Make Your Gift to the Nation's Library

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

The Library of Congress depends on the support of people like you for its exhibitions, programs, events and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with its unique collections, experts and services.

The Library of Congress is your gateway to discovery. New books, films and music arrive every day. New research and new stories reveal themselves every day. Join us on this #GivingTuesday, December 3, to help bring new ideas and experiences to life!

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.

On Tuesday, December 3, we ask you to make a gift to the Library of Congress in celebration of #GivingTuesday—a global giving movement.

Your gift supports exhibitions, events, programs and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with the unique collections, experts and services here at the nation’s library.

The Library of Congress is your gateway to discovery. New books, films and music arrive every day. New research and new stories reveal themselves every day. Help bring new ideas and experiences to life with your gift this #GivingTuesday, December 3.

Save the date to make your gift and visit loc.gov to see what’s new!

Hello! In order to more effectively communicate with our educator audience, we encourage you to subscribe to our regularly updated education blog, “Teaching with the Library of Congress.” If you’re not familiar with our blog, check it out here. 

This "News for Teachers" list will no longer be active, and we’ll focus our outreach efforts to you via our regular blog posts. Please click here to subscribe to the blog.

We’re grateful for your interest in our education programs and resources, and hope you continue to enjoy them in the future.

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

He was acting solicitor general under Barack Obama and drew up regulations used in the Mueller investigation. Now Neal Katyal is arguing for impeachment

It is the season of impeachment in Washington. As the temperature dips in the nation’s capital and the first frosts arrive, the US Congress prepares, not for the first time, to break the glass and reach for the emergency lever provided by the founding fathers for ridding the country of a miscreant president. The congressional hearings have proved strangely compulsive viewing. The sight of senior officials sitting before a microphone addressing a bench of stern, preening, hectoring members of Congress somehow combines solemnity and glamour in an archetypal American tableau.

It recalls the great inquisitions of the past: McCarthyism, Watergate, Iran-Contra, as well as Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings 21 years ago. As the Monica Lewinsky scandal was unfolding, a young lawyer was asked by the Clinton administration to draw up new regulations for the post of special counsel, intended to prevent a recurrence of the Starr report, a vehicle by which the president’s enemies could conduct an untrammelled and lurid excavation of his private life. Those regulations provided the guidelines for Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s role in Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The journey to an awakening, whether of a fictional character, a reader or a writer, is rarely straightforward. In Suncatcher, my narrator’s political awareness begins as a young boy when he reads Trotsky by torchlight. “The Problems of Life” is a Young Socialist pamphlet he has nicked from his father’s bookshelf. Under a mosquito net, in post-colonial Ceylon, Kairo is drawn in by Trotsky’s impassioned lectures on vodka, housework and the cinema. I discovered it while researching Sri Lanka in the 60s, a time when the Trotskyite party was at its peak. But it could have been in our house all along, tucked among the leftwing books on my father’s shelves – the 1962 edition I found in the British Library had been printed in Colombo, a mile from my childhood home.

A generation earlier, in 1908, Ananda Coomaraswamy, a Ceylonese man of English and Tamil parentage, published Mediaeval Sinhalese Art, printing it on a hand press used by William Morris. Could an innocuous-sounding study of drawings and pottery be political? “Nations,” Coomaraswamy declared, “are created by poets and artists.” The monograph was instrumental in awakening a modern consciousness of artistic identity in South Asia and became an important strand in the national movement for self-rule.

India, the US, Brazil ... a study of the journey of far-right populists from the fringes to the heart of the world’s democracies

Back in 2012, the political scientist Cas Mudde wrote a lecture he planned to deliver in Antwerp entitled: “Three decades of populist radical right parties in western Europe: so what?”. Unexpectedly struck down by a short-term illness, Mudde, a professor at the University of Georgia, was unable to board his transatlantic flight and never gave the speech. Had he done so, he might have been asked whether the decades he dedicated to studying the extreme rightwing fringes of democratic politics had been worth it. The lecture, later published in a journal, stressed that populist radical right parties had only had a limited impact in elections, and warned they were receiving “disproportionate” attention from scholars like himself. He described them as only a “relatively minor nuisance in west European democracies”.

Seven years later, few commentators call the populist radical right a mere nuisance. Mudde has since become one of the world’s most in-demand political scientists, as well as a Guardian columnist, widely regarded as the leading expert on the rise of nationalist, reactionary and far-right populism.

The colourful life of a 19th-century ne’er-do-well, whose murderer – the famous photographer Muybridge – walked free

On 17 October 1874, Edward Muybridge travelled from San Francisco – by ferry, train and two-horse buggy – to confront Harry Larkyns, the man who had been having an affair with his wife and who he believed was the father of her child. It was dark by the time Muybridge reached the ranch in the rural community of Calistoga, Napa County. As Larkyns stepped out on to the porch, Muybridge said: “I have a message from my wife.” Then, without warning, he drew his Smith & Wesson revolver and shot him through the heart.

Muybridge made no attempt to escape and the policeman who arrested him noted that he was “very cool for one who had just killed a man”. Even when he was remanded in custody, the press reported him to be “very calm and collected, and apparently feeling entirely justifiable in the killing of Larkyns”. His remarkable self-confidence was well-founded. Within four months a local jury decided unanimously that he was not guilty. Reporters said the courtroom “shook with applause” at the verdict. Muybridge’s murder of his wife’s lover was, the jury said, wholly in accordance “with the law of human nature” and they decided “they could not conscientiously punish him for doing what they would have done themselves”.

The sweary self-help guru behind a string of bestsellers explains her evangelical faith in turning down everything from lunch to love

Fuck seems to have been the word we’ve all needed to hear. As in, stop giving a fuck, calm the fuck down, say “fuck, no”: all sentiments at the heart of every self-help book published since the genre exploded. But where these books were once determinedly optimistic and outwardly focused on goals such as making money and influencing people, they now assume the voice of your bluntest friend, one who is not afraid to curse while telling you how it is.

Self-help has turned sweary, and no one has made being blue a bigger part of their brand than Sarah Knight, author of the five “No Fucks Given Guides”, most recently Fuck No!. The series, which started with the 2015 bestseller The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck, has sold more than 2m copies worldwide and ushered in a new wave of tough-love tomes, such as The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson and Gary John Bishop’s Unfuck Yourself – each bestsellers themselves.

From Arthurian feasts to awkward moments with Ian McEwan and mealtime at the Macbeths, these miniature dramas are literary staples. Tuck in

Life is full of stresses: death; divorce; disasters, natural and otherwise. But another stress under D in the dictionary of stresses is the Dinner Party. It’s a bit like opening a restaurant, it’s a bit like putting on a play, and it’s all for the benefit of people who are our friends or colleagues but also our audience, our guinea pigs, our judges.

