inclination. How sinful depends on your confessor. The result is that gay clergy are officially innocent until guilty but in gossip guilty until proven innocent – which of course they never quite can be. Most of the men cited were identified only by their initials, and the sender himself hoped to remain anonymous. But with patience and the help of friends, I worked out who all the initials belonged to and tracked the author to his cathedral. He denied everything and expressed surprise that a reputable newspaper should be interested in such gossip. I will not easily forget his smirk as he said this.

It was a glimpse of the poisonous world that Frédéric Martel, himself gay, has spent five years researching for this book. In this place of make-believe, guilt and constant innuendo the prelates live in a tension between the dreadful fear of being outed and the loneliness of not being recognised for who and what they are. So they out each other instead, compulsively. Martel’s rule of thumb is that the most publicly homophobic prelates are those most likely to be homosexually inclined themselves; the only ones who feel they can afford to be sympathetic to gay people are celibate straight people, who do exist in the Vatican. Martel quotes the estimate of the pope’s former chief Latinist that up to 80% of the Vatican staff could be gay even if obviously most of them are buttoned up. The real figure is unknowable but 80% is not entirely incredible.

A biography which tries to convince readers that the Labour leader is unfit for office scores some hits but is itself flawed

Tom Bower specialises in men with something to hide. He made his name as a biographer by doggedly digging up dirt on the sort of rich, powerful figures who excel at keeping it buried, such as Robert Maxwell. But in Dangerous Hero, he is attempting something slightly different. For all the author’s dark inferences that Jeremy Corbyn is hiding things that voters deserve to know, the striking thing about the Labour leader is what is out there in plain sight.

Once again this week Corbyn’s record and character have come under a harsh spotlight. He stands accused by a group of now former Labour MPs of leading an institutionally antisemitic party, fiddling while Brexit burns and jeopardising national security in his eagerness to accommodate almost any enemy of America.

After endless guides to self-help, a new wave of books spearheaded by The Little Book of Bad Moods is switching the focus to more realistic hopes

Although Finnish doesn’t have a direct equivalent of English’s “mustn’t grumble”, Lotta Sonninen admits, it has a few equivalents. “Vali vali” comes from “valittaminen”, meaning complaining: but there is also “marina”, “kitinä” and “jupina” (to complain under your breath or through gritted teeth); “urputtaminen” (to complain to someone about something they did); “nillittäminen” (to complain at length); and “avautuminen” (to complain at length with unnecessary frankness). Sonninen is familiar with them all; she has spent years working in the Finnish publishing industry, poring over positivity handbooks designed to get her countrymen through the long dark winters.

“The type of books that crossed my path ask you to find the joy in the little things of life and turn up the silver lining or the bright side,” Sonninen says. “Although one at a time they’re really cute, when there were several of them it started looking a bit comical. So I ended up imagining an antidote.”

Novelist Kate Davies picks the best books about a task that never happens just once

Coming out is one of the most daunting things a queer person will have to do. My parents are very liberal, but I still felt sick when, aged 25, I realised I had to tell them I was a lesbian: it felt like too much information, as though I was announcing I liked it from behind. This was just the last in a series of comings-out. When I was 12, my friends read my diary and realised I had a crush on another girl. Soon afterwards, an actual boy kissed me on the cheek at his bar mitzvah and everyone forgot about the girl. Aged 14, I told a few people I was gay, but then I developed a crush on Eddie Izzard and decided I was bisexual. Finding another woman to be bisexual with seemed like a lot of effort, though, so I pretty much forgot about fancying women until I was in my 20s.

Coming out never happens just once. First you have to acknowledge your sexuality or gender identity to yourself. Then you might tell your friends and family, add a rainbow flag to your Twitter bio, ostentatiously read Sarah Waters novels on the train, that sort of thing. But it doesn’t end there. You’ll come out over and over again for the rest of your life – to the new guy at work who asks whether you’re married, to the family friend who assumes “partner” means “business associate”, and to the estate agent who thinks your wife is your daughter. (This has happened to me twice. Twice.)

The Goldfinch takes flight in cinemas, Robert Macfarlane goes underground and Margaret Atwood continues The Handmaid’s Tale … what to look forward to in the world of books

1 Centenary of the birth of The Catcher in the Rye author JD Salinger.
7 Winners of Costa category awards announced.
11 Release of the biopic Colette, starring Keira Knightley.
12 50th anniversary of the publication of Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint.
14 TS Eliot prize for poetry awarded.
29 Costa prize-giving with book of the year revealed. Germaine Greer turns 80.

Does evil exist? Are we all born killers, saved only by impulse control? A chattily written study of inexcusable acts

Is evil just in the eye of the beholder? At the beginning of this book, the criminal psychologist author cites Nietzsche’s claim that “thinking evil means making evil” – though Hamlet got there first with “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”, and the Stoics long before him. But what about murderers?

It turns out, Julia Shaw wants to argue, that we all have the capacity to commit murder and other heinous acts, and it boils down to a matter of moral luck that most of us have the impulse control that prevents us acting out our dark fantasies. “I regularly feel like I want to kill people,” she admits disarmingly, “you know, just a little bit.” Look more closely at the context of a crime – or inside a person’s head – and you will not fail to find extenuating circumstances. Shaw recounts the sad case of a man who stabbed his father to death because he had been convinced by an alcoholism counsellor that his substance abuse problems must have been caused by sexual abuse in his childhood. Meanwhile, it may be the case that an absence of empathy, of the kind characteristic of psychopaths and killers, is neurologically determined at birth. Can it be anyone’s fault to be born with such a brain?

Atruism and exhilaration combine in a surgeon’s breathtaking exploits in conflict zones

In late 1993, the surgeon David Nott travelled from his home in London to a hospital in war-torn Sarajevo on his first humanitarian mission. Two weeks into the trip, a teenage boy was brought in with a metal fragment in his abdomen, sustained from one of the mortars that had been raining down on the city for days. He was anaesthetised and taken to an operating theatre where Nott set about opening his abdomen to inspect the damage. After making the incision, he heard an enormous crash and the lights went out. The hospital had taken a direct hit, leaving him in the dark trying to stem the bleeding by squeezing the boy’s aorta while pressing down on a swab. When the lights eventually flickered back on, Nott realised he was all alone. The rest of the team – an anaesthetist, a scrub nurse and an assistant – had fled the room and taken cover in the basement. The boy, meanwhile, had died.

In War Doctor, Nott’s account of 25 years dispensing life-saving treatment in some of the most dangerous places in the world, he describes his fury at having been abandoned, though later he comes to understand his colleagues’ actions. “This experience taught me two things,” he explains. “First, I’d have to toughen up; second, I also had to take care of myself. Not just because there was no one else there who was going to do that for me, but because I wouldn’t be helping anyone if I was dead.”

Since the publication of The End of Eddy in 2014, Édouard Louis has assumed for himself the voice of the voiceless in his native France. His autobiographical novel, published when he was only 22, sold nearly half a million copies, was translated into 20 languages, and was hailed as an authentic insider’s story of that demonised demographic, the provincial poor, living on minimum wages and diminishing benefits, instinctively homophobic and reflexively racist. Louis, bullied at home and at school for being effeminate and gay, wrote neither to condemn those attitudes nor to exonerate them. He rather claimed them as his birthright – they were the brutalised opinions of his father and brothers. He placed the blame for them, however, squarely on the post-industrial despair in which families like his own had been required to exist – and, moreover, on the remote political class that had systematically denied dignity to a generation of low-paid men and women.

This book, published in France more than a year ago, is a short, sharp shock of a coda to that novel, which ended when the author/narrator changed his name, moved away from the small town he grew up in and went off to study philosophy in Paris. It is written as a long letter from Louis to his father, the figure who remains his inarticulate muse – drunk and obese and mostly housebound after the industrial accident that crushed his spine and his spirit, and left him unable to care for his wife and seven children. The author does not so much put words into his old man’s mouth as seek to find some hard-won common ground with him. It is a kind of love letter, but one that admits only the bluntest truths: “One night, in the village cafe, you said in front of everyone that you wished you’d had another son instead of me. For weeks I wanted to die.” And, a question that goes both ways: “Is it normal to be ashamed of loving someone?”

A timely history shows how confusion and dispute plagued the Irish border long before Brexit

Numbering 208, there are more border crossings between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland than there are between the European Union and the countries to its east, which amount to a mere 137. That troubled border in the north-east of the island of Ireland runs for 310 miles along the middle of 11 roads, meets in the middle of at least three bridges and dissects two ferry crossings.

These facts come from a joint report between the Republic’s Department of Transport and the Northern Ireland Department for Infrastructure and are to be found in the Irish historian Diarmaid Ferriter’s richly detailed The Border: The Legacy of a Century of Anglo-Irish Politics.

