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Learning and Innovation Office
The Library of Congress

Happy Spring – the Season of Webinars.

Join us for our upcoming educator webinars.  All sessions are free and a certificate is available for those attending the live sessions where noted. 

March 26th 4 ET – Exploring Social Justice Through the Arts Part I

Hosted by Carolyn Bennett, our Music Teacher in Residence. 
The Library of Congress has over 900 WPA posters in its free-use online collection. Participants will explore ways to engage students in artistic inquiry through use of these rich primary sources, and strategies for increasing students’ capacity for personal artistic expression. Though the specific webinar content may be used in an elementary classroom or visual arts course, the strategies presented will help ALL students broadly use the performing and visual arts to explore primary sources. Certificate available for live attendance.

Register: https://locgov.webex.com/locgov/onstage/g.php?MTID=e1557046ca3b53943df04ee56638d679f

April 4^th 7 ET – The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AABP) in the Classroom

Join AAPB, LOC and WGBH education staff to learn about the collection and share resources on how to use with students. Former Teacher in Residence, Tom Bober, will share teaching ideas. Leave with knowledge of a digital and openly available online archival collection of historic public broadcasting programs that document important historical and culturally significant topics, events and people of the 20th and 21st centuries. Space is limited.

Register: https://wgbh.zoom.us/meeting/register/d5afddded61ad2c5dc2040ba88984b7b

April 16^th 4 ET - Exploring Social Justice Through the Arts Part II

Hosted by Carolyn Bennett, our Music Teacher in Residence.
The Library of Congress documents over a century of folk music, including diverse recordings of familiar songs.  What can students learn about the cultural, social, and historical context of musicians by comparing these recordings?  In this webinar, participants will explore several recordings of “This Little Light of Mine” to learn how inquiry leads students to learn about music and those who make it.  Though the specific webinar content may be used in a general or vocal music classroom, the strategies presented can engage students across content areas. Certificate available for live attendance.

Register: https://locgov.webex.com/locgov/onstage/g.php?MTID=e18065cd279530569dc5a29589f4bda94

April 30^th 4 ET - Creatively Exploring the 12-Bar Blues

Hosted by Carolyn Bennett, our Music Teacher in Residence. 
The 12-bar blues is a distinctively American musical form, which many diverse musicians have used to express their experiences and connect with others. Blues music provides a rich field for young musicians to create, perform, and respond. It also provides a lens to explore historical periods, and can empower students to express their own historical perspectives in an engaging, multimodal way. In this webinar, participants will experience several blues pieces from the Library of Congress. Participants will discuss how students can use these primary sources to develop musical and historical understandings, and how these understandings empower students’ own creative works. Certificate available for live attendance.

Register: :https://locgov.webex.com/locgov/onstage/g.php?MTID=ebb67ec244f884ed44ea12924542404df

We look forward to seeing you online!

The Library of Congress is continues to accept applications for our 2019 Summer Teacher Institutes for educators interested in using primary sources with their students.  Interested applicants are invited to apply by the deadline of March 10, 2019.  More information on this free professional development opportunity for educators of all disciplines, interested in using primary sources with their students, follows: 2019 Library of Congress 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

The Library of Congress is continues to accept applications for our 2019 Summer Teacher Institutes for educators interested in using primary sources with their students.  Interested applicants are invited to apply by the deadline of March 10, 2019.  More information on this free professional development opportunity for educators of all disciplines, interested in using primary sources with their students, follows: 2019 Library of Congress 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

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.

Jawbone shaving, gene therapy cosmetics, robotics ... What will our bodies be like in the future, asks Susie Orbach

There’s a war going on over our bodies. There are unexpected players and uncertain outcomes. As in any war, resources go from one side to the other. As in any war, the ideologies that are involved make the players and the playing field fuzzy: sometimes we see what’s in view and other times it’s just our normality, like gravity, unrecognised but inescapable.

The terrain of the body is changing. New developments – #MeToo, artificial intelligence, epigenetics, egg freezing, selfies, Snapchat dysmorphia, the Kardashians, gut politics, womb rentals, implants, sex dolls – require new thinking. Two trends are butting up against each other: the difficulty of living in the bodies we currently inhabit, with their many predicaments, and the promise of trouble-free, almost body-free existence as we move towards futures constituted by algorithms and synthetic biology.

First published in 1938, US author Kathrine Kressmann Taylor’s forgotten classic is a devastating work of political fiction that still resonates today

Some of the largest themes have been addressed in the shortest books. That is especially true in the realm of what might be called political fiction. The single best evocation of communism – and especially the distance between the ideal and the Soviet reality – remains George Orwell’s brief allegory, Animal Farm. In the same way, few works have conveyed the brutal nature of imperialism more effectively than Joseph Conrad managed in fewer than a hundred pages in Heart of Darkness. A third place in that small space on the shelf could be allocated to an even briefer work: Address Unknown, a story so short it can be read on a morning bus ride. Yet somehow it distils the essence of the ideology that, along with the other two, casts a deathly shadow over the 20th century. Across a few economic pages it touches the heart of the Nazi darkness.

Address Unknown was first published in Story magazine in September 1938, and then in book form a year later, becoming an instant bestseller. It has been translated across the world, adapted into a 1944 film and into multiple productions for the stage and radio – all under the name of Kressmann Taylor, after Story’s editor, along with Kathrine Kressmann Taylor’s husband, Elliott, decided it was “too strong to appear under the name of a woman”. The impact was immediate, the story credited with having “jolted America”, alerting it to the horror unfolding in Nazi Germany.

The Girl Who Lived Twice by David Lagercrantz; The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell; Take It Back by Kia Abdullah; The Sinner by Martyn Waites; Call Him Mine by Tim MacGabhann and The Case of the Wandering Scholar by Kate Saunders

The Girl Who Lived Twice (MacLehose, £20, translated from Swedish by George Goulding) is the third instalment in David Lagercrantz’s continuation of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series featuring ferocious uber-hacker Lisbeth Salander and crusading investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist. While Lagercrantz’s prose is more serviceable than the peculiarly clodhopping original writing, by this point the main characters have, sadly, become subject to the law of diminishing returns – in particular Salander, who is now just another all-purpose kick-ass heroine; despite the all-guns-blazing ending, there’s a half-heartedness to the story of her continued battle with twin sister Camilla. Far more intriguing, despite its unlikely beginnings, is the investigation into an ill-fated Everest expedition, although the necessity of shoehorning the narrative into the Millennium framework distances the action, thereby lessening its dramatic impact.

The author on the book that changed his mind about the British empire, and rewriting Mister Men books on the fly

The book I am currently reading
Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War by Tim Bouverie. My family were very active in the fight against fascists in Britain. Growing up, I was always hearing about who was an appeaser and who was a collaborator, so I wanted to see what the latest views are.

The book that changed my life
The way James Joyce’s style just changes as the character ages in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was like a great penny dropped. I was so excited when I first read it that I thought: “I want to do that for the rest of my life.”

Birds, roses, maps and calendars are among the objects that have been “disappeared” from an unnamed island. Our narrator is a novelist who has lost both her parents. As the book opens, she has been working with her beloved editor, R, on a gentle love story between a typist and her teacher that takes a nightmarish turn. The novelist has one other trusted friend, an old man whom she has known since childhood.

In their lives, disappearances are continual. For instance: one night, the inhabitants of the island feel a stirring, a realisation that something is leaving. When morning arrives they find that red petals are inundating the river. “The breeze seemed to discriminate, choosing only the rose petals to scatter.” Without need of instruction, the islanders, “quiet, dazed”, dig up their rose bushes. They throw them into the river or incinerate them at communal fires. Some observe small ceremonies to mark the departure. Days later, the rose gardens will be gone and no one will remember what existed on that piece of land. The word “rose” will dissolve from memory; the Memory Police will do a thorough search for all images and writings about roses and remove them. “The first duty of the Memory Police [is] to enforce the disappearance.” The bird observatory is already in ruins, since the birds flew away never to return. Former hat-makers, ferrymen and boat mechanics have been displaced into other professions, as hats and ferries no longer exist.

Bombs as well as biscuits are on the menu from the starry family behind the cosy Lyons tea shops

For most of the 20th century J Lyons & Co Ltd lodged at the heart of Britain’s social imagination. From the 1920s you could pop into a Lyons tea shop to be served by a “nippy”, a light-footed waitress got up like a parlourmaid. If you were a working girl of the newest and nicest variety – a secretary, teacher or shop assistant – you could eat an express lunch on your own in a Lyons without risking your respectability. If you were feeling particularly smart, you could go up to “town” and stay in the art deco-ish Strand Palace or Regent’s Palace hotels, vernacular versions of elite institutions such as Claridge’s or The Savoy. In the evening you might venture out to the “Troc”, or Trocadero, in your best togs, where you could enjoy a fancy dinner and dance to a jazz band. Back home, the stream of comforts continued as you sat down with a cup of Lyons tea while your children might get a Mivvi, a sumptuous ice-cream-lolly hybrid.