There’s so much that can go wrong: the food can be undercooked or overcooked – or perfectly cooked but not very good. The conversation can stall or it can turn into a competition or an argument or a shouting match.

A fascinating biographical study of a stellar acting career – including the secrets that lie behind it

Garry O’Connor’s book about Ian McKellen is as much involved with ideas as it is with facts. It makes no claim to be an exhaustive account. O’Connor has been writing more or less experimental biographies of actors for many years, starting with his classic account of Ralph Richardson, continuing with Paul Scofield, Alec Guinness (twice) and a fine double portrait of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. A former drama critic, he is fascinated by the mystery of great acting. Of the present volume, he says, quoting Hamlet, but sounding more like a fairground barker: “Here is the height, the presumption of my endeavour: to ‘pluck out the heart’ of the Ian McKellen mystery – how such a single being could create a monumental career of such depth and span; where the ever-charging source of his energy comes from; and how his personality and character have continued to develop and change throughout his life. All in all to make it speak as it never has before, to sound him from his lowest note to the top of his compass.”

There is a McKellen mystery and at its centre is his duality, his paradoxical capacity to be both/and. He is simultaneously “deeply secretive, intensely private”, as his former partner Sean Mathias says, and perhaps the most open and accessible personality British theatre has ever produced.

Bestselling authors and celebrities share their favourite books of the year, including fiction, poetry, cookbooks and more

• Best books of 2019: genre by genre

Gillian Tindall is a high-minded Autolycus, devoted not merely to snapping up the “unconsidered trifles” of past lives but holding them to the light to glean the stories they might conceal. “Most objects, like all people, disappear in the end,” she writes at the start of The Pulse Glass, an excellent suite of essays on transience and remembrance. And yet not everything crumbles to dust; some bits and pieces defy the odds by surviving, and it is Tindall’s delight – albeit of a measured and low-key sort – to describe their escape from “the quiet darkness of forgetting”.

Take, for instance, the scrap of tightly folded paper recently discovered in the crack of a wall at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, possibly to stop up a draught; when examined, it turned out to be a fragment of a musical score by Thomas Tallis, from a service held in St Paul’s in 1544. Or the case of an attic clearance in Westminster Abbey where debris was found strewn across the floor. It was about to be tipped away when an archaeologist happened to notice many tiny shards of coloured glass mixed in there: closer study uncovered 30,000 fragments, which when put together revealed details of “exquisite workmanship” dating back to the 13th century – literally a window on a lost world.

A ‘freelance dealer’ escapes drugs, debt and New York in a Reagan-era memoir

Peter Kaldheim begins his story in a part of Penn Station familiar to New York daytrippers and passengers stuck in long layovers: the luggage lockers. Three decades ago he used one of these lockers to store all his belongings. He was broke, unemployed and homeless in the city. His life, he writes, had become “only something to survive, and for that I had no one to blame but myself and my accomplices: alcohol, cocaine and a deep-seated streak of what my old Greek philosophy professor would call akrasia – a weakness of will that allows one to act against one’s better judgement”.

Born to working-class parents in Brooklyn, he had graduated from Dartmouth. At 22, he was married to his high-school girlfriend and working as a copy editor at Harcourt Brace in New York. He dreamed of publishing his first novel by the time he was 25. But there is a rift between one’s dreams and one’s deeds that Kaldheim tried to bridge by staying past happy hour every evening in the West Village. His wife left him after she found out he had been cheating. He quit Harcourt and became an acquisitions editor at another publishing firm. The new job came with a pay rise that he again squandered on his drinking. He developed a taste for speed and cocaine, and resigned from his job after spectacularly failing to meet a deadline. Kaldheim landed in prison in Rikers Island after selling coke to an undercover agent. He got married again and lost his wife to a brain aneurysm during a trial separation. By the time he was homeless in his mid-30s, he was spending his nights hopping from bar to bar, drinking and “freelance dealing”. When he realised he was too deep in debt to a violent drug boss, he decided to get out of the city. He abandoned all his clothes in the locker at Penn Station, fleeced a customer for cash one last time and caught a Greyhound bus to Richmond, Virginia, even as a terrible blizzard kept other New Yorkers indoors.

Alison Light’s last book, the Samuel Johnson-shortlisted Common People, was what she called “family history as public history”, using generations of her own working-class family as a lens through which to examine the social conditions that shaped them. In A Radical Romance she uses a similar approach to more recent and personal history – her 10-year marriage to the radical historian Raphael Samuel, until his death in 1996. She draws on her own extensive diaries and letters to offer a hybrid memoir that is at once a tribute to Samuel and his work, a portrait of a part of London in the grip of accelerated social change, and an account of love, frustration and grief. Perhaps inevitably, these different currents vie with one another for precedence, but Light is keenly aware of these tensions, interrogating her own process and the nature of memoir as history, “a history from inside”: “Memoir weaves its way between what is often called the private and the public, the personal as opposed to the historical… I find these terms far more porous than absolute.”

“Sorrow, like guilt, never ends, though it ebbs and flows,” she writes

The traumas of the Turks and Greeks forced to flee their homes a century ago are drawn with moving simplicity and speak clearly to today’s refugee crisis

The distance between the ports of Mytilene, on the Greek island Lesbos, and Ayvalık, a Turkish city known as Aivali in Greek, is 47.5km by sea. Between 1922 and 2019, millions of people have crossed the unpredictable waters, many of them fleeing wars around the world.

Aivali: A Story of Greeks and Turks in 1922, a graphic novel published in Greek in 2014 and recently translated into English by Tom Papademetriou, is the story of the 1.6 million refugees who made the journey that year alone, when the Greek and Turkish governments agreed to a massive population exchange at the end of the Greco-Turkish war. The Greek Orthodox Christians of Asia Minor and other Turkish regions were made to relocate to Greece, while Muslim Greek citizens were forced into Turkey. Both sides suffered, and this is the strongest message in this soul-stirring account, which acknowledges all sides of the tragedy.

The candid life story of Princess Margaret’s aide, which has proved a publishing hit, provides insights into the aristocratic system and the real life behind The Crown

Nothing goes down better with a section of the British public than a posh old lady who isn’t afraid to talk dirty. It’s the contrast between the drawling vowels, blossomy complexion, sculpted cheekbones and sexual frankness that turns us into what Nanny would probably call “giggling ninnies”. Anne Glenconner, who at the age of 87 has published a bestselling memoir, was a big hit this autumn on The Graham Norton Show, Loose Women and all manner of breakfast television sofas. One of her plummiest anecdotes concerns her mother, Lady Coke, trying to explain sexual intercourse in terms of canine coupling. “Do you remember Daddy’s labrador getting on top of Biscuit? Well, that’s what happens when you get married and have sex, except you will probably be lying down in a bed.” Cue peals of shocked laughter from the studio audience.