This bracing account of the many predictions and uncertainties around climate change is designed to startle and shake us

Between 1833 and 1836, an ambitious young New Yorker painted his vision of the evolution of human society. In five grand canvases, Thomas Cole described an arc from nature, through pastoralism and empire, to desolation. This is the archetypal story of rise and fall.

In The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells now takes up Cole’s mantle, updated for the 21st century. We’re at the apex of the story arc, pivoting from blind triumph to hubristic ruin. He tells of coming climate catastrophes, brought on by our complacency and profligacy. These devastations will likely end history, culture and ethics as we know them. The portents surround us, but we wilfully turn away. A glimmer of hope, though, is present if we mend our ways.

Over the last 12 years Tana French has become known for blisteringly good crime thrillers narrated by various cops in the fictional Dublin Murder Squad. As so often in crime novels, they tended to be outsiders in some way, or struggling with their own past trauma. For her seventh book, she has created something rather different: a pin-sharp portrait of privilege, recounted not by a world-weary, wisecracking detective but by a crime victim who is also a suspect.

Twentysomething Toby has led a charmed life: popular at school; rich, supportive parents; sweet, adoring girlfriend. He bagged his first job doing PR for an art gallery – fortunately, the boss “had taken a chance on grass-green me when the other woman at the final interview had had years of experience”. Worrying has always seemed “like a laughable waste of time and energy”; after all, he’s never had anything to worry about. And then an overconfident bit of trickery at work is followed by a brutal attack in his own home, and the old Toby is gone for ever, replaced by a nervy, jittery wreck with a limp and a slur who gets lost in the middle of sentences.

The novelist Joan Silber, a critical favourite in her native US, is almost unknown over here. Lorrie Moore and Sarah Waters are fans, and her eighth book of fiction, Improvement, arrives with two major awards and a Washington Post plaudit calling her “our country’s own Alice Munro”. That’s already quite a lot to live up to.

Improvement is a patchwork novel, quiet in its voice, ambitious in its design. Starting and ending with the story of Reyna, a single mother in Harlem, and her eccentric aunt Kiki, who’s returned to New York after many years in Turkey, it daisychains several related narratives into a rich and surprising whole. Bound by their mutual affection, Kiki worries about her niece’s latest man, Boyd, who’s on probation following a jail term. Involved in a cross-state tax scam selling cigarettes, Boyd asks a favour of Reyna – he needs a driver, and as she’s white is less subject to suspicion; what she decides will reverberate throughout the book.

Tessa Hadley’s great success as a novelist lies in the way she conforms to received ideas of good writing. Rather than trying to “make it new” by blurring the distinctions between fiction and autobiography, for instance, or following other recent trends of a broadly Sebaldian nature, she delivers clear narrative lines, creates strongly visualised characters who speak in coherent sentences, and concentrates on the familiarly recurring patterns of human experience. Love; time and its passing. Does this mean there’s too much conservatism in her work? Maybe, but generally she offsets this danger by examining her characters with an unusual degree of psychological subtlety. Her particular strength is to combine a deep excavation of human frailty with compassion for its effects.

Late in the Day, her seventh novel, is no exception. On its small and tightly worked canvas we encounter two couples living in London in their late middle age, as well as a small number of their children and hangers-on. They have known each other, in various configurations, most of their adult lives. And it’s the end of one of these lives that precipitates the drama. Zachary, a wealthy gallery owner, suddenly drops down dead, leaving his wife Lydia to be cared for by Alex, a primary school head, and his wife Christine, a moderately successful painter.

The screenwriter Steven Moffat once said that his hit show Sherlock was “not a crime drama, but a drama about a man who solves crimes”. The distinction would work well for Tana French’s acclaimed series of novels featuring the fictional Dublin murder squad (soon to be a TV series, scripted by Sarah Phelps). It’s a source of bafflement to me that French has not yet been nominated for a major literary award, and I can’t help feeling that she almost certainly would have been if her characters weren’t detectives. Her writing is poetic and scalpel-sharp, rich in allusions to literature, myth, history and contemporary politics; her exploration of character is full of insight. But there are murders to be solved, so her books – though garlanded with critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic – have tended to be labelled as genre fiction.

French’s first standalone novel, The Wych Elm, might change that. Leaving the murder squad behind, she flips the perspective of a police procedural to regard the process from the other side, through a narrator who is, at various points, potential victim, suspect and witness. In the process, she carries out a forensic, and timely, examination of the nature of privilege and empathy.

I had never read Ada Limón when I dipped into Bright Dead Things and The Carrying (published simultaneously in Britain), but have since discovered that Limón is far from an unknown quantity in her native US. Bright Dead Things, her fourth collection, was shortlisted for the National Book award and feted by Tracy K Smith, the US poet laureate. Limón has been published in the New Yorker and the New York Times. And she is that rare thing – a poet whose work sells.

It sells for the same reason that it spoke to me. I was ambushed by her power to move – several poems brought a lump to my throat. Yet her popularity is about more than accessibility. She never hides behind words but reveals herself through them – even when the risk is overexposure. She situates herself in her writing as a figure in a landscape – rural Kentucky – and her struggles (especially with fertility in Carrying) are set against this unheeding pastoral scene. In a recent interview, she said she thought it important that poets should not “just write poems for other poets”. She makes no apology for keeping it simple.

Chloe Aridjis’s 2009 debut, Book of Clouds, about a young Mexican writer exploring Berlin, and the novel that followed, Asunder, in which a guard at the National Gallery in London reflects on the suffrage movement, count among the more interesting fiction in English of the past decade. You read her more for atmosphere than plot; her eccentrically detailed style holds out the promise of a big-picture coming together in a perpetual tease that, depending on how twitchy you’re feeling, leaves your expectations rewired or just frustrated.

It’s typical that her new book, set in Mexico in the late 1980s, should open with its teenage narrator, Luisa, wandering a beach in Oaxaca “aimlessly, purposefully and in search of digressions”.

Samanta Schweblin’s 2017 debut novel, Fever Dream, won the Argentinian writer widespread acclaim as well as a shortlisting for the Man Booker International prize. Fever Dream transcended genre: part ecological morality tale, part story of maternal self-sacrifice, it skilfully combined aspects of the supernatural and witchcraft with an atmosphere of underlying horror. Mouthful of Birds, Schweblin’s new collection of short stories, demonstrates a similar blending of genres, and a comparable climate of surreal, unsettling tales.

The first story, Headlights, opens with a newly married young woman, Felicity, being left by her husband at the side of the road: “In the flat darkness of the countryside, there is only disappointment, a wedding dress, and a bathroom she shouldn’t have taken so long in.” What begins as a seemingly straightforward story about a jilted bride takes an abrupt turn when Felicity discovers that the fields either side of the highway are filled with hundreds of similarly discarded wives. As one of them tells Felicity: “They keep crying and crying at all hours, every minute of every damned night.” The story is underpinned by a deep sense of feminist rage, with a chilling twist in the final line.

The Hate U Give made a YA superstar of Angie Thomas, but just how do you follow a bestselling debut that has already been made into a movie? In On the Come Up (Walker) 16-year-old Brianna longs to become a famous rapper but finds herself stymied by poverty, a troubled reputation at school and, after her song goes viral, media prejudice about who she really is. There is no second-book syndrome here. Unflinching, honest and brimming with humanity, Thomas writes with confidence and conviction about kids seldom seen in literature. In a book that is all about finding your voice and the power of words, Bri’s frustrated, angry lyrics are pure magic.

Another author following a feted debut is Muhammad Khan, whose excellent I Am Thunder introduced him as an exhilarating new talent. Kick the Moon (Macmillan) sees Ilyas Mian navigate the pressures of contemporary teenage life, from family and religion to toxic masculinity, racism and revenge porn. Gritty stuff, certainly, thick with moral dilemmas, but Khan’s empathy and wry humour, accentuated by a deft use of slang, make this authentic and relatable.

On this week’s show, we hear the latest news about one of literature’s greatest mysteries: what was JD Salinger doing in the decades after 1965, when he published new work for the last time? With the news that the Catcher in the Rye author’s family is set to release unseen writing from his latter years, Richard and Sian chat about his legacy and what we might see.

Then Sian sits down with Jason Reynolds, the author of books for children and young adults including Long Way Down, a book in verse about US gun violence, and his new series, Run, about the contrasting lives of children chosen for a track team. Reynolds talks about reading his first book cover to cover at the age of 17, his love for music and how all that fed into his unique writing style.

Here are the 25 Book Illustration Competition finalists in the running to illustrate the Folio Society’s new edition of Diana Wynne Jones’s classic novel about a young woman’s adventures with a wizard. The winner will be announced on 26 February

Images provided by the Folio Society and the House of Illustration

In 2015, James became the first Jamaican writer to win the Man Booker. His new novel is a hotly anticipated African fantasy epic and here he talks about loving the X-Men, coming out and writing about violence

It’s two days before the US release of Marlon James’s much-hyped fourth novel, Black Leopard, Red Wolf and the prizewinning Jamaican author has an air of baffled, exhausted ebullience about him. He’s no stranger to critical success: he won the 2015 Man Booker prize for his violent, multi-voiced epic, A Brief History of Seven Killings. But it feels like this new book will propel James into a new galaxy of literary stardom.