Customers liked knowing that the firm that provided them with so many reliable treats was run by a family, although exactly who that family was and where it came from remained hazy. The name subliminally suggested “lion” and therefore something enduringly, heraldically British. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jo Lyons was connected to the Salmon & Gluckstein dynasty whose founder had arrived in Whitechapel from Prussia via Belgium in 1843. “Lyons” rolled off the tongue better than Gluckstein or even Salmon and it also kept the two sides of the business sounding separate, in case the risky move from cigars to mass catering crashed and burned. As well as muffling the firm’s Jewish origins, “Lyons” covertly signposted its imperial reach: agents for the company scoured the American south for the best-priced tobacco and the Indian subcontinent for the tenderest tea, and took inspiration from Europe’s smartest pastry counters, before metabolising these far-flung raw materials into a brand that felt as British as a rainy afternoon in Piccadilly.

He sounds like a Brexit party candidate. In fact, he is the latest mind-body-spirit magnate gifted to us by Gwyneth Paltrow

Important news: we have been gifted a new curator by mind-body-spirit magnate Gwyneth Paltrow. Of course, even that is too limiting an epithet. Gwyneth is, if you will, a curator of curators, lovingly assembling a rolling collection of some of the most preposterous people in late-stage capitalism, and repackaging them for consumption via her Goop website at an undisclosed mark-up.

The latest curator to be raised up by association with madam is one Thatcher Wine, who has assisted Paltrow with the augmentation of her Los Angeles bookshelves, and is described as a “celebrity bibliophile” in an interview with Town and Country magazine.

A novel where special coffins are required to keep the dead from rising, and river gods vandalise jetskis could be irritating. But here the tricks pay off

Flames is a novel that asks for indulgence, from its first sentence: “Our mother returned to us two days after we spread her ashes over Notley Fern Gorge.” This mother, covered in “leafy appendages”, spends a few days moping around the house, morose and silent, before trudging over to the home of her estranged husband and immolating herself on his lawn. Soon we’re following her daughter Charlotte down to the wild southern edge of Tasmania as she flees her brother Levi, who wants to get hold of a special coffin that will prevent Charlotte from also coming back to life after she dies.

We also follow Karl, who catches giant “Oneblood” tuna with the help of his buddy – a seal. There’s a river god who is about to be killed by the man Levi has hired to build Charlotte’s coffin, and a hardbitten, gin-hungry female detective Levi has hired to find Charlotte … and so on.

From terrorists to Groucho-Marxists ... the story of one of the most daring political currents of the age

The first suicide bomber in English literature is a crazed anarchist professor in Joseph Conrad’s novel The Secret Agent who stalks around London wired up with explosives. Entranced by a vision of pure nothingness, he has only to squeeze a rubber ball in his pocket to annihilate the present and clear a space for a utopian future. His political comrades are a bunch of sinister continental freaks who succeed in blowing up a young boy with learning difficulties.

Anarchism, in short, has something of an image problem. Even Ruth Kinna, in this sympathetic, impressively well-informed history of the movement, has to admit that it has had its fair share of bombers and assassins. Yet she also illustrates its extraordinary creativity. Born in the 19th century, a brainchild of the Unholy Trinity of French libertarian socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Russian revolutionaries Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin, anarchism rejected what it saw as Karl Marx’s narrow economic and proletarian viewpoint. Nevertheless, the two creeds have a lot in common. Both believe in class struggle, the abolition of private property and the overthrow of the state. Both see the role of the state as defending private property, a view that you can also find in Cicero. Marx thinks that the state will eventually wither away, while anarchists believe in helping it on its way as soon as they can.

In a world of ‘alternative facts’ respect for evidence must lie at the heart of any scientific endeavour

What is the scientific attitude? In 1941, at the lowest point of the war, the developmental biologist Hal Waddington published a small book with that title. The scientific attitude, he asserted, was rational, disinterested, evidence-dependent and above all modern. In alliance with progressive artists and architects, it confronted the irrationality of nazism, and shared many of the values of Soviet communism. Today, nearly 80 years later, when irrationality is once again growing, science denial and pseudoscience proliferate on social media, and to assert the “values of communism” warrants at best a scornful laugh, philosopher Lee McIntyre repeats Waddington’s question, but uses it to address some very specific modern problems.

He begins by distancing himself from the long-standing goal of philosophers of science to identify something specific about the methods of science. Prominent among these was Karl Popper’s claim that the test of a scientific theory is that it survives attempts to falsify it. The trouble with his claim, as later philosophers soon recognised, is that testing theories by trying to falsify them is not what most scientists spend their time doing; instead, the day job is mainly spent accumulating “facts” about the material world – what Popper’s critic Thomas Kuhn politely called puzzle solving. Worse still, there is not one scientific method; methods and standards of proof are very different as between, say, ethology and nuclear physics. Some sciences are experimental, others (like astronomy) observational. Instead, McIntyre argues, what distinguishes science from both pseudo-science and “not-science” (within which he includes art and literature) is its attitude; that is, its sceptical respect for evidence as opposed to mere anecdote, belief or opinion, and its willingness to change its mind when confronted with new data. Scientific scepticism accepts that our knowledge and theories are always provisional, open to challenge but hopefully approaching steadily nearer the “truth”.

An economist’s manifesto for guarding our natural resources from private companies is elegant and important

Last year, I accompanied the former Undertones singer Feargal Sharkey as he walked along the River Lea, one of England’s many chalk streams. He told me about the deliberate neglect, commercial exploitation and pollution of these natural resources and painted a picture of a joint bureaucratic-corporate carve-up and then cover-up that has resulted in only 14% of England’s rivers reaching good ecological standards.

How that situation came to be is a story in one sense of private commercial interests seeking profit from public need. What’s often negated in that process is the longstanding relationship between personal use and public responsibility. After all, how many of us think about the communal impact of flushing the loo and allowing the tap to run while we brush our teeth?

Sarah T Roberts’s vital new study demonstrates how online content moderation is a global industry that operates on the back of human exploitation

“All human life is there” used to be the proudest boast of the (mercifully) defunct News of the World. Like everything else in that organ, it wasn’t true: the NoW specialised in randy vicars, chorus girls, Tory spankers, pools winners, C-list celebrities and other minority sports. But there is a medium to which the slogan definitely applies – it’s called the internet.

The best metaphor for the net is to think of it as a mirror held up to human nature. All human life really is there. There’s no ideology, fetish, behaviour, obsession, perversion, eccentricity or fad that doesn’t find expression somewhere online. And while much of what we see reflected back to us is uplifting, banal, intriguing, harmless or fascinating, some of it is truly awful, for the simple reason that human nature is not only infinitely diverse but also sometimes unspeakably cruel.

Ramallah, in the heart of the West Bank, is only a few miles north of Jerusalem, its nose pressed up against the dashes of Palestine’s borders on the maps, official markers of the city’s – and the country’s – provisional nature. It is a place of scarcely 30,000 inhabitants, historically a Christian city (although now the majority are Muslim) and also one of cold winters and carefully tended gardens, chosen by the PLO as its de facto headquarters following the Oslo accords of 1993 and 1995. It is, above all, a city of authors, home to Palestine’s greatest poet, the late Mahmoud Darwish, and the man we can now recognise as its greatest prose writer, Raja Shehadeh.

Shehadeh won the Orwell prize for his 2007 book Palestinian Walks and published a powerful memoir of a cross-border friendship, Where the Line Is Drawn, in 2017. These books built on earlier memoirs, Strangers in the House and When the Bulbul Stopped Singing, written at the beginning of the century, during the second intifada, when any optimism that the Oslo agreements might bring peace had died, and a new kind of hope gripped Palestine – that desperate and violent resistance might succeed where political negotiation had failed.

A vivid insight into the thoughts and feelings of a young woman who works as a carer

When Ella tells people that she works as a freelance home carer for the elderly, they tend to react with a gushing mixture of approval and self-deprecation: “How wonderful. I could never do what you do.” One young woman is entirely unabashed about the human instinct to put one’s own emotions at the centre of every story, replying: “Oh, now I feel bad.”

US author Lila Savage worked as a caregiver for nearly a decade, and her wise and understated first novel explores a carer’s thoughts and feelings as she steps into the crucible of other people’s suffering. At first, Ella was “wide open” to the all-consuming dramas of the people she worked for, but she has learned over the years to “step in and out of grief, to sample it on demand”; to offer up a version of herself and ration her own responses.

Supernatural elements combine with everyday life, as a seemingly perfect boyfriend is revealed to be a cold-blooded manipulator

It is 4am in Peterborough station, which “sits in the middle of England like a spider at the centre of its web”. A lone fox trots across the rails, a security guard sleepily watches CCTV. The silence is broken occasionally by the slow screech of a freight train. Nobody notices when a man enters the station, and makes his way towards deserted platform seven. Nobody except Lisa Evans, and she is dead.

Welcome to the world of Louise Doughty’s ninth novel, which is all the creepier for its quotidian setting. Doughty is known for her tense, intelligent explorations of the darker corners of the human psyche. Apple Tree Yard followed the murder trial of an eminent scientist in lust with the wrong man; Whatever You Love explored a bereaved mother’s desire for revenge. Most recently, Black Water looked at political killings during the 1965 Indonesian genocide.

The trauma of European totalitarianism is channelled through one man in this intricately layered analysis of personal and political power

The moment we speak about history, we encounter the problem of where to locate it. History, we tend to think, is behind and around us, a structure we inhabit and by which we are shaped. This partial truth, though, obscures a more intimate reality. History resides within us; it arises directly from our actions and choices. Unless we remain conscious of this, the “study” of history, too often predicated on an illusion of remove, becomes an act not of interrogation, but of evasion.