In fact, there’s nothing especially odd or even socially elevated about Lady Coke’s advice to her eldest girl on the eve of her 1956 marriage. Anne belonged to the generation of girls who were too young to have served in the WAAF and, instead of jitterbugging with young men, spent their chaste teenage years knitting socks for them. You didn’t need to have been brought up on the 27,000 acre Holkham Hall estate, nor been crowned “Deb of the Year” by Tatler, to have arrived at your courtship years without knowing much about men beyond a vague rule of thumb that some were “safe in taxis” while others most definitely were not.

A short, spiky novella about identity and belonging plays with the boundaries between ‘truth’ and ‘fiction’

In a lecture published in the essay collection Feel Free, Zadie Smith remembers the moment she began to write fiction in the first person. It was a revelation. The “I” had such an immediate “reality effect”, she writes: no longer was it so necessary to build, painstakingly, the “reality” of a third-person world – the “I” cut through at once, and the reader was away.

In autofiction, this power is only intensified. How much is factual (for that has its own deep power also, as every memoirist knows)? How much is not? How unsettled does the reader therefore feel? And how much is in the gift of the author – that is, who gets to call it fiction at all? The Indian poet, novelist and activist Meena Kandasamy, bruised by the reception of When I Hit You, an autofictional account of her own short and abusive first marriage, argues that it all depends on who you are and especially where you are from. “To a Western audience,” she writes in the margins of her new novella, Exquisite Cadavers:

‘Life and language split open’: there is beauty as well as humour in a poet’s portrait of the disruptions of parenthood

Some of the most exciting and unconventional fictions of recent years have converged, improbably or otherwise, on the ancient orthodoxies of the domestic sphere. From Jenny Offill’s wryly subversive Dept. of Speculation to the corporeal meditations of Jessie Greengrass’s Sight, the need to re-examine marriage and motherhood has provoked richly divergent creative responses. With notable exceptions, such as the protean folklore of Max Porter, a new fiction of fatherhood has been slower to emerge. This first fictional experiment by the poet Caleb Klaces addresses the deficit in stark terms, hoping to capture “a life and language split open”.

On the surface, at least, these fissures are not readily apparent. The new parents (neither is named) buy a house and must grapple with the division of domestic labour. The nearest thing to cataclysm is supplied by planning failures and sketchy estate agents: the house has been built on a flood plain and on Christmas morning is duly inundated. A cache of notebooks and a laptop are destroyed, and with them the only draft of the father’s novel.

A heartbreaking wartime tale of a Korean ‘comfort woman’ stands out in an excellent year in which stalwarts Seth and Chris Ware continued to expand the horizons of the form

This would have been an extraordinary year for graphic novels even had no other comics save for Seth’s Clyde Fans (Drawn & Quarterly) and Chris Ware’s Rusty Brown (Jonathan Cape) been published. Seth’s book is a history of mid-century capitalism disguised as the story of two elderly brothers; Ware’s uses a single day in a Nebraska high school in the 1970s to tell, in characteristically frown-inducing manner, a host of very human stories. Both are utterly amazing; both push the form in new directions. That said, even without them it would have been an exceptional 12 months. I could write a piece three times as long as this and still have to leave out several favourites.

I loved – and reviewed – the following: Sensible Footwear (Myriad), Kate Charlesworth’s vital and joyful history of British LGBTQ life; Sunday’s Child (Jonathan Cape), in which Serena Katt pieces together with exquisite tact the story of what her Polish-German father did in the war; Maggy Garrisson (SelfMadeHero), an intricately plotted collection of stories about a female London gumshoe by Lewis Trondheim and Stéphane Oiry; and Off Season, James Sturm’s spare and strangely affecting book about a canine builder who finds himself estranged from his wife and politics in Trump’s America. And I can say, without hesitation, that all four of them would make fantastic Christmas presents.

Frost Fair is a tiny book, about 4in x 4in, and might be alighted upon as a stocking filler, though, unlike most stocking fillers, it will surely survive Christmas Day.

It is tempting to take Carol Ann Duffy for granted, in rather the same way that Joyce Carol Oates is sometimes undervalued because of her productivity. But reading this small, icy, perfectly formed book – a ballad, a winter’s tale – one is reminded of Duffy’s consistent excellence. And here she is supported by David de las Heras’s understatedly graceful illustrations. A solitary figure in rusty red walks through a sepia world of snow, flanked by feathery poplars. The ballad begins as an ordinary yarn: “So cold it was –” and then after you turn the page, becomes a singular story:

There are no happy endings in this nastily funny phantasmagoria set in a warped version of England

There will always be people who are hipper than you. You’ll have been reading Murakami, for example, and they’ll say: “Haruki or Ray?” Or you’ll just have discovered Soviet sci-fi or weird folk and they’ll have long since moved on to space-jazz and Chinese noir. Just like in the song, you saw the crescent, but they saw the whole of the moon. Tim Etchells is a whole of the moon sort of a person.

Etchells is a writer and artist and the artistic director of performance art group Forced Entertainment. The stories in Endland are gathered from an earlier publication, Endland Stories: Or Bad Lives, published in 1999, with additional pieces and an introduction by Jarvis Cocker. I am so utterly unhip that I wasn’t familiar with the original, but I am now a diehard fan: late to the party, I’m glad to have made it at all.

The Caiplie Caves by Karen Solie; The Mother House, by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin; A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson; and Still Life by Ciaran Carson

As someone who passes a Pictish symbol stone with an Ogham inscription to the obscure St Ethernan every time I go to Tesco, I might constitute the natural audience for a book-length sequence on that seventh-century Irish saint’s adventures in north-eastern Scotland. Unsurprisingly, given the subject matter, Karen Solie’s TS Eliot prize-shortlisted The Caiplie Caves (Picador, £10.99) is one of the more unusual poetry collections of recent years. It is many things at once: a vision of insular Celtic Christianity in its early medieval heyday; a juxtaposition of this with a more elliptic modern narrative; and a meditation on literary form, and how the modernist long poem might look through a contemporary lens. Was Ethernan attracted by self-abnegation or a very unholy chance to show off (“I can’t be sure now there was ever humility in it / burning the self as though it were a city”)? The same might be asked of Solie herself. Whatever the answer, this is a wilfully strange and unforgettable performance.