We’ve arranged to have lunch – on a balmy Sunday in early February – at the Commodore, a carefully shabby Williamsburg diner near his Brooklyn apartment. Brawnily broad-shouldered, his dreadlocked hair tied back in a ponytail, James has arrived before me. We’re shown to seats at the bar where low winter sun slants through the blinds on to the bar top. James tells me it feels like summer to him – he spends much of his time teaching creative writing at Macalester College in Minnesota – and as if to prove it asks the waiter for an Aperol spritz.

On this week’s podcast, French author Leïla Slimani sits down with Sian to talk about her novel Adèle, the story of a self-destructive sex addict. And author Kristen Roupenian reveals to Hadley Freeman how writing one short story, Cat Person, threw her suddenly into the spotlight and cast her, rather dauntingly, as an internationally recognised expert on modern love.

Then Claire and Sian recall the novelist Andrea Levy, who died last week.

The Iranian-American Washington Post journalist reveals the psychological scars his 2014 imprisonment left him with

Three years after being released from an Iranian prison, Jason Rezaian can still not quite shake off a recurring bad dream. It no longer dogs him several times a week as it did in the early days after his release, but it still revisits him, often after he has been retelling his tale. And it never changes.

“It’s not a nightmare of somebody beating me and trying to chase me down,” says Rezaian, a Washington Post journalist now back in his newspaper’s home town. “It is: you were supposed to get out and you didn’t. There was this moment you were supposed to be released and for whatever reason, that didn’t happen.”

The neuroscientist, controversial podcaster – and longtime exponent of meditation – talks about his new app and why he is definitely not an Islamophobe

Back in the middle of the first decade of this century, a new movement was heralded by the publication of several books on the same subject. The main four authors were Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris. And the movement was called the New Atheism.

At the time, Harris, who was actually the first to publish, with his book The End of Faith, was unquestionably the junior partner. The others had global reputations in their fields – Dawkins in evolutionary biology, Hitchens in journalism and public speaking, and Dennett in philosophy and cognitive science. All Harris had was his book and a BA in philosophy. The four, who would become known as the Four Horsemen, got together in 2007 at Hitchens’s apartment in Washington to discuss arguments for atheism or, more accurately, against faith. The event was recorded and is available to watch on Youtube.

Mark Zuckerberg’s mentor and an early investor in Facebook on why his book Zucked urges people to turn away from big tech’s toxic business model

Roger McNamee is an American fund manager and venture capitalist who has made investments in, among others, Electronic Arts, Sybase, Palm Inc and Facebook. In 2004, along with Bono and others, he co-founded Elevation Partners, a private equity firm. He has recently published Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe.

What is your history with Facebook?
I’ve been a technology investor since 1982, and a tech optimist until very recently. I first met Mark Zuckerberg in 2006, when he was 22 years old and I was 50. Even at that time it was already obvious to me that Facebook would be as successful eventually as Google was at that time, which was to say spectacularly successful. He had broken the code on the two things that historically had undermined all network-based companies: he had required authenticated identity, and he had provided genuine control of privacy.

The author has branched out with the twisty, psychological thriller The Wych Elm. She shares her conversations with a retired detective and why she’s not interested in true crime

Tana French ducks out of the rain and into an Italian restaurant in the villagey Dublin suburb of Sandymount, looking a little like a mischievous sprite: cap on her head, a crush of vintage and contemporary badges pinned to her bag, a big, open smile. Of Russian, Italian, American and Irish heritage, she orders a cappuccino in the relevant language, though declares herself far fonder of the Leinster damp than the sweltering heat of Rome, where she lived before this latest, decades-long stint in Ireland.

We’re here to talk about the former actor’s seventh novel, The Wych Elm, a twisty psychological thriller that has been likened to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History – and her first to stand apart from her Dublin Murder Squad series. When it came out in the US last October (as The Witch Elm, presumably because the tree in question is European and thus unfamiliar to her Stateside readership), Stephen King took to the New York Times to pronounce it extraordinary, and to invoke the names of Thomas Hardy, James Ellroy and Ruth Rendell: “The prose, as fine as it is, as dense as it is, as obsessive as it is, remains in service to the story. This is good work by a good writer. For the reader, what luck.”

Nico Walker was born in 1985 and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. Aged 19, he joined the US army as a medic and served 11 months in Iraq, returning with what a forensic psychiatrist later described as one of the worst cases of PTSD he’d ever seen. Walker developed a heroin addiction and in 2011 began robbing banks, carrying out 10 heists in four months before he was arrested and sentenced to 11 years in prison. Now, with less than two years left on his sentence, he has published Cherry, a novel partly based on his experiences, which the Washington Post called “a miracle of literary serendipity, a triumph… his prose echoes Ernest Hemingway’s cadences to powerful effect”.

What prompted you to start writing?
Matthew Johnson, who runs Tyrant Books, read a [2013] BuzzFeed article about me. We started talking and he told me I should write a book about my experiences. I wasn’t so eager to do it, because a lot of the stuff touched raw nerves. But he convinced me, so I went at it one step at a time. I definitely didn’t want to write a non-fiction memoir.

A love story ever on the brink of ‘self-contempt’, the novel shows the private terrors that beset the fearless public campaigner

Today James Baldwin is most frequently encountered as a “trailblazer of the civil rights movement”; a magnificent prophet who declared that “ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have”.

His contemporary relevance is so obvious it hardly needs to be stated – although it’s always good to be reminded. To watch him in the recent documentary I Am Not Your Negro is exhilarating, showing just what an unstoppable moral and intellectual force he was. It’s not just that it’s hard to disagree with him; it’s impossible to argue with him. Representatives of the old order charge towards his machine-gun rhetoric like sword-waving cavalrymen and they are mown down.

A restrained elegy for a friend, this is also a discreet reflection on how to live well in old age

‘As you set out …’
in memory of Ursula S

Within a week your sons emptied
your apartment, removed the Giacometti.

Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them

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Welcome to this week’s blogpost. Here’s our roundup of your comments and photos from last week.

Let’s start with some positivity: BirdsAreGood has been rereading Angela Carter’s Wise Children:

Q: What books would help instil confidence in a preteen boy?
Stay-at-home mother, 33, trying to help her 10-year-old son to become calmer and more confident

A: Fiona Noble, children’s books editor at the Bookseller, writes:
The act of reading can itself create an oasis of calm in a busy world, and I believe children’s fiction can play a powerful role in building confidence and resilience. Look for stories showing characters facing and overcoming fears and persevering in tough times. SF Said’s modern classic Varjak Paw, with wonderfully menacing artwork from Dave McKean, is about a young cat on a voyage of discovery and self-acceptance in the big city, replete with martial arts and terrifying villains. Another thrilling tale of bravery is Katherine Rundell’s epic adventure The Explorer, last year’s Costa children’s book of the year. Four children lost in the Amazon jungle face a compelling physical struggle to survive while each facing their own, more personal battles.

A furry animal that burrows underground, or an errand boy for a president?

Cliff Sims, Donald Trump’s former media aide, has just published Team of Vipers, a book about his time in the White House, and rebutted the president’s tweet that he had been “nothing more than a gofer”. This was not a typo for “golfer”, but some media corrected Trump by saying he had called Sims a “gopher”. Who was right?

A gopher is a cute furry animal that digs underground: the term has been applied to burrowing rodents, squirrels and tortoises. (It derives from the French gaufre, perhaps because that word also means “honeycomb”, evoking the critters’ holes.) By analogy, a “gopher man” in early 20th-century thieves’ cant was someone who tunnelled under a bank to blow up its vault, and “gophering” was small-scale mining.

A domestic violence charity has criticised Neil Strauss’ pickup artist book The Game – but dating guides aimed at both women and men are full of retrograde advice

Before writing The Game, Neil Strauss was a self-described “lump of nerd”. But his 2005 bestseller, which has shifted more than 3m copies around the world (270,000 in the UK), revealed the secrets of his midlife transformation into a ladies’ man, through time spent in the company of professional pickup artists. Techniques revealed by Strauss – practised long before his book, but never before exposed to such a big audience – included “negging” (making negative comments to lower a woman’s self-esteem so she’ll stay to earn approval) and “cavemanning” (aggressively escalating physical contact).

None of this reads very well in 2019 and this week, the director of women’s charity Zero Tolerance Rachel Adamson called out UK publisher Canongate for publishing Strauss’s book. “The Game is marketed on the premise that men are entitled to women’s attention and affection,” she said. “It says women are something to be attained and then thrown away. These sexist attitudes perpetuate dangerous ideas and opinions that cause violence against women.” Canongate has declined to comment.