Deborah Levy’s exquisite new novel The Man Who Saw Everything – her seventh, and her third in a row to be nominated for the Booker prize – both unmasks and confronts this convenient denial of individual culpability. The “Man” of the title is Saul Adler, a historian. The “Everything” is both his life and ours: his loves and disappointments, a history of 20th-century Europe viewed through, and embodied by, the fragmented memories of a single wounded mind.

Set in west Wales, Niall Griffiths’s new novel begins on a mountainside in the aftermath of an open-air rave, as three troubled strangers witness the mysterious vision of a spectral, floating woman. At first, the apparition seems to be more MacGuffin than comedown, as a means of immersing us in the characters’ stories.

Their travails, told in vernacular point-of-view chapters, hint at the past causes of their present difficulties, from childhood abuse to domestic violence. There’s Adam, an ex-addict volunteering at the rehab centre that helped him get clean; Cowley, a dragon-tattooed, Leave-voting hardman who, priced out of the building trade by “Stony-hands or Poles”, turns to the gangsters lining up for his services; and Emma, a single mother fending off a sleazy hookup who denounces her as a welfare cheat after she rejects his gift of a dildo moulded from his penis.

An island community facing disappearances, not only of objects but of complete concepts, makes for an unsettling novel

On an island of indeterminate location, in a house long since emptied of family life, a novelist works on her latest manuscript, the story of a typist who has lost her voice and can only articulate her thoughts via the new skills imparted by her secretarial teacher. Our narrator’s parents, an ornithologist and a sculptor, have died, their material legacies expunged by the ruthless and sinister Memory Police, who roam the island enforcing a regimen of “disappearances”.

Life on the island is being systematically atomised and erased: one day photographs are removed from communal life, the next, rose petals, boats or calendars. Once they awake to a disappearance – heralded by a roughening of the air and a sense of something missing – the islanders are not merely beholden to destroy their own belongings, but have the very concept and all associated memories removed from their frame of reference. Why this is happening is unknown; the ideology of totalitarian control and cultural isolation is implied, rather than explicitly outlined, and its intersection with the supernatural strengthens the feeling of allegory. All we are given to understand is that life is being dismantled, and to have memories is inimical to the project.

Benjamin Myers’s first novel since his Walter Scott prize-winning The Gallows Pole and switch from tiny indie publisher Bluemoose to Bloomsbury is an unexpectedly touching story of a friendship that conquers the barriers of age, class and gender. Set over a summer in the aftermath of the second world war, the book follows 16-year-old Robert Appleyard as he leaves his Durham colliery village to search for any work that isn’t coal mining: “an act of escapology and rebellion”. On reaching the east coast, he encounters Dulcie Piper, a woman three times his age who lives alone in a rambling cottage. They form an unlikely but symbiotic relationship, in which he gardens while she provides food, shelter and intellectual sustenance.

Dulcie is a lobster-eating, hard-drinking aesthete with a German shepherd called Butler. By turns verbose, eloquent, motherly and foul-mouthed, she might have come from central casting if Myers hadn’t given her such a richly imagined past and linguistic register. “Scones without proper cream is a disaster of apocalyptic proportions,” she exclaims, and one can sense Myers’ relish in bringing her to life.

You’ll come to know Nicole Dennis-Benn’s characters as intimately as you would a lover. They are refined in their humanity and depth. Patsy, her tender second novel, revolves around queerness and generational trauma. Like her 2016 debut, Here Comes the Sun, it centres on Jamaica – its culture, beauty, idiosyncrasies and socioeconomic struggles – but ranges more widely: all the way to America.

Patsy has a gnawing urge to escape the Caribbean and find love. Thanks to a mother who eschewed parental responsibility in favour of God, her life in Kingston contains too many cold, bloody secrets for it to be fulfilling. But when she gets her US visa, she passes on the harm she suffered by leaving behind her five-year-old daughter, Tru.

“Every aspect of our lives is governed by politics,” writes Malorie Blackman in the preface to Crossfire, the fifth book in her ground-breaking Noughts & Crosses series. “The results of the UK Brexit referendum and the US presidential election in 2016 brought home to me just how potent the politics of fear and division can be.”

Crossfire is published in advance of a BBC adaptation of Noughts & Crosses. In that first novel of the series, Blackman created a topsy-turvy alternative world, Zafrica, where the white underclass, the “Noughts”, who were once enslaved by the “Crosses”, encounter constant racial prejudice. Forbidden love was at the heart of that story. Almost two decades later, it is power and what people will do to get it that has prompted Blackman to resume the series. Political ambition exerts its own cost and, as Blackman notes, “sometimes it’s those we love who may have to pay that price as they get caught in the crossfire”.

A 17-year-old girl explores her new freedom after leaving a religious sect in Lawrence’s richly empathetic third novel

Newly escaped from God’s Pilgrims, an ultra-conservative sect on the outskirts of London, 17-year-old Rose takes the business of “decommissioning” seriously – so seriously that she has a list to tick off, including “dress immodestly”, “act immodestly” and “beget immodesty with worldly boyfriend”. Last on the list is a critical item – ensuring that Rudder, her younger brother, is “completely, utterly and finally” decommissioned, too. But while Rose acclimatises rapidly to life outside the Woodford Sanctuary, happily swapping long, confining skirts for makeup and mobile phones, it’s harder for Rudder, who misses his father and the friends they left behind, and is desperately afraid he’ll be condemned to hell. He and Rose share a room above a kebab shop – a dump their mother can barely afford, despite working all hours – and though the scars on his hands are a reminder of the repressive life he has left, he still wants to go back to the order he knows, and the people he loves. Not even his beloved Harry Potter books and robes are enough to reconcile him to life on the outside.

Related: Best book to read on the Riviera… or a damp campsite in Scotland?

A wolf in sheep’s clothing, a BMXing princess, a German refugee’s journey and more

In picture books this month, the superlative Morag Hood returns with Brenda Is a Sheep (Two Hoots), a suspense-filled account of a young sheep who isn’t like the rest, what with her pointy teeth, antipathy to grass and increasing desire to eat her companions. But the flock love Brenda’s unusual approach to sheephood; will their adoration change the predator’s mind? This funny story of a wolf in sheep’s clothing is delightfully deadpan.

There is a lovely warmth saturating Rebecca Cobb’s Hello Friend! (Macmillan), in which a rosy-cheeked protagonist plays zealously with a less enthusiastic pal, building towers, sharing lunch and banging a tambourine. At last, a small farewell smile shows that she has won him over, and the next day he is as excited as she is. A charming look at playground dynamics that effortlessly evokes pre-schooler feelings of being excited and overwhelmed.

Lara Maiklem’s study of the rich historical traces on banks of the river grew out of a personal obsession. She explains why the hobby is catching on

Lara Maiklem is sitting near Cannon Street station in London, sipping a cup of coffee when I arrive – but she doesn’t want to hang around. The sun is shining, the tide is low and we have an hour blocked out to go hunting for the remains of history on the banks of the Thames.

As we head down the steps towards the narrow strip of land, visible only at low tide, the noise of the city drifts away, but for the occasional screech and rattle of faraway trains. No one else is about. In the heart of the capital we have entered a world ruled by the slap of waves, the crunch and scrape of the sand and rubble underfoot.

New Zealand’s poet laureate rails against racism – but her poetry is more subversive than strident: ‘You can seduce someone to get your point across’

She blows in like a song carried on a powerful current: a wild-haired woman, larger than life, carrying a tall carved stick. She loses things in that hair, she says; finds pens in there days after they went missing.

A force of energy swirls around her as she sweeps into the Brisbane cafe, fresh from her daily 9km run. The stick is a tokotoko, a Māori symbol of status and authority, given to the celebrated scholar poet Selina Tusitala Marsh when she became New Zealand’s poet laureate in 2017. She carries it everywhere, a talisman not of war but of words.

If George RR Martin could be granted one wish, it would be for more time. The bestselling author of the Song of Ice and Fire saga, the books that became television phenomenon Game of Thrones, is in London for a talk with historian Dan Jones about his most recent work, Fire and Blood, an imagined history of the Targaryen family (the all-conquering ancestors of dragon queen Daenerys), before heading to the science-fiction event Worldcon in Dublin.

Yet, at the back of his mind, is the work still to come. The Winds of Winter, the sixth and penultimate book in Ice and Fire, has to be finished and the seventh, A Dream of Spring, to be written. Then there’s a couple of Dunk and Egg stories set in the same world to complete. (Lighter in tone, he saw them as palate cleansers between “the big mega-books” but then “fell behind with everything, so now I’m just trying to think about the next thing immediately in front of me”.)

What is the canon of English literature? When did it first emerge and why was it established? Who has challenged it and how has it changed as a result? And does it still make a difference to the books we get to read today?

Richard Lea speaks to writers including Penelope Lively, Elaine Showalter, Caryl Philips, Howard Jacobson and Yomi Sode about how this conception of the definitive literary greats has changed over time.

When French writer Philippe Besson was introduced to Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron at a dinner five years ago, it was friendship at first sight. Besson recalls that he and the woman who would become France’s first lady chatted about her favourite literary figure, Emma Bovary.