This lightly sketched tale moves towards an inevitable conclusion – but it’s dangerous to court comparisons with Fitzgerald when the writing is paint-by-numbers

Kairo is growing up in 1960s Sri Lanka at a moment of gathering political repression and destabilising social change. His father is a dyed-in-the-wool communist, in an armchair sort of way. His mother is trying to work out what to do about her son’s education now the schools have been suspended. But Kairo doesn’t care too much about all this. He’s just met Jay – be warned, it’s never a coincidence when the glamorous, wealthy character with the gilded life is called Jay – and he’s going to appear in a coming of age tale.

Jay has a life that Kairo finds intoxicating. His family are rich and live in a beautiful house; he has an attractive, unstable mother and a gangsterish uncle with a farm and a classic car collection; he likes to cycle, drive, shoot, build, skinny-dip, defend the helpless and all the other things boyhood heroes do. His bedroom is filled with metaphors for the contained experience of childhood – fish tanks, in this case, which also give us a hint of Jay’s possible fetish for control – but Jay and Kairo are growing up, and need a new, more apt metaphor for the half-freedom of adolescence. So they build a cage for Jay’s budgies, where Jay also keeps a sutikka, a bird native to Sri Lanka that he’s caught, which he calls his “Sunbeam”. The title of Romesh Gunesekera’s novel invites us to draw parallels between this bird and Jay. And if you haven’t worked out how the book ends already from the character’s name, you’ll have a second opportunity to see the story’s destination heavily foreshadowed in the fate of the bird.

Two new books are causing a stir by translating the contortions over EU membership into graphic tales of endearing animals

While the adult world is having trouble getting to grips with Brexit, children’s authors are taking a new approach: translating the whole sorry mess into a story with animals, where they hope it will start to make clearer sense.

Two new picture books attempt to make Brexit accessible to children. Smriti Prasadam-Halls and Robert Starling’s The Little Island sees a gaggle of geese hatch a plan to leave their farm, only for their solitary life on an island to go wrong. And in Richard David Lawman and Katie Williams’ I Want to Leave This Book, a cast of animals vote – unsuccessfully – on which sort of story they’d like to be part of.

As the TV adaptation of Philip Pullman’s epic fantasy His Dark Materials reaches our screens, one writer tells how the trilogy changed her life

As a child, I cavorted in Oxford colleges, rode atop armoured bears and swanned off to Svalbard to witness the majesty of the northern lights – all while remaining within the walls of an Edwardian terrace in Cardiff.

No, I wasn’t a fantasist. Or, at least, the fantasy wasn’t mine alone. The escapades were thanks to my compulsive reading of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. Northern Lights, the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, was published in 1995, when I was four, so it was a few years after it came out that I fell for Pullman’s writing. But when I finally did … boy, did I fall hard. I zoned out of sleepovers with friends, family dinners, and – on one occasion – my brother’s wedding as I joined Pullman’s heroine, Lyra, on thrilling Arctic voyages and skirmishes in parallel universes.

As His Dark Materials comes to TV, the prize-winning children’s author Katherine Rundell looks at how a scrappy girl became one of literature’s best-loved characters

I first read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy as a young teen; it felt like a revelation. The books had a rough-textured animal-breath closeness that I had rarely encountered before, and at the heart of that was a small child, swift witted and loose handed with the truth, throwing mud at rival children, and her soul companion, her daemon Pantalaimon. I decided there and then, with all acknowledgements to the glory and joy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, of Sophie in Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle, of Malorie Blackman’s Sephy Hadley in Noughts & Crosses and of Roald Dahl’s Matilda, that the greatest heroine in British children’s books was Lyra.

There is good evidence that many people of my generation felt the same. Pullman now shares with Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift and Philip Sidney the distinction of having popularised an English-language name that is now part of the lexicon. We owe the name Vanessa to Swift, who gave it as a piglatinish nickname to his lover Esther (Esse for short) Vanhomrigh, and Pamela (pronounced, originally, Pameela) to Sidney. Shakespeare has at least two; the first sighting we have of Miranda (from mirandus, meaning wonderful) is The Tempest, and Jessica, probably in an Anglicisation of the Old Testament Hebrew name Iscah, first appears in English in The Merchant of Venice. And last year, 362 new Lyras were born.

Lucy Ellmann is the British-American author of eight novels, including Sweet Desserts and Mimi. Her latest, Ducks, Newburyport, is a 1,000 page, one-sentence stream of consciousness, told from inside the mind of an Ohio mother as she worries about everything from gun control to toilet training, from her weak ankles to white supremacy. It was shortlisted for this year’s Booker prize and won the £10,000 Goldsmiths prize, which goes to a book that “opens up new possibilities for the novel form”.

When you first started writing Ducks, Newburyport, did you know it would take the shape that it did?
No, it doesn’t work to overplan things. My novels are generated by my preoccupations at the time. The principle I stuck to was simply writing the book I wanted to write. There’s no point in writing anything but that.

Michael Lewis has made his brilliant journalistic career by finding engaging human stories to illuminate the data-driven, risk-avoiding complexities of our world. In The Big Short Lewis brought to life the extraordinary black comedy of those who had made fortunes betting on the global financial crash. Moneyball examined the characters behind the new science of success in sports. His most recent book, The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy, applies his insider’s eye to unsung heroes of government administration, in light of the reckless dismantling of the US civil service under Trump. Lewis defines the fifth risk to civilisation – alongside more visible contenders like climate crisis and nuclear conflict – as a loss of faith in the mission of effective governance, “what you never learn that might have saved you”.

The afterword to your new book, written after Trump’s shutdown of government in January 2019, describes the life of Arthur A Allen, whose innovations in air-sea rescue for the US Coastguard saved countless lives in the course of his long career. He was among tens of thousands of civil servants considered expendable by Trump’s regime. Why do you think stories like his have been so rarely heard?
There is less diversity in the news. It has gotten harder and harder to tell a small story that is actually a big story. If you don’t start with a celebrity, it is harder to persuade people to take an interest in it. It is almost the reverse of what has happened in entertainment. Netflix has worked out how to make these very niche dramas and comedies and make them universal. News is much less good at it.

The US journalist spent eight years talking to three women about sex and desire – and had no idea the result would be a publishing sensation. She tells Hadley Freeman what happened next

The American author Lisa Taddeo would like some breakfast. But our waiter is thwarting her. “We don’t serve food in this part of the hotel, ma’am,” he says, adding that breakfast has finished when she suggests we move. “Is nothing available?” she persists. He barely restrains a sigh. “Is a croissant OK?” “Perfect!” she says, triumphant. With another sigh, he disappears in search of what Taddeo describes as “the illicit croissant”. She then leans over and whispers, “When he comes back I’m gonna freak him out and ask if I can now have scrambled eggs.”