On this week’s books podcast, we discuss the works that we struggled to finish – or even had to hide – because they were so shocking.

• Share your literary terrors in the comments below

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us,” Franz Kafka once wrote. “If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for?”

That’s all very well, Kafka, but how about the books literally about wounding and stabbing? On this week’s books podcast, the Guardian’s resident thriller fan Alison Flood struggled to finish The Flower Girls, a new thriller by Alice Clark-Platts, the plot of which contains similarities to the James Bulger murder case. This sparked a discussion on the books desk about the books that have most disturbed us: commissioning editor Richard Lea had nightmares after reading Colson Whitehead’s zombie novel Zone One; I once had someone hide my copy of American Psycho so I’d stop dwelling on it; and associate culture editor Claire Armitstead once destroyed a copy of Naked Lunch by William Burroughs, because she was so disturbed by a particular scene: “I put it in the fire! I have never destroyed another book … but I didn’t want anyone else to read what I’ve read.”

‘To create a new relationship,’ a life coach advises single women to empty their boudoir of distractions such as books – particularly if they’re downbeat

“How to avoid turning your home into a MANrepeller”, the Daily Mail proclaimed from atop the mountain on Sunday. “Interiors therapist reveals the items that could be making your abode offputting to men.”

It could be forgiven for wanting to jump on the Marie Kondo bandwagon, but the twist obviously had to be that the gaze you must please is not your own, but a man’s.

The novelist on Tintin, Tom Wolfe and why Charles Willeford is the greatest writer of the 20th century

The book I am currently reading
Andrew Gimson’s Prime Ministers, the best general book on British politics I’ve ever come across. Learned, witty and wise, and splendidly illustrated by Martin Rowson, with great snippets for dinner parties. Take Henry Pelham, prime minister from 1743 to 54: “He lived without abusing his power and died poor.”

The book I wish I’d written
Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff. I read his account of the US space race with a mixture of elation and wonder, and the odd throb of despair (how will I ever write anything this good?).

As we mark LGBT history month, the novelist selects some classic, personal novels and true accounts of the battle for civil rights

It’s a rite of passage for every young gay man to read Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story, the classic tale of a teenager coming to terms with his homosexuality. I first read it when I was 15 years old, hiding the book at the back of my wardrobe, terrified that anyone might find it and discover my terrible secret! It was dangerous, it was seductive, but it spoke to me in such a way that I felt sure it had been written for me alone, a conviction shared by many of its readers. White remains a hero, a stalwart, a champion for the ages.

Young female readers experienced similar self-recognition in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson’s witty and personal 1985 novel about a girl navigating the road towards self-acceptance in 1960s England. As with White, Winterson shares so many of her own experiences in the book that the reader feels a deep connection with the author.

After two years of careful reading, moving backwards through time, Robert McCrum has concluded his selection of the 100 greatest nonfiction books. Take a quick look at five centuries of great writing

• Robert McCrum reflects on his 100 greatest nonfiction books list
• The 100 best novels written in English: the full list
• What did Robert miss? Leave your thoughts in the comments

1. The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert (2014)
An engrossing account of the looming catastrophe caused by ecology’s “neighbours from hell” – mankind.

2. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (2005)
This steely and devastating examination of the author’s grief following the sudden death of her husband changed the nature of writing about bereavement.

After two years of careful consideration, Robert McCrum has reached a verdict on his selection of the 100 greatest novels written in English. Take a look at his list

• Robert McCrum reflects on his choices
• One in five doesn’t represent over 300 years of women in literature: a response
• What is missing: readers’ alternative list
• The world’s 100 greatest novels of all time (2003)

1. The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (1678)

A story of a man in search of truth told with the simple clarity and beauty of Bunyan’s prose make this the ultimate English classic.

In honor of the annual celebration of Japan’s 1912 gift of 3,000 cherry trees, the Library of Congress announced that it will host two cultural events during the 2019 National Cherry Blossom Festival, the nation’s most celebrated springtime festivity. 

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

A new exhibition, “Art in Action: Herblock and Fellow Artists Respond to Their Times,” pairs original drawings by editorial cartoonist Herblock with historical and contemporary artists’ prints, drawings and posters that respond to major issues from the 17^th century to the present day.

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

Twice each year, the Library of Congress opens its magnificent Main Reading Room to share information about how the public can access the Library’s resources year-round. The Main Reading Room will be open to the public on the federal Presidents Day holiday, Monday, February 18, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Main Reading Room is located on the first floor of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C.   American Sign Language interpreters will be available during the open house.

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

The Library of Congress will host several events throughout February that celebrate African Americans and their contributions to the fabric of American culture and history.  

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

The Law Library of Congress and the Supreme Court Fellows Program will present a conversation with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Thursday, Feb. 14 at 3:30 p.m. in the Library of Congress Coolidge Auditorium in the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C.

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

This spring, the Library of Congress will bring you a host of events on a variety of topics. Concerts, lectures, film screenings, symposiums and special events all fill the public events calendar.

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

For the first time in 20 years, creative works entered the public domain in the United States on Jan. 1, 2019.  To mark this occasion, the U.S. Copyright Office in the Library of Congress will host the event “The Public Domain: Celebrating the Lifecycle of Copyright” on Wednesday, Jan. 16.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress will launch a yearlong initiative in 2019 inviting visitors to Explore America’s Change Makers with a series of exhibitions, events and programs. Major exhibitions drawing from the Library’s collections will be focused on important figures in women’s history and the fight for suffrage, Rosa Parks’ groundbreaking role in the civil rights movement and artists’ responses to major issues of the day.

Click here for more information.

The Library’s resolution for 2019 is to offer more opportunities to engage lifelong learners like you with our unique treasures and programs. Make your gift before we close the books on 2018!

Your gift supports FREE exhibitions, events, programs, and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with our unique collections, experts, and services.

The Library of Congress is your library, your gateway to understanding the world. There is so much to discover, not only the nation’s memory, but the world’s—information from all corners of the earth, in more than 470 languages. With millions of items available online, you can access the Library’s treasures from anywhere and connect with us in ways that are personally relevant and valuable.

The Library’s resolution for 2019 is to offer more opportunities to engage lifelong learners like you with our unique treasures and programs. Make your gift before we close the books on 2018!

Your gift can:

• Inspire curiosity in children to read more books and reflect on the power of books to change their lives
• Ignite thoughtful conversation among current and future generations of students and scholars
• Illuminate the minds of people like you who use the resources of the nation's Library here in Washington or via the Internet in their own homes and communities

With the help of supporters like you, we can spark the imagination of people of all ages with programs that open the Library’s doors wide to all.

Join us TODAY by making your 2018 tax-deductible donation, and together we’ll spark a lifelong adventure of learning.

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), will deliver the Kissinger Lecture in Foreign Policy and International Relations. Lagarde will speak about the changing landscape of the international system and the need for continued creativity in U.S. leadership in order to tackle the world’s shared economic challenges.

This event will begin with an introduction by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. Hayden will be followed by Lagarde's keynote address and an interview by Margaret Brennan of Face the Nation on CBS.

The program will be streamed LIVE on Tuesday, Dec. 4, beginning at 6:30 p.m. ET:

• Watch LIVE on YouTube
• Watch LIVE on Facebook

Learn more about the Henry A. Kissinger Program in Foreign Policy and International Relations here.

In observance of the national day of mourning honoring former President George H.W. Bush Wednesday, December 5, all Library buildings will be CLOSED and all public events and services are canceled.

The Library will resume normal operations Thursday, December 6.

Click here for more information.

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), will deliver the Kissinger Lecture in Foreign Policy and International Relations. Lagarde will speak about the changing landscape of the international system and the need for continued creativity in U.S. leadership in order to tackle the world’s shared economic challenges.

This event will begin with an introduction by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. Hayden will be followed by Lagarde's keynote address and an interview by Margaret Brennan of Face the Nation on CBS.

The program will be streamed LIVE on Tuesday, Dec. 4, beginning at 6:30 p.m. ET:

• Watch LIVE on YouTube
• Watch LIVE on Facebook
• Watch LIVE on the Library of Congress website

Learn more about the Henry A. Kissinger Program in Foreign Policy and International Relations here.

The day has arrived—#GivingTuesday—a day when your gift makes a difference and a statement.

The Library of Congress depends on donations from people like you to produce exhibitions, events, programs, and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with our unique collections, experts, and services.

Gifts bring the Library to life with music, dance, film, sound, culture, scholarship, research, discussions and ideas. Your gift, no matter the size, will support diverse programs that are entirely FREE for everyone to enjoy, and will make the Library’s treasures and services more accessible.

Help spread the word today and encourage your friends and family to make a gift to the nation’s library, your gateway to understanding the world!

#GivingTuesday is a global day of giving fueled by the power of social media and collaboration.