The choice of Gustave Flaubert’s tragic heroine who is passionate and bored with the banality of provincial life but trapped in a mediocre marriage, was not, Besson thinks, an accident. After all, it is no secret that Brigitte was married with three children and working as a teacher in the provincial northern city of Amiens when she began a relationship with Emmanuel Macron, 24 years her junior.

Louise Doughty is a novelist, playwright and journalist. Her 2010 novel, Whatever You Love, was shortlisted for the Costa novel award and the Orange prize, while her bestselling novel Apple Tree Yard was adapted by the BBC into a four-part drama starring Emily Watson and Ben Chaplin. Her most recent novel, Platform Seven, tackles suicide, coercive control and life after death.

Platform Seven features a dead protagonist. Why did you want to tell a story from the perspective of someone who has died?
I grew up in a small town in the East Midlands, so going back home to see my parents has always involved changing trains at Peterborough. It can be a really bleak station on a cold winter’s night, and I used to have a joke that when I die and go to purgatory, I’ll find myself trapped on Peterborough station. So I decided to have a novel with the ghost of a woman who was trapped there: it’s a transitional place. She’s a lost soul.

The Pulitzer finalist’s latest book is an ‘immigrant’s manifesto’. He talks about creating a media storm and why he wants to get on Fox News

Suketu Mehta is tucking into a vegetarian lunch in one of his favourite Thai restaurants in New York’s Jackson Heights district and looking back in – and on – the anger of 2017. His anger was the result of journalistic assignments to Hungary where he witnessed politically choreographed rage against north African refugees crossing the border from Serbia. Back in America, itself dinning with nationalistic bloviation, his Foreign Policy magazine article on what he now calls “the whole staggering hypocrisy of the global debate around migration” resulted in hundreds of threatening tweets and emails. “Essentially what I said was that people are coming to rich countries from poor countries not because they want to, but because rich countries had stolen the futures of poor countries.”

Mehta himself is an immigrant. Born in Calcutta in 1963, he moved with his Gujarati parents to Jackson Heights in 1977. “Fourteen is a strange age at which to shift countries, because you never finished growing up in one and you never fully wear the skin in the one you move to,” he reflects. He attended a Catholic school where “I was kicked out of the speech and debate team because of my accent.” He was beaten up more than once. Yet this predominantly working-class area, rich in teeming, noisy sidewalks, is still close to his heart.

It is not simply the plight of his real-life subjects that still draws readers in their millions. The story’s force depends on its craft

When Steinbeck finished The Grapes of Wrath in 1938, he expressed doubts about its quality. Since then, critics and the public alike have decided that he needn’t have worried. Sure, there are some exceptions: not everyone likes Steinbeck’s phonetic rendering of the Oklahoma dialect or his overwrought religious imagery, all the blaring indications that John Casey (JC!) may have similarities with Jesus Christ. It’s certainly true that the book doesn’t so much slip over into sentimentality as avalanche.

But then again, The Grapes of Wrath isn’t meant to be subtle. Sometimes reading about the “Okie” family’s ever-increasing woes can feel like getting clanged round the head with Tom Joad’s spade – but that’s because Steinbeck wants us to feel it hard. Reading it over the past few weeks has felt like an urgent and all too resonant experience, especially since we’re also living in a time of environmental catastrophe and mass migrations.

A philosophical look at the irreconcilable ingredients of marriage is snappier and funnier than you might expect

Marriage

Marriage sets off egg tagliatelle and shame,
insists it is the solution
and not the problem

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 begin with a tribute to Ronald Blythe’s Akenfield by PatLux:

Q: What books should I read before I start university? I am going to Cambridge and don’t want to seem uncultured compared with all the posh people!
Post-A-level student

A: Johanna Thomas-Corr, critic and writer, writes:
As someone who was intimidated by all the private-school kids at my university, I wish I had known what they seemed to know: that essays needn’t be a chore. Martin Amis’s latest collection, The Rub of Time, covers everything from John Travolta and porn to Donald Trump and Princess Diana and displays the kind of brainy swagger that you’ll encounter a lot. Or try Feel Free, a collection of thought experiments by state-school student and Cambridge wonderkid Zadie Smith about Renaissance art, Jay-Z, climate change and Prince’s dance moves. She makes thinking fun.

With Kashmir under lockdown, Preti Taneja chooses books that explore the history of the most militarised region in the world

Seventy years after partition, the annexation of Kashmir by India is the endgame of Devraj, the Hindu nationalist businessman protagonist of my 2017 novel We That Are Young. His tactic is settler-colonialism: he is opening a seven-star hotel in Srinagar. But according to Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which among other protections prohibited non-Kashmiris from owning property there, he should never have been allowed to build it.

In real life, Article 370 was last week unilaterally abolished by the Indian government. The Kashmiri population were placed under lockdown; there was a shortage of medicines and baby food, people were not able to speak to family members outside the state. Reports emerged that police used tear gas and pellet guns to break up peaceful protest.

Writers from Alice Munro to Ottessa Moshfegh explore some of life’s most gruelling experiences in ways that build in survival tools

Shortly before the publication of my first novel, I learned that my mother’s cancer had returned. I am not yet her caregiver but I have cared for folks with cancer before – and Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and other afflictions, mostly of old age. I worked as a professional companion for elderly people for nearly nine years before I began writing about my caregiving work in the form of Say Say Say – the story of young woman who cares for a woman with a brain injury, and the complex intimacies that emerge within her family as she declines.

During that time I thought about why people might want to read work on difficult or dark subjects, but it was largely an abstract consideration. By the time I began reading and rereading for this list my own pre-emptive grieving was well under way. It changed how I experienced the stories; I was startled by the comfort they offered. Certainly my tears were closer to the surface than when I had first encountered these texts, but I felt grateful when the tears came, grateful that the words could pull me outside of my own sadness and into empathy.

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.

Clockwise: Midori (photo by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders), Asko | Schönberg, Chucho Valdés (photo by Carol Friedman) and Jörg Widmann.

The Library of Congress is launching a spectacular and richly diverse 2019-2020 season with a concert by jazz icon and master pianist Chucho Valdés on Oct. 12, 2019. Marking the 95th season of the “Concerts from the Library of Congress” series is an impressive roster of more than 95 free events features classical music, jazz, pop, musical theater and dance. Concerts, lectures, film screenings and conversations with artists and scholars will connect concertgoers with the 25 million-plus treasures of the Library’s extraordinary music collections.

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 National Book Festival will expand to include a yearlong series of events – to be known as National Book Festival Presents – featuring high-caliber authors, their books and related Library treasures beginning this fall, following the signature daylong festival on Aug. 31, the Library announced today.

Neil Patrick Harris, an accomplished actor, producer, television host, author and magician, will kick off the new series at the Library on Sept. 11 with his new book, “The Magic Misfits,” a bestselling series that is his debut for middle school children. In addition, on Sept. 24 prominent Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat will discuss her new book, “Everything Inside: Stories." Also, Joy Harjo begins her formal duties as the new U.S. poet laureate Sept. 19 with an inaugural reading of her work, including from her new book “An American Sunrise.”

Click here for more information.

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

The exclusive screening of the newly released GKIDS animated film “Okko’s Inn” will highlight the Library of Congress’ “Anime for All” series, which is being presented in conjunction with Otakon, Washington, D.C.’s annual convention celebrating Asian pop culture (anime, manga, music, movies, video games, etc.) and its fandom.

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 and the Washington Performing Arts’ Mars Arts D.C. project will co-host the “Summer Concerts on the Lawn” outdoor musical performance series. The performances take place Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. from July 11 through Aug. 15 on the north lawn of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building, across the street from the U.S. Capitol. 

Tonight's performance features Saxophonist Brent Birckhead. Due to the anticipated inclement weather, the location of the performance has moved inside the Thomas Jefferson Building to the Coolidge Auditorium. 

The performances will be presented in conjunction with “LOC Summer Movies on the Lawn,” a six-film series that showcases iconic films from the Library’s National Film Registry. Each film screening will follow the musical performances at sundown.

Due to the expected inclement weather, the "Summer Movies on the Lawn" screening of Mary Poppins (1964) scheduled for tonight, July 11 has been rescheduled to Thursday, Aug. 22. 

Click here for more information.

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

Music and theatrical performances, an outdoor film screening, tours and gallery talks this summer will accompany the new exhibition “Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight For the Vote” at the Library of Congress, along with a full day of family activities during a Community Day on July 13 and a featured author at the National Book Festival on August 31.

Click here for more information.

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

 On Tuesday, July 16, the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, in conjunction with the Daniel K. Inouye Institute, invites the public to attend the 2019 Daniel K. Inouye Distinguished Lecture. The fifth and final event of the series will feature political strategists David Axelrod and Karl Rove, who will discuss leadership, public discourse, political parties and campaigns in a changing world. Former White House correspondent Ann Compton will moderate the conversation. The event begins at 6:30 p.m. in the Coolidge Auditorium in the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C. The event is free and open to the public, however, tickets are recommended and available at https://roveaxelrod.eventbrite.com.

The conversation will be live-tweeted by both the Kluge Center and the Inouye Institute at @KlugeCtr and @DKIInstitute with the hashtag #Inouye, and the event will be live-streamed on YouTube and Facebook to the University of Hawaii and for the general public.