In the past year, Taddeo has gone from being a relatively little known journalist to one of the most celebrated authors of 2019, thanks to her extraordinary debut book about women’s appetites and desires, and how men frustrate and warp them. Three Women, which has been a bestseller in the US and the UK, tells the true stories of Maggie, Lina and Sloane, each of whom, for utterly personal and yet profoundly relatable reasons, has a complicated understanding of their own needs. Maggie alleges she had a sexual relationship with her high school teacher, Aaron Knodel, and we meet her as she’s dealing with the emotional and legal aftermath. After being raped by three classmates as a teenager, Lina married a cold, undemonstrative man, and is now, as a mother of two, embarking on a frantic affair with an old boyfriend. Elegant, privileged Sloane has sex with other people so her husband can get a thrill from watching.

So long was Barbara Taylor Bradford’s novel A Woman of Substance – the book that would launch her career and go on to sell 32m copies – that she measured it by weight, not number of pages. It was 16 and a half pounds (7.5kg), she says, her eyes glittering. “I wrote more,” she says. “We cut a lot.” Her then editor made her take out a whole chapter – the one that followed her character Blackie O’Neill through the first world war (he was a friend to the book’s heroine, the kitchen maid turned retail tycoon Emma Harte). “I really fought this. But she took it out, and I was infuriated.”

It occurs to Bradford, with the 40th anniversary edition of the book on the table in front of us, that the chapter might have made its way back in. “I never thought of looking,” she says, flicking through the 800-plus pages, then she starts reading aloud. She looks up and says excitedly: “What a good beginning!” Then she goes back to it. Goodness, I think, she’s going to read the whole thing. A well-timed waiter comes to our table at the Dorchester hotel to pour tea; she closes the book, greets him by name and they have a chat.

On this week’s show, Megan Phelps-Roper talks about growing up in the Westboro Baptist Church. Established by her grandfather, the late pastor Fred Phelps, the Kansas church is famous for its aggressive and offensive protests, with members holding up signs with slogans such as “God Hates Fags”, “Thank God for Aids” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” outside funerals, businesses and homes.

Widely regarded as a hate group, the WBC is largely made up of the children and grandchildren of Fred Phelps, who died in 2014. After a lifetime in the church, Phelps-Roper finally left in 2012 at the age of 26, reuniting with several family members already outside – but leaving behind most of her 10 siblings and her parents. She sat down with Sian to talk about her memoir Unfollow, which details how she adjusted to a new life.

Marie-Elsa Bragg, 54, is an author, Anglican priest, therapist and duty chaplain at Westminster Abbey. She is half-French and half-Cumbrian and grew up in London with her father, the broadcaster Melvyn Bragg. She wrote her debut novel, Towards Mellbreak, in 2017. Her forthcoming book, Sleeping Letters, is a memoir addressed to both her parents about her mother, Marie-Elisabeth Roche, who took her own life when Marie-Elsa was six years old. The book is written – in part – as a series of unsent letters to her mother and father. It is also a description of the ritual of the eucharist.

What was the starting point for Sleeping Letters?
I was commissioned to write another novel but I went into a silent retreat and this is what came out. I thought, Well, I’ve just got to do this. I didn’t know if I wanted my editor to see it but then they kept asking and I felt there was something universal about what I was writing. I’ve watched so many people go through grief now, and I’ve also done a lot of funerals, and there really is no shame to suffering. It’s actually quite beautiful. If you allow yourself to still love, even when you’ve had incredible grief, then all of you comes through it somehow.

The author of Women’s prize shortlisted novel When I Hit You talks about the troubling line between memoir and fiction and how Brexit politics shaped her new book

After reading her playful, political novels – described by reviewers as “explosive” and “radical” – it’s a surprise to find Meena Kandasamy to be quiet and diffident in person. Today this may be because she is not feeling well; she keeps a scarf wrapped around her throughout our conversation. But also, as she tells me: “I think I’m much better writing down what I feel.”

We meet in Belfast’s Grand Central hotel, an opulent symbol of the city’s post-Troubles renaissance and a landmark that celebrates local literary history: walls, exterior paving and even the revolving doors display work by poet Paul Muldoon. Kandasamy is in Belfast to promote her new novel Exquisite Cadavers, but it’s impossible to talk about this without first discussing her last novel When I Hit You: Or, a Portrait of the Artist As a Young Wife, to which the new book is in part a response.

Telling the stories of child migrants on the US border, this novel is one of 2019’s most acclaimed books. Will we admire it too?

Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive has come out of the hat and will be our reading group choice for December.

The first English-language book written by the Mexican author, Lost Children Archive is inspired by the plight of the tired, poor and huddled masses of refugee children who have fled danger and persecution, only to find that themselves interned or turned away from the US. In other words, it’s about one of the most important stories of our times. It’s a cry for compassion and empathy and the ideal book to round off this turbulent, difficult decade.

A ludicrous image of physical intimacy provides a suitor with a feeble wooing ruse – and us with sharp romantic comedy

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

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

Let’s start with a success story. “I’ve just finished Memento Mori by Muriel Spark,” says ignicapilla, “yet another recommendation from this forum and another that I’ve enjoyed enormously”:

Stuck for a literary stocking filler? From medical memoirs to bittersweet romance, short stories to gay histories, our panel of celebrated writers – Andrew Rawnsley, Konnie Huq and Kit de Waal among them – offer their recommendations

Anonymous, thirtysomething, south-east England

Dazzling debut novels, searing polemics, the history of humanity and trailblazing memoirs ... Read our pick of the best books since 2000

• Read an interview with the author of our No 1 book
  
• Read Ali Smith on Autumn
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The Australian novelist on crying over a Dickens biography, laughing at Kathy Lette and the classic he is ashamed not to have read

The book I am currently reading
The Barbara Kingsolver novel Unsheltered. Not quite up there with The Poisonwood Bible and Flight Behaviour, but still a magnificent novel.

The book that changed my life
Nobel prize-winning Australian novelist Patrick White’s Voss. It is a sweeping and eccentric book, a modernist classic (Thomas Mann eat your heart out), and it showed me that Australians were just as entitled to write novels as anyone.

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.

You can get tickets for any 2020 event that is part of Concerts from the Library of Congress.