This year is the second year the Library of Congress is participating in #GivingTuesday—a global giving movement. On Tuesday, November 27, we are asking you to make a gift to spark a lifelong adventure of learning.

Your gift supports FREE exhibitions, events, programs, and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with our unique collections, experts, and services.

The Library of Congress is your library, your gateway to understanding the world. There is so much to discover, not only the nation’s memory, but the world’s—information from all corners of the earth, in more than 470 languages. With millions of items available online, you can access the Library’s treasures from anywhere and connect with us in ways that are personally relevant and valuable.

Save the Date to Make Your Gift!

Celebrated on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving (in the U.S.) and the widely recognized shopping events Black Friday and Cyber Monday, #GivingTuesday kicks off the charitable season, when many focus on their holiday and end-of-year giving.

The Library of Congress will mark the 155th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's delivery of the Gettysburg Address with a discussion of the speech and a #LettersToLincoln transcribe-a-thon for volunteers on and offsite. 

Tune in Monday, November 19 at 10 a.m. ET for this special event.

• Read more information on this special event.
• Watch LIVE on YouTube

NOTICE

Thursday, November 15, 2018, the Great Hall, all exhibitions and the Library Shop in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress will close at 3:00 p.m. for a special event. Please plan accordingly. We do apologize for any inconvenience.

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

This holiday season, the Library of Congress will bring you a host of events on a variety of topics. Concerts, lectures, film screenings, symposiums and special events all fill the newly-designed public events calendar. Headlining the fall/winter line-up are two events to spread awareness of digital tools that can be used analyze and simplify the information and data available here at the Library.

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

The Library of Congress will celebrate GIS (Geographic Information Systems) Day on Nov. 14 with an all-day series of talks on the use of GIS technology in the federal government and academia.

GIS Day—held during Geography Awareness Week (Nov. 12-18)—is an annual, global celebration of GIS technology, with events held by organizations around the world. Formally started in 1999, GIS Day aims to provide a forum to promote the benefits of GIS research, demonstrate real-world applications of GIS and foster open idea sharing and growth in the GIS community.

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

VETERANS DAY AT THE LIBRARY

11 am–Noon: Panel Discussion: LJ-119

A panel of experts will discuss writing as a means of healing from the trauma of war.

1:30–2:30 pm: Poetry & Literature Reading: LJ-119

Prominent veteran poets and literary writers will read their works and works that have inspired them, including selections from World War I veteran writers.

3:00–4:45 pm: Film Screening: The Road Back, Pickford Theater 

Directed by James Whale, The Road Back (1937) is based on the novel of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque and is the sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front.

Tours of Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I will be available at 10 am and noon.

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

Ever wanted to explore the Library’s collections but didn't know where to start? Join us and Library of Congress Innovator-in-Residence Jer Thorp in a Twitter takeover as he takes a #SerendipityRun through the collections on our Twitter account from 1-4 PM ET, Thursday, November 8.

What’s a #SerendipityRun? Click here to find out – and join us this Thursday!

The Library of Congress will award the 2018 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry to Jorie Graham for her 2017 book “Fast.” Graham will receive the award and read selections from her work at the Library on 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 6.

Click here for more information.

2018 marks the 200^th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” and to acknowledge this milestone, the Library of Congress hosts “Frankenreads,” a live, day-long reading of the novel in its entirety by Library staff, friends and some very special guests.

The program will be streamed LIVE on Halloween, Wednesday, Oct. 31 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET:

• Watch LIVE on YouTube

Yesterday, Oct. 24 marked 40 years since the premier of the theatrical box office hit, The Wiz.

“Ease on down the road” to the Library for its celebration of the 40th anniversary of the film version of The Wiz. Harlem and Oz intersect in this magical re-telling of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, starring luminaries like Diana Ross and Michael Jackson. Catch one or both screenings, as well as several opportunities to hear and interact with Tony Walton, the production and costume designer for the film. Be sure to see a display of the Library’s holdings related to The Wiz and don’t miss the chance to see the movie on the big screen!

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

TONIGHT at 6 p.m.

“Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley”

Award-winning author Charlotte Gordon will present a book talk on her biography of Mary Shelley and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. 

Click here for more information.

2018 marks the 200^th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” and to acknowledge this milestone, the Library is hosting “Frankenreads,” a livestream reading of the novel in its entirety with a showcase of Halloween-themed activities inside the nation's Library.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

The Library of Congress has acquired and made available online the Omar Ibn Said Collection, which includes the only known surviving slave narrative written in Arabic in the United States. In 1831, Omar Ibn Said, a wealthy and highly educated man who was captured in West Africa and brought to the United States as a slave, wrote a 15-page autobiography describing his experiences.

Read more about the extraordinary Omar Ibn Said Collection.

Happy New Year! We have new collections and resources to tell you about in this update. 

Occupational Folklife Project

The Occupational Folklife Project began in 2010 as a multi-year project to document the culture of contemporary American workers during an era of economic and social transition. To date, fieldworkers have recorded more than 600 interviews with workers in many areas. The interviews feature workers discussing their current jobs and formative work experiences, training, challenges, rewards, and aspirations. The latest set of interviews added to the site features home health care workers. For example, Nargiza Turanova describes her experiences as a home care worker, what caregivers discuss when they talk to each other, and her job satisfaction.

Nargiza Turanova, home health care worker.

Federal Theatre Project

This collection for theater lovers is now available in a much improved format and features stage and costume designs, photographs, posters, playbills, and playscripts from 1935-1939 including productions of Macbeth and The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus as staged by Orson Welles. 

   
Costume designs from Macbeth and A Christmas Carol.

116th Congress

Did you know that the Library of Congress manages Congress.gov, the official site for U.S. legislation? On this site you can track legislation and find current members of Congress.

Thanks for reading and happy browsing!

The Library’s resolution for 2019 is to offer more opportunities to engage lifelong learners like you with our unique treasures and programs. Make your gift before we close the books on 2018!

Your gift supports FREE exhibitions, events, programs, and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with our unique collections, experts, and services.

The Library of Congress is your library, your gateway to understanding the world. There is so much to discover, not only the nation’s memory, but the world’s—information from all corners of the earth, in more than 470 languages. With millions of items available online, you can access the Library’s treasures from anywhere and connect with us in ways that are personally relevant and valuable.

The Library’s resolution for 2019 is to offer more opportunities to engage lifelong learners like you with our unique treasures and programs. Make your gift before we close the books on 2018!

Your gift can:

• Inspire curiosity in children to read more books and reflect on the power of books to change their lives
• Ignite thoughtful conversation among current and future generations of students and scholars
• Illuminate the minds of people like you who use the resources of the nation's Library here in Washington or via the Internet in their own homes and communities

With the help of supporters like you, we can spark the imagination of people of all ages with programs that open the Library’s doors wide to all.

Join us TODAY by making your 2018 tax-deductible donation, and together we’ll spark a lifelong adventure of learning.

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today the annual selection of 25 of America’s most influential motion pictures to be inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress because of their cultural, historic and aesthetic importance to the nation’s film heritage. These films range from Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” and Paul Newman’s unforgettable “Hud” to the opulent musical “My Fair Lady” and the rocking sounds of “Monterey Pop.” Selection to the registry will help ensure that these films will be preserved for all time.

Read more about this year's selections and find out how we're celebrating the 30th year of the National Film Registry!

Watch Dr. Hayden introduce the 2018 registry and see film clips on our YouTube channel.

Hello subscribers! We have a few quick updates for your weekend browsing. 

Watch: A Conversation with Rod Serling

In our last update we announced the National Screening Room which makes rare movies available on the Library's website and on our YouTube channel. We are still discovering treasures from this collection like this conversation with Rod Serling from 1968 in which he discusses television as a medium for literary writers and artists. Check it out.

In related film news, on Wednesday, December 12, we will announce the 2018 National Film Registry selections. We've been highlighting films previously added to the registry as we get ready for the big reveal! 

World War I: 400 Volumes of WWI Newspaper Content are Now Online

Read all about this extraordinary collection of newspaper front pages, illustrated feature articles, editorial cartoons, and more in a post from our Headlines & Heroes blog. You can also go straight to the collection and start exploring yourself. 

Thanks for reading! Let us know if you have any feedback at news@loc.gov. 

The day has arrived—#GivingTuesday—a day when your gift makes a difference and a statement.

The Library of Congress depends on donations from people like you to produce exhibitions, events, programs, and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with our unique collections, experts, and services.

Gifts bring the Library to life with music, dance, film, sound, culture, scholarship, research, discussions and ideas. Your gift, no matter the size, will support diverse programs that are entirely FREE for everyone to enjoy, and will make the Library’s treasures and services more accessible.

Help spread the word today and encourage your friends and family to make a gift to the nation’s library, your gateway to understanding the world!