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 and the Washington Performing Arts’ Mars Arts D.C. project will co-host the “Summer Concerts on the Lawn” outdoor musical performance series. The performances take place Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. from July 11 through Aug. 15 on the north lawn of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building, across the street from the U.S. Capitol. The performances will be presented in conjunction with “LOC Summer Movies on the Lawn,” a six-film series that showcases iconic films from the Library’s National Film Registry. Each film screening will follow the musical performances at sundown.

Click here for more information.

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

Featured Events 

Friday, June 21
7 p.m.
Presented part of LGBTQ Pride Month.
James Madison Building- West Dining Room 

For a complete list of events happening at the Library between June 17 - June 22: Click here for more information.

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

Featured Event 

Thursday, June 13
6 p.m.
Changemaker Conversation 

Conversation with the Librarian: Women in Leadership

Please join the John W. Kluge Center and the Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden for a Changemaker Conversation with the Librarian: "Women in Leadership, Featuring Drew Gilpin Faust."

Drew Gilpin Faust is the 2018 recipient of the John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity. As the first female president of Harvard University, Drew Gilpin Faust has led one of the most esteemed educational institutions in the world through a period of intense growth and transformation. 

This event will be livestreamed from both the Library's Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/libraryofcongress and the Library's YouTube site (with captions) at https://www.youtube.com/user/LibraryOfCongress.

For a complete list of events happening at the Library between June 10 - June 15: 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 the third annual “LOC Summer Movies on the Lawn” outdoor film festival this summer. The six-film series — which showcases iconic films from the Library’s National Film Registry — will be presented on Thursday evenings at sundown from July 11 through Aug. 15 on the north lawn of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building, across the street from the U.S. Capitol. 

Click here for more information.

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

On Thursday, June 13, the Library of Congress invites the public to attend a Changemaker Conversation with Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden: “Women in Leadership, Featuring Drew Gilpin Faust.” Faust is the 2018 recipient of the John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity. As the first female president of Harvard University, Faust led one of the most esteemed educational institutions in the world through a period of intense growth and transformation.

Click here for more information.

Festival Lineup on Aug. 31 Features José Andrés, Barbara Kingsolver, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Among Dozens of Authors

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be among the featured speakers at the 2019 Library of Congress National Book Festival, along with dozens of best-selling authors, novelists, historians, poets and children’s writers, the Library announced today. This year’s festival will be held Saturday, Aug. 31, from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.

Ginsburg will discuss her book “My Own Words,” a collection of writings and speeches from throughout her life, discussing gender equality, the workings of the Supreme Court, interpreting the U.S. Constitution, being Jewish, and the law and lawyers in opera. The book, written with her authorized biographers, was Ginsburg’s first book since becoming a Supreme Court justice in 1993. It’s been called witty, engaging, serious and playful.

The 2019 festival will invite visitors to Explore America’s Changemakers, part of a yearlong initiative coinciding with a series of exhibitions, events and programs at the Library. Exhibitions opening this year will explore the fight for women’s voting rights and Rosa Parks’ groundbreaking role in civil rights history. Changemakers are everywhere. Everyday citizens become trailblazers and history makers, shaping America.

Among numerous festival programs dedicated to the theme of Changemakers, a special panel will feature new books on Winston Churchill by Andrew Roberts, Frederick Douglass by David Blight and visionary women including Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Jane Goodall and Alice Waters, by Andrea Barnet.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress will present a conversation with Singaporean American novelist and changemaker Kevin Kwan, known for his satirical novels “Crazy Rich Asians,” “China Rich Girlfriend” and “Rich People Problems,” who seeks to introduce contemporary Asian culture to an American audience. This event is presented as part of the Library’s Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month programming. 

Click here for more information.

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

Upcoming next week at the Library...

Monday, April 29
10 a.m.
SPECIAL EVENT
To recognize and promote this new Digital Collection as well as Children’s Book Week, local authors and illustrators will each read a select book from the historical collection out loud.

Tuesday, April 30
10 a.m.
Research Orientation 
Designed as a basic introduction for researchers and staff.  Tour the reading room and learn about our favorite databases.

This course is taught by our reference specialists and is designed as a basic introduction for researchers using the Newspaper & Current Periodical Reading Room's collections and resources. Each hour-long session includes a tour of the N&CPR Reading Room, procedures on how to locate and request materials, and using various equipment such as microfilm machines and scanners. 

Register by phone: (202) 707-5690 or online loc.gov/rr/news/classes.html.

11:30 a.m.
Science Talk
Dr. Noah Petro will discuss re-evaluating those samples in a local and regional context which provides improved understanding for what those samples represent. The lecture will celebrate "Appollo at 50" and is being presented part of the annual Earth and Space Science lecture series, now in its fourteenth year. The series is presented in partnership with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Science, Technology, and Business Division at the Library of Congress. The talk will take place in the Pickford Theater, James Madison Memorial Building. 
Contact: (202) 707-1192. 

Wednesday, May 1
1:30 p.m. 
Law Day Event 
Join Law Librarian Jane Sánchez in a conversation with American Bar Association President, Bob Carlson on this year’s Law Day topic. The 2019 Law Day theme—Free Speech, Free Press, Free Society—focuses on these cornerstones of representative government and calls on us to understand and protect these rights to ensure, as the U.S. Constitution proposes, “the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.” 

This event will take place in room LJ119, Thomas Jefferson Building. Contact: (202) 707-1990. 

Friday, May 3
1 p.m.
ART SHOWCASE
A display and workshop with Chicano Artist Mario Torero. A political activist and muralist from the San Diego area, Torero has taught at several schools and colleges and his work has been exhibited around the world. He is the co-founder of the San Diego Commission of Arts and Culture, el Centro Cultural de la Raza, the Chicano Park Murals Outdoor Museum.  San Diego's Chicano Park, which contains a number of Torero's murals, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016.  The Library of Congress has acquired more than 20 prints, drawings and posters by the artist dating from 1967 - 2016. 

Activities will take place inside the Hispanic Reading Room. Contact: (202) 707-5397. 

9 p.m. 
YOU CAN WATCH!

EMILIO & GLORIA ESTEFAN: THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS GERSHWIN PRIZE FOR POPULAR SONG, a PBS music special honoring Emilio and Gloria Estefan’s receipt of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, will premiere nationwide Friday, May 3, 2019 at 9:00 p.m. ET on PBS, and on PBS.org and the PBS Video App (check local listings). The program will also be broadcast at a later date via the American Forces Network to American service men and women and civilians at U.S. Department of Defense locations around the world. This is the first time the Gershwin Prize has been awarded to a married couple or to musicians-songwriters of Hispanic descent.

Saturday, May 4
2 p.m.
Baseball Talk 
A conversation between Baseball Americana curator Susan Reyburn and Bill James, the baseball analyst who coined the term and popularized “sabermetrics,” the method of statistical analysis that has revolutionized Major League baseball. The talk will take place in room LJ119, Thomas Jefferson Building. 

Tickets are recommended but not required, and seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Contact: (202) 707-8000. 

6:30 p.m.
Pre-concert Lecture
A conversation with David Plylar, PhD, Music Division. Tickets are not required. Contact: (202) 707-5502. 

8 p.m.
Concert
The dynamic sibling duo of Tanja and Christian Tetzlaff is joined by pianist Lars Vogt to form a superstar trio. Tickets are required via Eventbrite.

Planning Your Visit 

The Library of Congress is open Monday-Saturday, 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

https://www.loc.gov/visit/ 

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

Upcoming next week at the Library...

Tuesday, April 23
10 a.m.
Research Orientation 
Designed as a basic introduction for researchers and staff.  Tour the reading room and learn about our favorite databases.

This course is taught by our reference specialists and is designed as a basic introduction for researchers using the Newspaper & Current Periodical Reading Room's collections and resources. Each hour-long session includes a tour of the N&CPR Reading Room, procedures on how to locate and request materials, and using various equipment such as microfilm machines and scanners. 

Register by phone: (202) 707-5690 or online loc.gov/rr/news/classes.html.

4 p.m.
Lecture 
Join Bruce Clarke, Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, as he moderates a discussion on the rich cultural impact of the photo on the US space program and the environmental movement. "Earthrise: Celebrating the Photograph that Changed (How we View) the World" will take place in room LJ119. The event is free, but tickets are required, and there may be special restrictions. Click here for more information and to secure your ticket. Contact: (202) 707-3302. 

Wednesday, April 24
Noon
Folklife Talk
In his talk, folklorist and ethnomusicologist Langston Collin Wilkins will discuss how "screw" and "slab" combine form a unique local tradition that has affirmed and empowered working class Black Houstonians across several generations."Street Folk: Hip Hop, Car Culture, and Black Life in Houston, TX" will take place in the Whittall Pavilion. Contact: (202) 707-1743. 

5 p.m. 
Lecture 
Author and diplomat James Ford Cooper worked at the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki during the Cold War, first as Political Counselor and later as Deputy Chief of Mission. He was subsequently Director of the State Department Office of Northern European Affairs. Mr. Cooper’s discussion about Finland and the Cold War is on an important topic given the current international political situation. "On the Finland Watch: An American Diplomat in Finland during the Cold War" will take place in the Whittall Pavilion. Contact: tspi@loc.gov.

Thursday, April 25
2 p.m. 
Symposium 
The U.S. Copyright Office will celebrate World Intellectual Property Day with a special event. This year’s theme, as announced by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), is “Reach for Gold: IP and Sports.”