PLEASE NOTE: All films, talks and pre-concert events this year are general admission with no ticket required, unless otherwise indicated. You can still register for reminders and updates about those events, but seating will be first-come, first-served.

Click here for more information.

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

Beginning at 10 a.m., you can get tickets for any 2020 event that is part of Concerts from the Library of Congress.

PLEASE NOTE: All films, talks and pre-concert events this year are general admission with no ticket required, unless otherwise indicated. You can still register for reminders and updates about those events, but seating will be first-come, first-served.

Click here for more information.

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

Starting at 7 p.m EST., tonight Dec. 4, 2019. 

A new Library of Congress exhibition,“Rosa Parks: In Her Own Words,” opens December 5. Celebrate Rosa Parks with us at this opening event. Hear from Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, the Honorable John Lewis & others.

WELCOME: Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress

REMARKS: The Honorable John Lewis, Representative from Georgia

DISCUSSION: Fred Gray and Jane Gunter, Moderated by Michelle Miller, CBS News The exhibition will immerse visitors in Parks’ words, reflections, handwritten notes and photographs, allowing her to tell her own life story. It is the first exhibition of Rosa Parks’ personal collection.

The exhibition offers an intimate view of this seminal figure’s life – beyond her famous refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus – to reveal the real Rosa Parks, a seasoned activist with a spirit forged over decades of challenging inequality and injustice. Learn more about the exhibition https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/rosa-parks-in-her-own-words/about-this-exhibition/ 

Click here to watch. 

Make Your Gift to the Nation's Library

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

The Library of Congress depends on the support of people like you for its exhibitions, programs, events and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with its unique collections, experts and services.

The Library of Congress is your gateway to discovery. New books, films and music arrive every day. New research and new stories reveal themselves every day. Join us on this #GivingTuesday, December 3, to help bring new ideas and experiences to life!

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.

On Tuesday, December 3, we ask you to make a gift to the Library of Congress in celebration of #GivingTuesday—a global giving movement.

Your gift supports exhibitions, events, programs and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with the unique collections, experts and services here at the nation’s library.

The Library of Congress is your gateway to discovery. New books, films and music arrive every day. New research and new stories reveal themselves every day. Help bring new ideas and experiences to life with your gift this #GivingTuesday, December 3.

Save the date to make your gift and visit loc.gov to see what’s new!

Staying home for the holidays? Expecting out of town guest? 

Spend time at the world's largest Library, the Library of Congress. 

VISIT US DURING THE HOLIDAYS

Visitor Hours to the Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building (Tours, Exhibitions, Gallery Talks)

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

Researchers Hours (Access to Readings Rooms, Research Assistance)Hours for reading rooms vary. View reading room and research center hours at loc.gov/rr/hours.html.

Weather Closures

In the event of inclement weather or other issues, the Library of Congress typically follows the Federal Government operating status.

For more information visit loc.gov/visit.

WORKSHOPS

Programs Lab LJ-G25: Oral History Listening Stations

Open 10 a.m. to noon – November 25, 26, 27, 29; December 2, 4, 6

Short selections of interviews from the Veterans History Project, Civil Rights Oral History Project, Occupational Folklife Project, and StoryCorps will be available in listening stations along with materials and resources for conducting your own oral histories and for using the Library’s oral history collections in research.

Programs Lab LJG26-27: Ask the Archivist: Oral History and Personal Archiving Sessions

Tuesday, November 26, 11-11:30 a.m. and Thursday, December 5, 1-1:30 p.m.

Ask the Archivist: Oral History Basics

Archives specialists from the American Folklife Center will share tips for recording personal stories and related resources available from the Library of Congress. 

Wednesday, November 27 and Monday, December 2, 11-11:30 a.m.

Ask the Archivist: Preserving Veterans’ Stories

Join specialists from the Veterans History Project to hear recommendations for recording the stories of veterans, requirements for submitting materials to the Library’s collections, and tips for using the collections of the Veterans History Project in research.

Wednesday, December 4, 11 - 11:30 a.m.: 

Ask the Archivist: Caring for Family Papers and Personal Archives

Join archivist Andrea Briggs to learn basic archival preservation techniques and strategies to best care for materials at home. Tips will include general handling, appropriate storage, how to display materials, and identifying different types of damage and when professional conservation services might be needed.

Young Readers Center: Puppet Show: Native American Folk Tales 

Friday, November 29, 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.: 

This year’s puppet show will celebrate both the Native American History Month and Poet Laureate Joy Harjo by performing the Native American tales from The Girl Who Helped Thunder and Other Native American Folktales and Turtle’s Race with Beaver, both by Joseph and James Bruchac.

There will be puppet making between the two shows until 3 p.m.

Click here for more Library of Congress events.

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

The 10th annual Jonah S. Eskin Memorial Program will feature award-winning writer Andrea Warren and her book “Enemy Child: The Story of Norman Mineta, a Boy Imprisoned in a Japanese American Internment Camp During World War II” (Holiday House).

Click here for more information.

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

The 10th annual Jonah S. Eskin Memorial Program will feature award-winning writer Andrea Warren and her book “Enemy Child: The Story of Norman Mineta, a Boy Imprisoned in a Japanese American Internment Camp During World War II” (Holiday House).

Click here for more information.

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

The 10th annual Jonah S. Eskin Memorial Program will feature award-winning writer Andrea Warren and her book “Enemy Child: The Story of Norman Mineta, a Boy Imprisoned in a Japanese American Internment Camp During World War II” (Holiday House).

Click here for more information.

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

The Law Library of Congress will present a conversation with philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum for the 2019 Frederic R. and Molly S. Kellogg Biennial Lecture in Jurisprudence.

Click here for more information.

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

Join us as we celebrate GIS (Geographic Information Science) Day TODAY with an all-day series of talks on the use of GIS technology and 3D mapping in cultural heritage preservation and disaster response.

Click here for more information.

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

Do you love to read? Whatever your favorite subject, the Library of Congress’s National Book Festival Presents series has something for you. Coming this week and next, are three authors who write about three very different subjects: world history, children’s books, and fiction.

These programs are all free and open to the public. You must register, but tickets are still available, so hurry, don’t wait!

Click here for more information.

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

Tickets are now available for these upcoming events in the National Book Festival Presents series:

Nov. 6 – Karen Armstrong discusses her new book, “The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts.” Armstrong is the author of numerous groundbreaking works on world religions and speaks often on how faith shapes civic conversation. Click here for ticket information.

Nov. 8 – Brad Meltzer & Chris Eliopoulos present their new PBS KIDS series, “Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum,” based on their books for children, “Ordinary People Change the World,” featuring the newest titles, “I Am Walt Disney” and “I Am Marie Curie.” The PBS KIDS series, premiering Nov. 11, will introduce kids to inspiring historical figures and the character virtues that helped them succeed. Click here for ticket information.