#GivingTuesday is a global day of giving fueled by the power of social media and collaboration.

This year is the second year the Library of Congress is participating in #GivingTuesday—a global giving movement. On Tuesday, November 27, we are asking you to make a gift to spark a lifelong adventure of learning.

Your gift supports FREE exhibitions, events, programs, and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with our unique collections, experts, and services.

The Library of Congress is your library, your gateway to understanding the world. There is so much to discover, not only the nation’s memory, but the world’s—information from all corners of the earth, in more than 470 languages. With millions of items available online, you can access the Library’s treasures from anywhere and connect with us in ways that are personally relevant and valuable.

Save the Date to Make Your Gift!

Celebrated on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving (in the U.S.) and the widely recognized shopping events Black Friday and Cyber Monday, #GivingTuesday kicks off the charitable season, when many focus on their holiday and end-of-year giving.

Hello subscribers. We have big news to share with you in this update!

crowd.loc.gov

We recently launched crowd.loc.gov, an exciting new crowdsourcing project. Volunteer to transcribe, tag, or review documents to make them searchable for everyone and get a front row seat to history while you’re at it. Choose which project to work on -- letters sent to Abraham Lincoln or Clara Barton's diaries among others. If you’re a baseball fan you can examine Branch Rickey’s scouting reports to see how he sized up players. Who knows what you’ll discover? Follow the project on Twitter at Crowd_LOC.  

Watch Live on Nov. 19 at 10 a.m. ET: Tune in for a livestreamed event to commemorate the 155^th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address and to kick off the #LettersToLincoln transcription challenge. Watch the #LettersToLincoln event on YouTube or on loc.gov.

Watch Movies on loc.gov in the National Screening Room

The National Screening Room showcases the riches of the Library’s moving image collection and makes otherwise unavailable movies, both copyrighted and in the public domain, freely accessible to viewers worldwide. The films range from fiction and non-fiction to home movies to newsreels, covering a period of more than a hundred years. More content will be added every month. Watch home movies from George and Ira Gershwin to get started!

Personal Snapshots: Picturing the Vietnam War

The Library’s Veterans History Project (VHP) just launched “Personal Snapshots: Picturing the Vietnam War.” This curated presentation features images of the Vietnam War from those who served in it. One of the collections is from G. Mike Mabe, a self-described “low-rank infantryman” who served with the 101st Airborne Division. Mabe’s photographs depict scenes of his everyday life in Vietnam: pulling kitchen patrol duty, interactions with Vietnamese civilians and eating c-rations on the hood of his jeep.

Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories

This collection is now available in a new and improved format. These extraordinary recordings of former slaves took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine states. Twenty-three interviewees discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom. The individuals documented in this presentation have much to say about living as African Americans from the 1870s to the 1930s, and beyond.

Mary Church Terrell Papers

The papers of educator, lecturer, suffragist, and civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) are now online! The collection consists of approximately 13,000 documents and includes diaries, correspondence, speeches and writings primarily focusing on Terrell's career as an advocate of women's rights and equal treatment of African Americans. You can explore Mary Church Terrell's life and work further by helping to transcribe her papers in our new crowdsourcing project!

What would you like to see in these "New on the Web" updates? Let us know at news@loc.gov.

Ever wanted to explore the Library’s collections but didn't know where to start? Join us and Library of Congress Innovator-in-Residence Jer Thorp in a Twitter takeover as he takes a #SerendipityRun through the collections on our Twitter account from 1-4 PM ET, Thursday, November 8.

What’s a #SerendipityRun? Click here to find out – and join us this Thursday!

The largest collection of the papers of President Theodore Roosevelt, documenting his extraordinary career in the White House and as vice president, governor of New York, and as a naturalist, writer and reformer, has been digitized and is now available online from the Library of Congress.

The digitization of the massive collection comes just before the 160^th anniversary of Roosevelt’s birthday. The nation’s 26^th president was born Oct. 27, 1858, and died nearly 100 years ago on Jan. 6, 1919.

The Roosevelt papers are one of the largest presidential collections held by the Library, consisting of about 276,000 documents and comprising about 461,000 images. It includes letters, speeches, executive orders, scrapbooks, diaries, White House reception records and press releases of his administration, as well as family records.

Click here for more information.

Reports from the Library’s Congressional Research Service — objective information on policy, regulation & important issues before Congress — are now available to the public online.

Click here for more information.

The Veterans History Project (VHP) in the Library of Congress today launched a website feature, titled “Cold War Dispatches: Service Stories from 1947-1991,” as part of its “Experiencing War” online series. The feature highlights the stories of veterans who served in non-combatant roles within the military between 1947 and 1991, commonly referred to as the Cold War era.

Click here for more information.

Writings and personal records of the founder of American landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted, known for his work on New York’s Central Park, the U.S. Capitol grounds in Washington, the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina and many other landscapes, have been digitized and are now available online from the Library of Congress. The archive was digitized to serve as a resource in advance of the bicentennial of Olmsted’s birth, which will be celebrated with partner organizations in 2022.

Click here for more information.

Home to one of the most prominent North Korean collections in the Western Hemisphere, the Library of Congress has rolled out the North Korean Serials Database, an online indexing tool that offers researchers enhanced access to periodicals and articles published as far back as the 1940s.

Click here for more information.

Attention subscriber to bulletin services from the Library of Congress:

As you may be aware, on May 25, 2018, the EU General Data Protection Regulation EU (2016)/679 (GDPR) came into force in all EU member states. The GDPR applies to “personal data,” meaning any information relating to an identifiable person who can be directly or indirectly identified by reference to an identifier. It requires that personal data be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner, and that personal data be collected for specified and legitimate purposes.

For those who subscribe to the Library’s email and RSS bulletins, the Library of Congress collects email addresses which can include personal data. The Library of Congress relies on its legitimate interests to process this data so that we can keep you up to date with developments for the topics to which you subscribe. The Library does not make any other use of this data.

The Library respects your personal data and takes care to maintain its confidentiality. You have the right to unsubscribe from the Library’s e-mail newsletters and alerts at any time. You can manage your subscriptions by clicking “Subscriber Preferences” in the box at the bottom of this email.

If you have any questions about the Library’s data privacy policy, please email the Library: ogc@loc.gov

The papers of President Woodrow Wilson, from his time in the White House and as a scholar and governor of New Jersey, have been digitized and are now available online from the Library of Congress 100 years after his presidency.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project (VHP) today launched an online “Experiencing War” website feature, titled “Equality of Treatment and Opportunity: Executive Order 9981,” marking the 70^th anniversary of the landmark order that abolished racial discrimination in the U.S. armed forces.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress has launched three new online interactive applications that highlight creative ways to facilitate the accessibility of thousands of collections, using the Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based tool Story Maps.

Click here for more information.

The papers of American scientist, statesman and diplomat Benjamin Franklin have been digitized and are now available online for the first time from the Library of Congress. The Library announced the digitization today in remembrance of the anniversary of Franklin’s death on April 17, 1790.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress’ Asian Division has digitized its Japanese Censorship Collection, a unique online archive comprising more than 1,000 marked-up copies of government-censored monographs and galley proofs from the 1920s and 1930s in Japan. The collection, originally from the Home Ministry’s library, reveals traces of the otherwise-hidden censorship process of the Japanese government through marginal notes, stamps, penciled lines and commentary inscribed by the censors’ own hands.

Click here for more information.

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth, the Library of Congress has made available online—for the first time—musical manuscripts and scrapbooks from the legendary composer’s personal and professional archives housed in the nation’s library.

Click here for more information.

Archival materials from one of the most successful political partnerships in history, the collaboration of suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the movement for women’s rights, have been digitized and are now available online for the first time from the Library of Congress.

Click here for more information.

The papers of commissioner of patents, United States postmaster general, secretary of war, judge advocate general of the United States Army, and lawyer Joseph Holt (1807-1894) consists of 20,000 items in 118 containers and three oversize folders. The material spans the years 1797-1917, with the bulk concentrated in the period 1859-1889. The collection consists principally of correspondence supplemented by diaries, ledgers, account books, bills and receipts, briefs and other legal papers, newspaper clippings, speeches, photographs, and printed matter.

Click here for more information.

A poem by Edward Hirsch from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Andrew Hudgins from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Charles Harper Webb from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Steve Kowit from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Frank O'Hara from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Kenneth Koch from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Gerald Stern from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Mary Oliver from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Steve Kowit from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Stephen Dobyns from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Laura McKee from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Mark Irwin from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Joyce Huff from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Aracelis Girmay from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Mark Halliday from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Colette Inez from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Robert Wrigley from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Elise Paschen from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Oliver Rice from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Linda Pastan from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Ronald Koertge from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Ira Sukrungruang from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Henry W. Rago from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Arlene Tribbia from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Laurel Blossom from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

Note: Due to a scheduling conflict, Billy-Ray Belcourt is unable to participate in this event as originally announced. Poet Aisha Sasha John has been added to the program. 