The Copyright Office’s program will explore the unique and sometimes surprising relationship between sports and copyright. We will look at different points at which sports and copyright intersect, including how people watch games from home, the various ways athletes work with copyright to develop merchandise and more, and the burgeoning world of esports.

Featured speakers include Derrick Heggans, founder and CEO of Global Sports and Entertainment Business Academy (GSB Academy); Delara Derakhshani, counsel, tech policy, Entertainment Software Association; and Robert Garrett, senior counsel, Arnold & Porter.

The event will also be live-streamed on the Copyright Office YouTube site (with captions) at youtube.com/uscopyrightoffice.

“Reach for Gold: IP and Sports” will take place in the Coolidge Auditorium. Contact: (202) 707-0956. 

4 p.m.
Lecture 
Stephen Houston, Dupee Family Professor of Social Science, Brown University, and Library of Congress Kislak Chair for the Study of the History and Cultures of the Early Americas, will discuss ancient Maya warfare and the meanings of conflict and its aftermath.

Drawing on recent explorations, Prof. Houston will showcase the lidar technology now revolutionizing the study of Pre-Columbian civilizations.

"Flint, Shield, and Fire: Exploring Ancient Maya Warfare" will take place in room LJ119. The event is free, but tickets are required, and there may be special restrictions. Click here for more information and to secure your ticket.

A reception will follow. Guests are also invited to visit the “Exploring the Early Americas” exhibit, which displays artifacts from the Jay I. Kislak Collection at the Library of Congress. View the collection online here.

Contact: (202) 707-3302. 

Friday, April 26
1 p.m.
Gallery Talk
Join members of the Library's Preservation Directorate as they discuss conservation and preservation techniques that have been used to restore, refresh and provide long-term access to unmatched collections by evaluating, managing, and responding to the risks and challenges associated with the wide variety of baseball-related materials in the Library’s care.

Experts will be on hand to provide tips on caring for your artifacts and ephemera. Presented part of the Library's 2019 Preservation Week activities. 

"Preserving the Game" will be held inside the Baseball Americana exhibition. Contact: (202) 707-1120.

Saturday, April 27
10:30 a.m.
Led by Young Reader's Center volunteers and staff, the Story Time will focus on books such as My Pen by Christopher Myers, I Have an Idea! by Herve Tullet, The Dot by Peter Reynolds, and Niko Draws a Feeling by Bob Raczka, all of which center on kids taking their ideas and making them into creative works. A puppet show will feature characters working together to create something, debating on who owns the work (children will interactively take sides), and then resolving the conflict through joint ownership and sharing. Songs will be on the themes of writing, drawing, and making ideas into creative products.

This event is great for families with children from 5 to 10 years old. Taking place inside the Library's Young Readers Center. 

This event is an adjunct to the Copyright Matters lecture that will be held April 25, the Copyright Office’s official recognition of World Intellectual Property Day. 

The event is free, but due to expected demand, tickets are recommended, and there may be special restrictions. Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Click here for more information and to secure your ticket. Entry is not guaranteed. Contact: (202) 707-1950. 

2 p.m.
It is exceptionally rare that we have the opportunity to hear a previously unknown work by a major composer, but that is precisely what the Library will offer in its presentation of the piano/vocal version of Franz Liszt’s Sardanapalo. 

The concert is free, but tickets are required, and there may be special restrictions. Click here for more information and to secure your ticket.

Pre-Concert Lecture will be held at 12:30 p.m. in the Whittall Pavilion. Tickets are not required. 

Contact: (202) 707-5502. 

Planning Your Visit 

The Library of Congress is open Monday-Saturday, 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

https://www.loc.gov/visit/ 

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

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Award-winning author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o presents his recently released publication titled, “Minutes of Glory And Other Stories” at the Library of Congress.

Click here for more information.

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

Walt Whitman in his younger years, as shown in this 1854 engraving by Samuel Hollyer used in the 1855 first edition of "Leaves of Grass." Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The Library of Congress will celebrate the 200^thanniversary of American poet and changemaker Walt Whitman’s birthday in spring 2019 with a series of exhibits, public programs and a digital crowdsourcing campaign to showcase the Library’s unparalleled collections of Whitman’s writings and artifacts.

Click here for more information.

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

Upcoming next week at the Library...

For a complete list of events happening next week, visit the Library's Public Event Calendar. 

Planning Your Visit 

The Library of Congress is open Monday-Saturday, 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

https://www.loc.gov/visit/ 

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

Photo Credit: Benda, Wladyslaw T. (Wladyslaw Theodore), 1873-1948., artist

This month, the Library of Congress will kick off the annual Earth and Space Science lecture series, now in its fourteenth year. The series is presented in partnership with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Science, Technology, and Business Division at the Library of Congress.

The first lecture of the series will be held on Tuesday, April 30 and will celebrate the 50 year anniversary of the Apollo mission.

Click here for more information.

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

The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress invites the public to attend two events hosted by its renowned scholars in residence in April.

Click here for more information.

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

Upcoming next week at the Library...

CLOSING NOTICE
Tuesday, April 9

The Library's Thomas Jefferson Building will be closed to the public for a special event. Credentialed researchers may access the Jefferson reading rooms normally, as they will be open during regular hours of service. 

For more information: https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-19-A01/?loclr=eaue 

Monday, April 8
5 p.m. 
Poetry Reading and Conversation 
Portuguese poet Ana Luísa Amaral will participate in a conversation and reading from her new book of poems What’s in a name?. Amaral is one of Portugal’s most exciting poets whose work has been described as “small hypnotic miracles […] reminiscent of Szymborska and of Emily Dickinson”. Hispanic Reading Room, Thomas Jefferson Building. 

Tuesday, April 9
11 a.m.
Hispanic Reading Room Research Orientation 
Sign up for our research orientation and learn about the Hispanic Reading Room services and collections. Orientations are offered to the public the second Tuesday of every month from 11:00am-12:00pm. Those attending should obtain a Library of Congress Reader Identification Card prior to the session. For more information about reader's cards, see: http://www.loc.gov/rr/readerregistration.html. 

Noon
Emergence of the Comic Strip in the 19th Century 
Swann Foundation Fellow Joshua Abraham Kopin will present “Comics in Nineteenth Century Time and Space.” West Dining Room, James Madison Memorial Building. 

Thursday, April 11
Noon
I Spy a Spy: Social Anxiety and Farce in North Korea Comedy Film

This presentation plays out against a ghostly landscape of North Korean society, much of which is tragic: the Korean War, economic crises, tensions along the DMZ, and famine. North Korean comedy films are both a response to the grief and a salve for the wound.

This talk will be presented by Dr. Immanuel Kim, professor of Korean literature and culture studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at George Washington University. Dr. Kim is a specialist in North Korean literature and cinema.

Dining Room A, James Madison Memorial Building.
Registration via Eventbrite is encouraged but not required.

Friday, April 12
8 p.m. 
JerusalemQuartet 
The Jerusalem Quartet deploys a strong sense of drama and a striking range of tonal color to create “an extraordinary unity of sound and purpose” (New York Times). 

The event is free, but tickets are required, and there may be special restrictions. Click the "Get Tickets" link below for more information and to secure your ticket. Coolidge Auditorium, Thomas Jefferson Building. 

GET TICKETS

Pre-concert lecture: 6:30 p.m. Tickets are not required. 

7:30 p.m. 
"Nothing But a Man" (Cinema V, 1964)
A groundbreaking work filmed during the tumult of the mounting civil rights movement, this independent film tells the story of Duff Anderson (Ivan Dixon), a proud railroad worker from the wrong side of the tracks who marries a preacher’s genteel schoolteacher daughter Josie (Abbey Lincoln). Packard Campus Theater. 

Saturday, April 13
2 p.m. 
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s ORCHKIDS
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s ORCHKIDSensemble performs with BSO Music DirectorMARIN ALSOPin this special family-friendly matinée concert, a tribute to Scott Joplin’s groundbreaking operaTreemonisha and the birth of jazz. Coolidge Auditorium, Thomas Jefferson Building. 

Registration via Eventbrite is encouraged but not required.

Planning Your Visit 

The Library of Congress is open Monday-Saturday, 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

https://www.loc.gov/visit/ 

COMING...

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

Part of the 2018-2019 Concerts from the Library series, the Music Division is hosting a series highlighting music compositions and the historical significance and progression video game scores. The video game collection as it now stands consists of about 5,000 games for a wide variety of platforms, 3,000 strategy guides and 1,100 game related periodicals. Additionally the collection includes descriptive documentation that comes through Copyright with the games and about 100 examples of gameplay footage on VHS or DVD. 

In a series of public events over the course of three days, a gathering of composers, designers, performers curators and educators will explore the music of this vital cultural phenomenon through film, lectures, discussions, performance and interactive displays.

Also being presented part of the Augmented Realities Mini- Fest is #LOCArcade. For one day only visitors can experience #LOCArcade. Over 40 years of video game nostalgia at the Library of Congress. Classic Super Mario gaming to Star Wars virtual reality. Game on! Tickets are recommended but not required. For tickets and more information on the arcade, visit http://locarcade.eventbrite.com/.

Click here for more information on the entire mini-fest..

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

The Library of Congress and "We Need Diverse Books" present “On Writing, Voice, and Courage: A Conversation with Walter Honorees,” a symposium on diverse children’s literature. 