Nov. 13 – André Aciman discusses his new book, “Find Me,” the sequel to his bestselling “Call Me By Your Name,” which was made into an Academy Award-winning film. Click here for ticket information.

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

Friday, Nov. 8 at 6 p.m. 

Brad Meltzer discusses the launch of his new PBS KIDS series, “Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum,” based on his books for children, “Ordinary People Change the World.”

Click here for more information.

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

Art + Design Stacks Showcase

Library of Congress Main Reading Room
November 8^th 6:00pm-8:00pm

Spend the evening in the magnificent Library of Congress Main Reading Room while exploring an array of public-domain art + design books!

Browse and scan an array of public domain art, craft, and design books pulled especially for you from our closed stacks in the Library of Congress Main Reading Room. Photography and sharing are encouraged! Come #TouchTheBooks

Full details in the Eventbrite:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/art-design-stacks-showcase-in-the-library-of-congress-main-reading-room-tickets-74697573453

Click here for more information.

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

Rosa Parks, the civil rights icon made famous for her refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1955, is often mischaracterized as a quiet seamstress, with little attention paid to her full life story. A new Library of Congress exhibition, “Rosa Parks: In Her Own Words,” will reveal the real Rosa Parks was a seasoned activist with a militant spirit forged over decades of challenging inequality and injustice.

Opening Dec. 5, this will be the first exhibition of the Rosa Parks Collection, which includes her personal writings, reflections, photographs, records and memorabilia. 

Click here for more information.

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

Whether crafting, performing, cooking, writing, or painting, art has the dynamic power to alleviate stress, build connections, and even stimulate recovery. For veterans and active-duty service-members, art affords an outlet through which they can articulate – and process – what they experienced during their service.

From November 5-9^th, the Library of Congress Veterans History Project (VHP) will host a Veteran Art Showcase. This series of cultural events highlights art and artists with a focus on the myriad experiences of military veterans. The five-day Showcase begins a yearlong commemoration of VHP’s 20th anniversary, and will be held in the Library of Congress Jefferson Building, located at 10 First Street SE, Washington, DC. 

Click here for more information.

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

The Library of Congress will celebrate GIS (Geographic Information Science) Day on Nov. 13 with an all-day series of talks on the use of GIS technology and 3D mapping in cultural heritage preservation and disaster response.

Click here for more information.

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

TICKETS ARE STILL AVAILABLE 

Art Kane: Harlem 1958

Tuesday, Oct. 29
7 p.m.

Ticket Link: http://www.loc.gov/concerts/lecture-art-kane-harlem-1958.html

Quicksilver: Founder's Day Concert

Wednesday, Oct. 30
8 p.m.

Ticket Link: http://www.loc.gov/concerts/quicksilver.html

"Reminiscing in Tempo: Some Highlights from Nine Decades with Jazz"

Thursday, Nov. 7
7 p.m.

Ticket Link: http://www.loc.gov/concerts/lecture-morgenstern-reminiscing.html

Click here for more information.

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

Tickets are now available for these upcoming events in the National Book Festival Presents series:

Nov. 6 – Karen Armstrong discusses her new book, “The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts.” Armstrong is the author of numerous groundbreaking works on world religions and speaks often on how faith shapes civic conversation. Click here for ticket information.

Nov. 8 – Brad Meltzer & Chris Eliopoulos present their new PBS KIDS series, “Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum,” based on their books for children, “Ordinary People Change the World,” featuring the newest titles, “I Am Walt Disney” and “I Am Marie Curie.” The PBS KIDS series, premiering Nov. 11, will introduce kids to inspiring historical figures and the character virtues that helped them succeed. Click here for ticket information.

Nov. 13 – André Aciman discusses his new book, “Find Me,” the sequel to his bestselling “Call Me By Your Name,” which was made into an Academy Award-winning film. Click here for ticket information.

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

Mark your calendar! Ticket will be available for the November events in the new "National Book Festival Presents" series at noon ET on Monday, October 28!

Join us for these special author talks:

• Nov. 6 – Karen Armstrong on her new book, “The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts.” Armstrong is the author of numerous groundbreaking works on world religions and speaks often on how faith shapes civic conversation
• Nov. 8 – Brad Meltzer on the launch of his new PBS KIDS series, “Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum,” based on his books for children, “Ordinary People Change the World.” The PBS KIDS series, premiering Nov. 11, will introduce kids to inspiring historical figures and the character virtues that helped them succeed
• Nov. 13 – André Aciman on the launch of his new book, “Find Me,” the sequel to his bestselling “Call Me By Your Name,” which was made into an Academy Award-winning film.

Tickets will be required for these events! Click here for more information on the National Book Festival Presents series.

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

José André is a 14-year-old Bolivian-born, acclaimed jazz pianist and current Washington, DC resident whose playful and inspired composition bridge jazz, rock, blues, bossa nova, Latin American and world music.

Click here for more information.

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

Twice each year, the Library of Congress opens its magnificent Main Reading Room to share information about how the public can access the Library’s resources year-round. The Main Reading Room will be open to the public on the federal Columbus Day holiday, Monday, Oct. 14, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Main Reading Room is located on the first floor of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street SE, Washington, D.C.

The Jefferson Building will open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. In lieu of the normal tour schedule, docents will be available to talk with visitors about the Jefferson Building, its history, art and architecture and the Library’s collections and exhibitions between 9:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.

Click here for more information.

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

Tickets are now available for the next event in the new "National Book Festival Presents" series!

Join us on October 24 for a book discussion with Alexander McCall Smith on "To the Land of Long-Lost Friends." In the latest book in the widely beloved "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series, Precious Ramotswe takes on a case for a childhood acquaintance and finds that family relationships are always a tricky proposition--even for Botswana's premier female detective.

Get your ticket today from Eventbrite at this location.

Ticket availability for November events will be announced shortly.

Click here for more information on the National Book Festival Presents series.

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

A special display at the Library of Congress will mark the 150^th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth on Oct. 2, featuring a letter written in Gandhi’s hand, a rare copy of the Indian Constitution and other items exploring Gandhi’s influence on Martin Luther King Jr. and the U.S. civil rights movement.

Click here for more information.

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

Make Your Gift to the Nation's Library

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

The Library of Congress depends on the support of people like you for its exhibitions, programs, events and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with its unique collections, experts and services.

The Library of Congress is your gateway to discovery. New books, films and music arrive every day. New research and new stories reveal themselves every day. Join us on this #GivingTuesday, December 3, to help bring new ideas and experiences to life!