Thursday, February 28, 6:30 PM 
US/CA CAPITAL POETRY EXCHANGE

Canadian poets Aisha Sasha John, Brecken Hancock, and Erín Moure will share their work and participate in a moderated discussion with Rob Casper, head of the Poetry and Literature Center. Presented in partnership with the Embassy of Canada, Washington, D.C. and VERSeFest Ottawa.

Location: Mumford Room, sixth floor, James Madison Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

For more event information, visit the Poetry and Literature Center's website.

Thursday, February 28, 6:30 PM 
US/CA CAPITAL POETRY EXCHANGE

Canadian poets Billy-Ray Belcourt, Brecken Hancock, and Erín Moure will share their work and participate in a moderated discussion with Rob Casper, head of the Poetry and Literature Center. This event is free and open to the public. Presented in partnership with the Embassy of Canada, Washington, D.C. and VERSeFest Ottawa.

Location: Mumford Room, sixth floor, James Madison Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Please visit the Poetry and Literature Center's website for more information.

Wednesday, February 6, 7:00 PM
LIFE OF A POET: ROSS GAY

Poet Ross Gay will discuss his work with Ron Charles, book critic at The Washington Post. This event is free and open to the public. Reservations are required. Co-sponsored by the Hill Center and The Washington Post.

Location: Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital (921 Pennsylvania Ave. SE)
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Tuesday, February 12, 4:00 PM & 7:30 PM
WHAT WAS, WHAT IS, AND WHAT WILL BE: A CROSS-GENRE LOOK AT AFROFUTURISM

• 4:00 PM

Author/playwright Tananarive Due, novelist N.K. Jemisin, and poet Airea D. Matthews will discuss the origins and extensions of Afrofuturism in a conversation moderated by Sheree Renée Thomas. Free tickets recommended, but not required.

Location: Mumford Room, sixth floor, James Madison Building, Library of Congress <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

• 7:30 PM

Tananarive Due, N.K. Jemisin, and Airea D. Matthews will read their work. Tickets required.  

Location: Folger Theatre, Folger Shakespeare Library
Contact: (202) 544-7077

Co-sponsored by the Library of Congress Center for the Book. Presented in partnership with Folger Poetry and PEN/Faulkner Foundation.

For more information about these events, please visit the Poetry and Literature Center's website or call (202) 707-5394.

The following event has been postponed to tomorrow, Wednesday, January 30 at 7:00 PM due to inclement weather. All tickets will be honored. 

Tuesday, January 29, 7:00 PM Wednesday, January 30, 7:00 PM
LIFE OF A POET: ADA LIMÓN

Poet Ada Limón will discuss her work with Ron Charles, book critic at The Washington Post. This event is free and open to the public. Reservations are required. Co-sponsored by the Hill Center and The Washington Post.

Location: Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital (921 Pennsylvania Ave. SE)
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Please visit the Poetry and Literature Center's website for more information.

Tuesday, January 29, 7:00 PM
LIFE OF A POET: ADA LIMÓN

Poet Ada Limón will discuss her work with Ron Charles, book critic at The Washington Post. This event is free and open to the public. Reservations are required. Co-sponsored by the Hill Center and The Washington Post.

Location: Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital (921 Pennsylvania Ave. SE)
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Wednesday, February 6, 7:00 PM
LIFE OF A POET: ROSS GAY

Poet Ross Gay will discuss his work with Ron Charles, book critic at The Washington Post. This event is free and open to the public. Reservations are required. Co-sponsored by the Hill Center and The Washington Post.

Location: Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital (921 Pennsylvania Ave. SE)
Contact: (202) 707-5394

For more information, please visit the Poetry and Literature Center's website.

The Library’s resolution for 2019 is to offer more opportunities to engage lifelong learners like you with our unique treasures and programs. Make your gift before we close the books on 2018!

Your gift supports FREE exhibitions, events, programs, and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with our unique collections, experts, and services.

The Library of Congress is your library, your gateway to understanding the world. There is so much to discover, not only the nation’s memory, but the world’s—information from all corners of the earth, in more than 470 languages. With millions of items available online, you can access the Library’s treasures from anywhere and connect with us in ways that are personally relevant and valuable.

The Library’s resolution for 2019 is to offer more opportunities to engage lifelong learners like you with our unique treasures and programs. Make your gift before we close the books on 2018!

Your gift can:

• Inspire curiosity in children to read more books and reflect on the power of books to change their lives
• Ignite thoughtful conversation among current and future generations of students and scholars
• Illuminate the minds of people like you who use the resources of the nation's Library here in Washington or via the Internet in their own homes and communities

With the help of supporters like you, we can spark the imagination of people of all ages with programs that open the Library’s doors wide to all.

Join us TODAY by making your 2018 tax-deductible donation, and together we’ll spark a lifelong adventure of learning.

The day has arrived—#GivingTuesday—a day when your gift makes a difference and a statement.

The Library of Congress depends on donations from people like you to produce exhibitions, events, programs, and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with our unique collections, experts, and services.

Gifts bring the Library to life with music, dance, film, sound, culture, scholarship, research, discussions and ideas. Your gift, no matter the size, will support diverse programs that are entirely FREE for everyone to enjoy, and will make the Library’s treasures and services more accessible.

Help spread the word today and encourage your friends and family to make a gift to the nation’s library, your gateway to understanding the world!

#GivingTuesday is a global day of giving fueled by the power of social media and collaboration.

Thursday, December 6, 6:30 PM
BOBBITT PRIZE READING: JORIE GRAHAM

Jorie Graham, winner of the 15th Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, will read selections of Fast. Book sales and signing to follow. Free tickets required.

Location: Mumford Room, sixth floor, James Madison Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

For more information, please visit the Poetry and Literature Center's website.

This year is the second year the Library of Congress is participating in #GivingTuesday—a global giving movement. On Tuesday, November 27, we are asking you to make a gift to spark a lifelong adventure of learning.

Your gift supports FREE exhibitions, events, programs, and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with our unique collections, experts, and services.

The Library of Congress is your library, your gateway to understanding the world. There is so much to discover, not only the nation’s memory, but the world’s—information from all corners of the earth, in more than 470 languages. With millions of items available online, you can access the Library’s treasures from anywhere and connect with us in ways that are personally relevant and valuable.

Save the Date to Make Your Gift!

Celebrated on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving (in the U.S.) and the widely recognized shopping events Black Friday and Cyber Monday, #GivingTuesday kicks off the charitable season, when many focus on their holiday and end-of-year giving.

The Library of Congress will award the 2018 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry to Jorie Graham for her 2017 book “Fast.” Graham will receive the award and read selections from her work at the Library on 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 6.

Click here for more information.

Friday, November 2, 12:00PM
INTERNATIONAL WRITING PROGRAM: CELEBRATING WOMEN’S VOICES

Program residents Kateryna Babkina (Ukraine), Alisa Ganieva (Russia), and Rumena Bužarovska (Macedonia) will read selections of their work and participate in a moderated discussion with Christopher Merrill, director of the International Writing Program. This event is free and open to the public. Co-sponsored by the Library of Congress European Division and presented in partnership with the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. 

Location: Montpelier Room, sixth floor, James Madison Building, Library of Congress <view map>

Wednesday, November 7, 4:00 PM
INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE: URUGUAYAN POETS

Poet Silvia Guerra will read excerpts of her work and translators Jesse Lee Kercheval, Jeannine Pitas, Anna Deeny, and Seth Michelson will share new translations of Circe Maia, Marosa di Giorgio, Amanda Berenguer, and Melisa Machado. This event is free and open to the public. Co-sponsored by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress. Presented in collaboration with the Embassy of Uruguay.

Location: Whittall Pavilion, ground floor, Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress <view map>

Saturday, November 10, 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM
THE ROAD BACK: VETS AND LITERARY WRITING

In honor of Veterans Day, a day-long symposium featuring two panels and a screening of the newly restored film “The Road Back.” All events are free and open to the public. Tickets required for film screening. Co-sponsored by the Library of Congress Exhibits Office and Veterans History Project. Presented in collaboration with Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I exhibit.

11:00 AM - Kristin Windbigler, executive director of the Western Folklife Center; Niyati Dhokai, program manager of the Veterans and the Arts Initiative, Hylton Performing Arts Center; and Mohammed Sheriff, division coordinator of the National Endowment for the Art’s Literature & Arts Education Division will discuss writing and literature as a means of coping with service experience.

Location: LJ-119, first floor, Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress <view map>

1:30 PM - Poets Bill Jones, Vess Quinlan, Dave Richmond, and Bruce Weigl will discuss their favorite World War I writers, share selections of their work, and participate in a discussion moderated by Anya Creightney, programs manager of the Poetry and Literature Center.