Newbery Medalist and bestselling author Linda Sue Park will serve as the ceremony’s emcee. Christopher Myers, honored guest and son of the late Walter Dean Myers, will speak. Pura Belpré Award-winning author Meg Medina will act as Symposium Moderator.

The 2019 Walter Awards Ceremony will immediately follow the symposium.

The program is being streamed LIVE NOW!

Watch LIVE on YouTube

Caption: Comic strip by R. F. Outcault showing Buster Brown, his friend Mary Jane and dog Tige meeting up with the Yellow Kid, published in the New York American, July 7, 1907.

Swann Foundation Fellow Joshua Abraham Kopin will give an illustrated lecture at the Library of Congress discussing the cultural and technological contexts surrounding the rise of the comic strip in late nineteenth century America.   

Click here for more information.

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

Upcoming next week at the Library...

Wednesday, March 27
Noon
Alash Ensemble 
Tuvan traditional music and throat-singing trio. Alash Ensemble is a trio of master throat singers (xöömeizhi) from Tuva, a tiny republic in the heart of Central Asia. The ancient art of throat singing (xöömei) developed among the nomadic herdsmen of this region. Alash remains grounded in this tradition, while expanding its musical vocabulary with new ideas from the West. Performance will take place in the Coolidge Auditorium. Tickets are not required. 

Friday, March 29
Beginning at 9 a.m.
We Need Diverse Books Walter Dean Myers Awards Ceremony and Symposium

Newbery​ ​Medalist​ ​and​ ​bestselling​ ​author​ ​Linda​ ​Sue​ ​Park ​will​ ​serve​ ​as​ ​the​ ​Awards Ceremony’s​ ​Emcee​.​  Also, honored guest Christopher Myers, son of the late Walter Dean Myers, will speak.

A morning symposium, titled​ ​“On Writing, Voice and Courage:  A Conversation with Walter Honorees,”​ ​will​ ​precede​ ​the​ ​Awards​ ​Ceremony.​ Pura Belpré Award-winning author Meg Medina​ ​will​ ​act​ ​as​ ​symposium​ ​Moderator. 

The event will take place inside the Coolidge Auditorium. 

The event will also be live-streamed on the Library’s Facebook page at facebook.com/libraryofcongress and its YouTube site (with captions) at youtube.com/LOC.

11 a.m.
Gallery Talk
In honor of Women’s History Month and Major League Baseball’s Opening Day, Music Division specialist Susan Clermont will examine the feminist origins of the baseball classic Take Me Out to the Ballgame. Gallery talk will take place inside the Baseball Americana exhibition. 

Planning Your Visit 

The Library of Congress is open Monday-Saturday, 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

https://www.loc.gov/visit/ 

COMING...

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

The Library of Congress has restored and made available online the Gandhara Scroll, a manuscript dating back to around the first century B.C., that offers insight into the initial years of Buddhism. The scroll is one of the world’s oldest Buddhist manuscripts.

The scroll originates from Gandhara, an ancient Buddhist region located in what is now the northern border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The scroll tells the story of buddhas who came before and after Siddhartha Gautama, the sage who reached enlightenment under the Bodhi tree in eastern India around the fifth century B.C. and the religious leader on whose teachings Buddhism was founded.

Click here for more information.

The papers of President James A. Garfield, who was assassinated in the first year of his short presidency, have been digitized and are now available online for the first time from the Library of Congress.

The Garfield collection includes approximately 80,000 items, mostly dating from 1850 to 1881. The collection is online at: loc.gov/collections/james-a-garfield-papers/about-this-collection.

Garfield’s papers include correspondence, diaries, speeches, records of his Civil War military service, legal records, genealogical material, college notebooks, tributes, scrapbooks and other materials relating to Garfield’s life, career and death. Subjects in the collection include Ohio and national politics, the disputed election of 1876, tariffs and national finance, Garfield’s family life, as well as details of the shooting of President Garfield at a Washington, D.C., train station, his medical care and the national drama surrounding his death.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress Web Archiving Program has updated the United States Elections Web Archive to release content archived during the 2016 U.S. Elections, as well as some campaign websites from special elections in 2015 and 2017. As with prior election releases, this release contains campaign sites archived weekly prior to the elections, documenting sites associated with presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial elections. The sites archived in this collection typically include social media channels as well, in order to provide a fuller representation of how candidates presented themselves via the Internet to the electorate.

Just in time for the 100^th anniversary of Children’s Book Week, Children's Book Selections brings together a sampling of digitized children’s books, including rare and beloved titles, that reflect three general themes: Learning to Read, Reading to Learn, and Reading for Fun. The presentation includes both classic works that are still read by children today, and lesser-known treasures drawn from the Library’s extensive collection of historically significant children’s books. It is accompanied by a new guide to help researchers find historical children’s materials on the Library’s web site: Children's Book Selections: Resource Guide

In celebration of the Persian New Year, also known as Nowruz, the Library of Congress has digitized and made available online for the first time the Rare Persian-Language Manuscript Collection, which sheds light on scientific, religious, philosophical and literary topics that are highly valued in the Persian speaking lands.

This collection, including 150 manuscripts with some dating back to the 13^th century, also reflects the diversity of religious and confessional traditions within the Persian culture.

From the 10^th century to the present, Persian became the cultural language for a large region stretching from West Asia to Central and South Asia. Today, Persian is the native language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and some regions of Central and South Asia and the Caucasus.

Click here for more information.

The papers of suffragist and political strategist Carrie Chapman Catt, including her time as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, have been digitized and are now available online for the first time from the Library of Congress.

The collection includes about 9,500 items dating primarily from 1890 to 1920 as Catt helped lead the fight for a federal suffrage amendment. The Catt Papers are online at: loc.gov/collections/carrie-chapman-catt-papers/about-this-collection/.

Click here for more information.

Women's Suffrage in Sheet Music

The Library of Congress just released Women's Suffrage in Sheet Music, a selection of more than 200 pieces of sheet music spanning the years 1838-1923, over half of which highlight women's emerging voices and suffrage efforts. The collection includes published rally songs and songsters written and compiled by notable composers and suffragists, as well as music manuscripts submitted for copyright deposit by everyday citizens. Anti-suffragists raised voices in song as well, and popular music of the era echoed anti-suffrage sentiments of the day with specific references to the movement. Read more and browse the entire collection or take a quick look at the fascinating cover art. 

Joe Smith Collection

The Joe Smith Collection provides recordings of interviews conducted by Smith, a retired music executive, between 1986 and 1988, with musicians, producers, and other music industry icons. He spoke with everyone from Aerosmith to Yoko Ono about different genres of music, the industry, and how it had changed. The contributors are a virtual who’s who from the mid-to-late 20th century and the discussions provide a glimpse behind the curtain.

Lowell Folklife Project

The Lowell Folklife Project from the American Folklife Center (AFC) is the fifth of AFC’s ethnographic field projects to be digitized in full and presented online. The collection is the result of a year-long study conducted between 1987-1988 by AFC fieldworkers. The collection documents contemporary ethnic neighborhoods, occupations, and community life related to the history of industrialization in Lowell, Massachusetts. So much rich material: French, Portuguese, Puerto Rican, Greek, Cambodian, Irish, Polish, Laotian, Vietnamese and Italian communities; work, weddings, sports, parades and festivals; music, winemaking, teens hanging out, and Jack Kerouac’s birthplace are all here.

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.

A poem by Dorianne Laux from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

This is the final Poetry 180 poem of the season. This service will resume distributing Poetry 180 poems on Tuesday, September 3, 2019.

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

A poem by Phillis Levin from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

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

A poem by Anna Denise from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Andrea Hollander from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Jeffrey Harrison from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Lisel Mueller from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Major Jackson from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Dana Gioia from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

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

A poem by R. S. Gwynn from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Richard Brautigan from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

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

A poem by Tomas Tranströmer from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Naomi Shihab Nye from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Julie Lechevsky from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Timothy Murphy from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by William Matthews from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Eamon Grennan from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by James Valvis from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by William Matthews from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Doug Dorph from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Donald Hall from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Julie Lechevsky from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

Saturday, August 3, 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
2019 ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE FESTIVAL

Four events at the Library of Congress celebrating Asian American literature during second day of city-wide, three-day festival (read full schedule of events):

• 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM: Novelist Monique Truong gives a personal tour of Asian American literature through a mix of social/intellectual history, anecdotes, and short readings by writers both celebrated and overlooked.
• 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM: Poets Jennifer Chang and Cathy Park Hong uncover the work of lesser-known senior poets who have importantly shaped Asian American literary culture. Mini-lectures will be followed by readings of poets’ own work inspired by these secret histories.  
• 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM: Poet Arthur Sze gives a personal tour of Asian American literature through a mix of social/intellectual history, anecdotes, and short readings by writers both celebrated and overlooked.
• 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM: Poets Kazim Ali and Ching-In Chen uncover the work of lesser-known senior poets who have importantly shaped Asian American literary culture. Mini-lectures will be followed by readings of poets’ own work inspired by these secret histories.

Free tickets strongly encouraged. Books sold before/after day-long event; book signing after day-long event only. Co-sponsored by Library of Congress Asian Division and Asian American Association. Presented in partnership with Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and the Poetry Foundation.