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.

On Tuesday, December 3, we ask you to make a gift to the Library of Congress in celebration of #GivingTuesday—a global giving movement.

Your gift supports exhibitions, events, programs and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with the unique collections, experts and services here at the nation’s library.

The Library of Congress is your gateway to discovery. New books, films and music arrive every day. New research and new stories reveal themselves every day. Help bring new ideas and experiences to life with your gift this #GivingTuesday, December 3.

Save the date to make your gift and visit loc.gov to see what’s new!

Collections Include Records of National American Woman Suffrage Association, President Lincoln’s Private Secretary, Olmsted Associates Landscape Architectural Firm, Federal Monetary Policy

Researchers and students have gained access to seven newly digitized collections of manuscript materials from the Library of Congress, including records of one of the most important women’s suffrage organizations, the papers of President Abraham Lincoln’s personal secretary and collections on the history of federal monetary policy. The availability of these collections added more than 465,000 images to the Library’s already vast online resources.

Click here for more information.

In celebration of Constitution Day, the Library of Congress is launching a new website – constitution.congress.gov – for the Constitution Annotated, the authoritative source for how the Supreme Court has interpreted the nation’s governing document over the years.

With advanced search tools and a modern user-friendly interface, the new website makes the 3,000 pages of the Constitution Annotated fully searchable and accessible for the first time to online audiences – including Congress, legal scholars, law students and anyone interested in U.S. constitutional law.

Click here for more information.

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.

A poem by David Ignatow from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Marc Petersen from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by David Ignatow from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Frances Mayes from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Louis Jenkins from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Forrest Hamer from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Thomas Lux from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

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

A poem by Joseph Millar from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Jane Kenyon from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

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

A poem by Jane Kenyon from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Miller Williams from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Wisława Szymborska from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Jane Kenyon from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Max Garland from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

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

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

A poem by Tony Hoagland from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Kevin Hart from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Margaret Levine from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Katia Kapovich from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Debora Greger from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

A poem by Mac Hammond from the Library's Poetry 180 Project.

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

Make Your Gift to the Nation's Library

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

The Library of Congress depends on the support of people like you for its exhibitions, programs, events and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with its unique collections, experts and services.

The Library of Congress is your gateway to discovery. New books, films and music arrive every day. New research and new stories reveal themselves every day. Join us on this #GivingTuesday, December 3, to help bring new ideas and experiences to life!

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.

On Tuesday, December 3, we ask you to make a gift to the Library of Congress in celebration of #GivingTuesday—a global giving movement.

Your gift supports exhibitions, events, programs and activities that connect millions of people across the nation and around the world with the unique collections, experts and services here at the nation’s library.

The Library of Congress is your gateway to discovery. New books, films and music arrive every day. New research and new stories reveal themselves every day. Help bring new ideas and experiences to life with your gift this #GivingTuesday, December 3.

Save the date to make your gift and visit loc.gov to see what’s new!

Wednesday, November 20, 7:00 PM
LIFE OF A POET: REGINALD DWAYNE BETTS 

Poet Reginald Dwayne Betts 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 Hill Center and The Washington Post.

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

Tickets are still available for these upcoming events in the National Book Festival Presents series:

Nov. 6 – Karen Armstrong discusses her new book, “The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts.” Armstrong is the author of numerous groundbreaking works on world religions and speaks often on how faith shapes civic conversation. Click here for ticket information.

Nov. 8 – Brad Meltzer & Chris Eliopoulos present their new PBS KIDS series, “Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum,” based on their books for children, “Ordinary People Change the World,” featuring the newest titles, “I Am Walt Disney” and “I Am Marie Curie.” The PBS KIDS series, premiering Nov. 11, will introduce kids to inspiring historical figures and the character virtues that helped them succeed. Click here for ticket information.

Nov. 13 – André Aciman discusses his new book, “Find Me,” the sequel to his bestselling “Call Me By Your Name,” which was made into an Academy Award-winning film. Click here for ticket information.

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

Wednesday, November 6, 1:00 PM
OCCUPATIONAL POETRY ROUNDTABLE

Occupational poets Jerry Brooks (miner), Meezie Hermansen (fisher), Bill Jones (veteran), Vess Quinlan (cowboy), and Dave Richmond (judge) will read and discuss their work with John Fenn, head of research and programs at the Library of Congress American Folklife Center. Co-sponsored by Veterans History Project.

Location: LJ-119, first floor, Thomas Jefferson Building <view map>
Contact: vhp@loc.gov (include the subject line “occupational poetry”) or (202) 707-1196

Wednesday, November 20, 7:00 PM
LIFE OF A POET: REGINALD DWAYNE BETTS 

Poet Reginald Dwayne Betts 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 Hill Center and The Washington Post.

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

Saturday, November 23, 2:00 PM
MIAMI BOOK FAIR: JOY HARJO IN CONVERSATION

23rd U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo will discuss her work with Rob Casper, head of the Poetry and Literature Center. Tickets required. Co-sponsored by O, Miami.

Location: Miami Dade College, 300 NE 2nd Ave, Miami, FL 33132, Auditorium (Building 1, 2nd Floor)
Contact: (305) 237-3258

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

Tuesday, September 24, 7:00 PM
NATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL PRESENTS: EDWIDGE DANTICAT

Author Edwidge Danticat will discuss her new short story collection, Everything Inside. This event is free and open to the public. Free tickets required; signed copies are also available for pre-purchase. Presented in partnership with National Book Festival Presents.

Location: Coolidge Auditorium, ground floor, Thomas Jefferson Building
Contact: specialevents@loc.gov

Tuesday, September 24, 7:00 PM
NATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL PRESENTS: EDWIDGE DANTICAT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author Edwidge Danticat will discuss her new short story collection, Everything Inside. This event is free and open to the public. Free tickets required; signed copies are also available for pre-purchase. Presented in partnership with National Book Festival Presents.

Location: Coolidge Auditorium, ground floor, Thomas Jefferson Building
Contact: specialevents@loc.gov

Wednesday, September 11, 7:00 PM
LIFE OF A POET: CARMEN GIMÉNEZ SMITH

Poet Carmen Giménez Smith 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 on upcoming events.

Thursday, September 19, 7:00 PM
POET LAUREATE INAUGURAL READING

Joy Harjo will give her inaugural reading as 23rd Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. She will be joined by Howard Cloud and Robert Muller in a special musical performance. Free tickets required. Book sales and signing to follow. Co-sponsored by Library of Congress National Book Festival Presents.

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 information.

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.