Location: LJ-119, first floor, Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress <view map>

3:00 PM - Film screening of “The Road Back,” sequel to “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Restored by the Library of Congress in association with UCLA Film & Television Archive, Universal Studios, and The Film Foundation. Restoration funding provided by The Film Foundation and the Library of Congress. Screening rights provided by New York University, executor of the Erich Maria Remarque Estate. 

Location: Mary Pickford Theater, third floor, James Madison Building, Library of Congress <view map>

Sunday, November 18, 1:30 PM 
TWO POETS LAUREATE: READING AND CONVERSATION

Former U.S. Poets Laureate Billy Collins and Juan Felipe Herrera will read selections from their recent books and discuss the necessity of poetry with Robert Casper, head of the Poetry and Literature Center.

Location: Miami Dade College - Wolfson Campus, Building 1, second floor, #1261 (300 NE 2nd Ave, Miami, FL 33132) 

For more information about these events, please visit the Poetry and Literature Center's website or call us at (202) 707-5394.

Friday, November 2, 12:00PM
INTERNATIONAL WRITING PROGRAM: CELEBRATING WOMEN’S VOICES

Program residents Kateryna Babkina (Ukraine), Alisa Ganieva (Russia), and Rumena Bužarovska (Macedonia) will read selections of their work and participate in a moderated discussion with Christopher Merrill, director of the International Writing Program. Co-sponsored by the Library of Congress European Division and presented in partnership with the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. 

Location: Montpelier Room, sixth floor, James Madison Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

For more information, please visit the Poetry and Literature Center's website. 

Tuesday, October 30, 6:30 PM
BAGLEY WRIGHT LECTURE: POETS ON CRITICISM

Poet-critics Maureen McLane, Srikanth Reddy, and Matthew Zapruder will discuss the role of criticism in contemporary American poetry in a conversation moderated by Robert Casper, head of the Poetry and Literature Center. This event is free and open to the public. Presented in partnership with the Bagley Wright Lecture Series.

Location: Mumford Room, sixth floor, James Madison Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

For more information, please visit the Poetry and Literature Center's website. 

Tuesday, October 16, 4:00 PM
INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE: CRISTINA RIVERA GARZA

Novelist Cristina Rivera Garza will read excerpts of her work and participate in a moderated discussion with her translators Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana. This event is free and open to the public. No tickets required. Co-sponsored by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress. Presented in partnership with the Mexican Cultural Institute.

Location: Whittall Pavilion, ground floor, Thomas Jefferson Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Please click here for more information.

Monday, October 1, 7:00 PM
THE LIFE OF A POET: MARILYN CHIN

Poet Marilyn Chin will discuss her work with Ron Charles, editor of The Washington Post's Book World. This event is free and open to the public. Reservations are required. Co-sponsored by the Hill Center and The Washington Post.

Location: Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital (921 Pennsylvania Ave. SE)
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Please click here for more information.

Thursday, September 13, 6:00 PM
ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE TODAY: KUNDIMAN SPOTLIGHT

Kundiman fellows R.O. Kwon and Hieu Minh Nguyen will read excerpts of their work followed by a moderated discussion with poet Gowri K. The event is free and open to the public. Presented in partnership with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, The Asian American Literary Review, and Kundiman.

Location: Mumford Room, sixth floor, James Madison Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Please click here for more information. 

Wednesday, September 12, 4:00 PM
INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE: CATHERINE FILLOUX

Playwright and librettist Catherine Filloux will read from MANOA special feature Eyes of the Heart followed by a moderated discussion with MANOA series editor Frank Stewart. Free tickets are available via Eventbrite. Presented in partnership with MANOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing.

Location: Whittall Pavilion, ground floor, Thomas Jefferson Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Please click here for more information. 

Thursday, September 13, 6:00 PM
ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE TODAY: KUNDIMAN SPOTLIGHT

Kundiman fellows R.O. Kwon and Hieu Minh Nguyen will read excerpts of their work followed by a moderated discussion with poet Gowri K. The event is free and open to the public. Presented in partnership with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, The Asian American Literary Review, and Kundiman.

Location: Mumford Room, sixth floor, James Madison Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Please click here for more information. 

Wednesday, September 12, 4:00 PM
INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE: CATHERINE FILLOUX

Playwright and librettist Catherine Filloux will read from MANOA special feature Eyes of the Heart followed by a moderated discussion with MANOA series editor Frank Stewart. Free tickets are available via Eventbrite. Presented in partnership with MANOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing.

Location: Whittall Pavilion, ground floor, Thomas Jefferson Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Please click here for more information. 

Thursday, August 30, 4:00 PM
NATIONAL STUDENT POETS PROGRAM APPOINTMENT CEREMONY

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and Institute of Museum and Library Services Director Kathryn K. Matthew will appoint the seventh class of National Student Poets, five outstanding youth poets from across the United States, for their original work. Program to include a plaque ceremony and poetry reading. Public reception to follow. Free tickets required. Presented in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers.

Location: Mumford Room, sixth floor, James Madison Building
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Please click here for more information. The event will also be livestreamed on the Library’s Facebook page at facebook.com/libraryofcongress and its YouTube site at youtube.com/loc.

Thursday, August 30, 4:00 PM
NATIONAL STUDENT POETS PROGRAM APPOINTMENT CEREMONY

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and Institute of Museum and Library Services Director Kathryn K. Matthew will appoint the seventh class of National Student Poets, five outstanding youth poets from across the United States, for their original work. Program to include a plaque ceremony and poetry reading. Public reception to follow. Free tickets required. Presented in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers.

Location: Mumford Room, sixth floor, James Madison Building
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Please click here for more information. 

Saturday, June 30, 2018

LA VOZ LATINA—THE LATIN VOICE IN THE AMERICAS: A SPLENDID DIVERSITY

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in collaboration with the Hispanic Division and the Poetry and Literature Center of the Library of Congress, presents a series of programs on Latin American and Hispanic American literature. Events are free and open to the public. Free tickets are required and will be distributed 30 minutes prior to the event in front of the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater.

11:00 AM: HARLEM TO HAVANA—Langston Hughes and Nicolas Guillen: Two Poets, Two Worlds, One Friendship

Featuring Cuban American playwright Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas (Sleepwalkers and Maleta Mulata) and Pulitzer Prize–winning U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey, this is a re-enactment of the friendship and literary collaboration between two great jazz-age poets, Cuban Nicolás Guillén and American Langston Hughes. Cortiñas and Trethewey will present the poets’ verses, correspondence, and anecdotes, as well as talk about their influence on their own art. Learn more on the Kennedy Center website

2:00 PM: LA VOZ LATINA—Six Literary Stars of the Americas

Six of the most eclectic and revered Latino writers from the Americas—North and South—talk about their work, their inspiration, and their enormously diverse cultures, moderated by writer and critic Marie Arana, along with writer Ruth Behar. Featured are the legendary Mexican American writer Sandra Cisneros, Chilean American playwright and novelist Ariel Dorfman, Bolivian novelist and essayist Rodrigo Hasbún, Peruvian journalist and novelist Santiago Roncagliolo, and Puerto Rican American novelist and memoirist Esmeralda Santiago. Learn more on the Kennedy Center website

Location: Terrace Theater, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Contact: (202) 467-4600

Saturday, June 30, 2018

LA VOZ LATINA—THE LATIN VOICE IN THE AMERICAS: A SPLENDID DIVERSITY

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in collaboration with the Hispanic Division and the Poetry and Literature Center of the Library of Congress, presents a series of programs on Latin American and Hispanic American literature. Events are free and open to the public. Free tickets are required and will be distributed 30 minutes prior to the event in front of the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater.

11:00 AM: HARLEM TO HAVANA—Langston Hughes and Nicolas Guillen: Two Poets, Two Worlds, One Friendship

Featuring Cuban American playwright Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas (Sleepwalkers and Maleta Mulata) and Pulitzer Prize–winning U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey, this is a re-enactment of the friendship and literary collaboration between two great jazz-age poets, Cuban Nicolás Guillén and American Langston Hughes. Cortiñas and Trethewey will present the poets’ verses, correspondence, and anecdotes, as well as talk about their influence on their own art. Learn more on the Kennedy Center website

2:00 PM: LA VOZ LATINA—Six Literary Stars of the Americas

Six of the most eclectic and revered Latino writers from the Americas—North and South—talk about their work, their inspiration, and their enormously diverse cultures, moderated by writer and critic Marie Arana, along with writer Ruth Behar. Featured are the legendary Mexican American writer Sandra Cisneros, Chilean American playwright and novelist Ariel Dorfman, Bolivian novelist and essayist Rodrigo Hasbún, Peruvian journalist and novelist Santiago Roncagliolo, and Puerto Rican American novelist and memoirist Esmeralda Santiago. Learn more on the Kennedy Center website

Location: Terrace Theater, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Contact: (202) 467-4600

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