Location: Room 119, First Floor, Thomas Jefferson Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Saturday, August 3, 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
2019 ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE FESTIVAL

Four events at the Library of Congress celebrating Asian American literature during second day of city-wide, three-day festival (read full schedule of events):

• 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM: Novelist Monique Truong gives a personal tour of Asian American literature through a mix of social/intellectual history, anecdotes, and short readings by writers both celebrated and overlooked.
• 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM: Poets Jennifer Chang and Cathy Park Hong uncover the work of lesser-known senior poets who have importantly shaped Asian American literary culture. Mini-lectures will be followed by readings of poets’ own work inspired by these secret histories.  
• 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM: Poet Arthur Sze gives a personal tour of Asian American literature through a mix of social/intellectual history, anecdotes, and short readings by writers both celebrated and overlooked.
• 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM: Poets Kazim Ali and Ching-In Chen uncover the work of lesser-known senior poets who have importantly shaped Asian American literary culture. Mini-lectures will be followed by readings of poets’ own work inspired by these secret histories.

Free tickets strongly encouraged. Books sold before/after day-long event; book signing after day-long event only. Co-sponsored by Library of Congress Asian Division and Asian American Association. Presented in partnership with Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and the Poetry Foundation.

Location: Room 119, First Floor, Thomas Jefferson Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Saturday, June 8, 1:00 PM
RHYMING THE ARCHIVES: YOUTH POETRY SHOWCASE

Members of the Washington, D.C. Youth Slam Team will perform poems inspired by recordings, photographs, and field notes from the American Folklife Center archive. Free tickets recommended. Co-sponsored by the Library of Congress American Folklife Center and presented in partnership with Split This Rock.

Location: LJ-119, first floor, Thomas Jefferson Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Monday, June 3, 2:30 PM - 5:00 PM
WALT WHITMAN OPEN HOUSE

To celebrate the 200th birthday of Walt Whitman, the Library of Congress will present an open house featuring rarely seen collection items including draft poems, artistic renderings, and rare editions of Leaves of Grass. Filmmaker Haydn Reiss will also screen the short film “Walt Whitman: Citizen Poet,” featuring 22nd U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith and 8th U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass. This event is free and open to the public; tickets are not required. Co-sponsored by the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Rare Book & Special Collections Division, Music Division, Prints & Photographs Division, Serials and General Collections Division, and presented in partnership with Zinc Films, the Poetry Foundation, the Whitman 200 Festival, and Folger Poetry.

Location: LJ-119, first floor, Thomas Jefferson Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

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

Monday, June 3, 2:30 PM - 5:00 PM
WALT WHITMAN OPEN HOUSE

To celebrate the 200th birthday of Walt Whitman, the Library of Congress will present an open house featuring rarely seen collection items including draft poems, artistic renderings, and rare editions of Leaves of Grass. Filmmaker Haydn Reiss will also screen the short film “Walt Whitman: Citizen Poet,” featuring 22nd U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith and 8th U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass. Co-sponsored by the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Music Division, Prints and Photographs Division, Serials and General Collections Division, and presented in partnership with Zinc Films, the Poetry Foundation, and the Whitman 200 Festival.  

Location: LJ-119, first floor, Thomas Jefferson Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Saturday, June 8, 1:00 PM
RHYMING THE ARCHIVES: YOUTH POETRY SLAM

Members of the Washington, D.C. Youth Slam Team will perform poems inspired by recordings, photographs, and field notes from the American Folklife Center archive. Co-sponsored by the Library of Congress American Folklife Center and presented in partnership with Split This Rock.

Location: LJ-119, first floor, Thomas Jefferson Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Tuesday, May 14, 7:00 PM
LIFE OF A POET: DIANE SEUSS

Poet Diane Seuss 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

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

Saturday, May 11, 4:00 PM
WORDPLAY FESTIVAL: NATASHA TRETHEWEY IN CONVERSATION

19th U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey will discuss her work with Rob Casper, head of the Poetry and Literature Center. Tickets required. Book sales and signing to follow. Presented in partnership with The Loft Wordplay Festival.

Location: Guthrie Theater, Dowling Studio, 818 S 2nd St, Minneapolis, MN 55415
Contact: loft@loft.org

Tuesday, May 14, 7:00 PM
LIFE OF A POET: DIANE SEUSS

Poet Diane Seuss 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), Washington, DC 20003 
Contact: (202) 707-5394

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

Monday, April 15, 7:00 PM
AMERICAN CELEBRATION: POET LAUREATE CLOSING EVENT

22nd U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith will celebrate the conclusion of her laureateship in a conversation with state, city and county poets laureate Jeanetta Calhoun Mish (Oklahoma), Kealoha (Hawaii), Adrian Matejka (Indiana), Tina Chang (Brooklyn, NY) and Vogue Robinson (Clark County, NV). Conversation will be moderated by Jennifer Benka, president and executive director of the Academy of American Poets. Book sales and signing to follow. Free tickets required. Presented in partnership with the Academy of American Poets.

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

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

Monday, April 15, 7:00 PM
AMERICAN CELEBRATION: POET LAUREATE CLOSING EVENT

22nd U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith will celebrate the conclusion of her laureateship in a conversation with state, city and county poets laureate Jeanetta Calhoun Mish (Oklahoma), Kealoha (Hawaii), Adrian Matejka (Indiana), Tina Chang (Brooklyn, NY) and Vogue Robinson (Clark County, NV). Conversation will be moderated by Jennifer Benka, president and executive director of the Academy of American Poets. Book sales and signing to follow. Free tickets required. Presented in partnership with the Academy of American Poets.

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

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

Thursday, April 4, 6:30 PM
NATIONAL YOUTH POET LAUREATE COMMENCEMENT

The 2019 National Youth Poet Laureate will be announced. Regional Youth Poets Laureate Kara Jackson (Chicago, IL), Haviland Nona Gai Whiting (Nashville, TN), Jackson Neal (Houston, TX) Azura Tyabji (Seattle, WA), and Maren Wright-Kerr (Baltimore, MD) will participate. Event will be hosted by Mahogany L. Browne and feature Washington, D.C./Prince George's County Youth Poets Laureate. Book sales and signing to follow. Free tickets required. Presented in partnership with Urban Word.

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

Monday, April 8, 5:00 PM
INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE: ANA LUÍSA AMARAL

Poet Ana Luísa Amaral will share her work and participate in a moderated discussion with Talía Guzmán-González, Luso-Brazilian Specialist in the Hispanic Division. Book sales and signing to follow. Co-sponsored by the Hispanic Division.

Location: Hispanic Division Reading Room, second floor, Thomas Jefferson Building, LJ-240 <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5397

Monday, April 15, 7:00 PM
AMERICAN CELEBRATION: POET LAUREATE CLOSING EVENT

22nd U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith will celebrate the conclusion of her laureateship in a conversation with state, city and county poets laureate Jeanetta Calhoun Mish (Oklahoma), Kealoha (Hawai'i), Adrian Matejka (Indiana), Tina Chang (Brooklyn, NY), and Vogue Robinson (Clark County, NV). Conversation will be moderated by Jennifer Benka, president and executive director of the Academy of American Poets. Book sales and signing to follow. Free tickets required. Presented in partnership with the Academy of American Poets.

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

Tuesday, April 23, 7:00 PM
POETRY OFF THE SHELF: NATASHA TRETHEWEY & CHARLES WRIGHT

19th U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey and 20th U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Wright will read and discuss their prize-winning work. Free tickets are first come, first served. Co-sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.

Location: Poetry Foundation, 61 W Superior St, Chicago, IL 60654
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Monday, April 29, 6:30 PM
LIBRARIAN AND LAUREATE: A CONVERSATION

Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Kevin Young will lead a conversation between 22nd U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith and Librarian of Congress Carla D. Hayden. Free tickets are not required but strongly recommended; ticketed guests are given priority. Co-sponsored by Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Location: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Langston Hughes Auditorium (515 Malcolm X Blvd, New York, NY 10037)
Contact: (202) 707-5394; nyplevents@nypl.org

For more information about upcoming events, visit the Poetry and Literature Center's website.

Wednesday, March 20, 7:00 PM
CLIMATE CHANGE, NATURE, AND THE WRITER’S EYE

Science writer Peter Brannen and internationally acclaimed novelist Amitav Ghosh will join 2018 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction winner Annie Proulx to discuss pressing issues of environmental change and a writer’s responsibilities to them. Book sales and signing to follow. Free tickets required.

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

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

Thursday, March 14, 12:00 PM
CONVERSATIONS WITH AFRICAN POETS AND WRITERS: MAKENA ONJERIKA

Kenyan author and 2018 Caine Prize winner Makena Onjerika will read from her prize-winning short story “Fanta Blackcurrant” and will participate in a moderated discussion with Eve Ferguson, Africa Area Specialist in the African and Middle Eastern Division. Co-sponsored by the Library of Congress African and Middle Eastern Division. Presented in partnership with the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa, the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Center for African Studies at Howard University, the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, and Department of English at Georgetown University.

Location: Mary Pickford Theater, third floor, James Madison Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Wednesday, March 20, 7:00 PM
CLIMATE CHANGE, NATURE, AND THE WRITER’S EYE

Science writer Peter Brannen and internationally acclaimed novelist Amitav Ghosh will join 2018 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction winner Annie Proulx to discuss pressing issues of environmental change and a writer’s responsibilities to them. Book sales and signing to follow. Free tickets required.

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

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

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.