Library of America presents LOA LIVE
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Episodes
Helen Vendler’s Sixth Sense
03 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
December 2—Groundbreaking critic and revered scholar Helen Vendler could “second-guess the sixth sense of the poem,” wrote Nobel laureate Seamus...
The Radical Imagination of Octavia E. Butler
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Monday, November 24—Like a signal from a distant star, Octavia E. Butler’s luminous fiction jumps galactic distances to relay searing, often surpr...
Reading Democracy in America Now
11 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Wednesday, September 10—Two centuries on, Alexis de Tocqueville’s brilliant Democracy in America remains the most prescient account of the virtues...
Remembering Victory: World War II Memoirs of the European Theater
09 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thursday, May 8—Eighty years ago the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany closed the curtain on six years of total war in Europe, a conflict that...
The Greatness of Sylvia Plath
18 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thursday, April 17—Sylvia Plath’s bold and incandescent poems have struck a deep chord with generations of readers. A visionary writer who scaled ...
What Is Totalitarianism? Understanding Hannah Arendt Now
12 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tuesday, March 11—“The rise of totalitarian governments,” Hannah Arendt wrote, “is the central event of our world.” In her masterpiece, The ...
“A Place None of Us Know”: Writing, Loss, and Joan Didion’s Late Memoirs
15 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Thursday, November 14—Grief, Joan Didion wrote, “turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” In two luminous memoirs, The Year o...
Faith, Fiction, and Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer
22 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Tuesday, May 21—Published in 1961, Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer announced a major new voice in American fiction. In this lush, New Orleans–based...
Robert Frost: Our Poet for All Seasons
16 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Monday, April 15—Why does the poet Robert Frost continue to beguile and intrigue readers 150 years after his birth? What is it about the four-time P...
Deadline Artist: The Genius of Jimmy Breslin
07 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Wednesday, March 6—Brash, opinionated, funny, and an indefatigable champion of the vulnerable over the rich and well-connected, Jimmy Breslin brough...
Black Writers of the Founding Era
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Tuesday, February 6—The story told and retold about America’s founding often excludes the Black communities that existed during the Revolution and...
Why Don DeLillo Deserves the Nobel
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Wednesday, January 17, 2024—Don DeLillo is “our most necessary writer,” says his longtime editor Gerald Howard, one whose “intuitions and sent...
I’m Dreaming of a Noir Christmas: Classic Crime Thrillers of the 1960s
06 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tuesday, December 5, 2023—To cap LOA LIVE’s fall season, a killer lineup of panelists explores classic crime fiction of the 1960s, from Donald Wes...
Black Writers in Paris, the FBI, and a Lost 1960s Classic: Rediscovering The Man Who Cried I Am
09 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Wednesday, November 8—The expatriate literary scene in Paris that flourished around Richard Wright and James Baldwin produced brilliant writing, int...
The Startling Theater of Adrienne Kennedy
26 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Wednesday, October 25—For more than sixty years, in such works as Funnyhouse of a Negro and Ohio State Murders, Adrienne Kennedy has bewitched audie...
The Mysterious Greatness of Gatsby
25 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Thursday, September 21—In the hundred years since The Great Gatsby was published, American society and culture have been utterly transformed. Why ...
A Celebration of Ray Bradbury
20 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Wednesday, July 19—In The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451, and other visionary works melding science fiction, horror, fan...
Rediscovering the Pathbreaking Fiction of Nancy Hale
22 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Wednesday, June 21—Best-selling author Kate Bolick joins LOA LIVE to discuss one of the most gifted American writers of the mid–twentieth century....
‘The Best American Writer You’ve Never Heard Of’: A Tribute to Charles Portis
18 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Wednesday, May 17—Charles Portis’s novels and stories, with their deadpan style, unforgettable characters, and rollicking plots of pursuit, obsess...
Small Miracles: The Stories of Bernard Malamud
24 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Thursday, April 20—An unparalleled master of the short story, Bernard Malamud ranks among America’s greatest mythmakers and illuminators of the hu...
Back to the Future Is Female!
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Wednesday, March 15, 2023—From Pulp Era pioneers to the radical innovators of the 1960s and ’70s, visionary women writers have been a transformati...
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom with David W. Blight
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Wednesday, February 15, 2023—Frederick Douglass’s first recorded speech, “I Have Come to Tell You Something About Slavery,” inaugurated a five...
Ordinary Heroes: Bruce Catton’s Civil War Masterpiece
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Wednesday, January 18, 2023—One of the most popular works ever written about the Civil War, Bruce Catton’s Army of the Potomac Trilogy is a master...
The Unknown Kerouac
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
November 14, 2022—Is the all-American Jack Kerouac best understood as an immigrant writer? Join LOA Kerouac editor Todd Tietchen (University of Mass...
Lying and Politics: The Relevance of Hannah Arendt
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
October 20, 2022—Fifty years ago, the 20th-century’s foremost political philosopher wrote two seminal essays on questions that have new urgency to...
A Celebration of Oscar Hijuelos
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
September 14, 2022—Oscar Hijuelos’s rich and radiant novels bring the Cuban American immigrant experience into the heart of American literature. T...
A Tribute to Gary Snyder
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
July 20, 2022—A starry tribute to Pulitzer Prize-winning poet laureate of deep ecology Gary Snyder commemorates the publication of his Collected Po...
Fiddler on the Roof on Stage and Screen
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
June 29, 2022 — Since 1964 Fiddler on the Roof, one of the most popular Broadway musicals of all time, has also captivated audiences in new forms: ...
The Heart of American Poetry, with Edward Hirsch
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
June 1, 2022—In The Heart of American Poetry, his revelatory new book from Library of America, Edward Hirsch offers deeply personal readings of for...
Maxine Hong Kingston and Viet Thanh Nguyen
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
May 18, 2022—Beginning with her stunning 1976 memoir The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston has forged a profound, richly imagined, and genre-defy...
Our Town for Our Time
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
May 3, 2022—Thornton Wilder’s 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about the town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, is one of the most-produced cl...
World War II Memoirs: The Pacific Theater
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
March 16, 2022 — A new Library of America volume presents three powerful firsthand accounts of WWII by veterans of the Pacific War who lived to te...
Filming Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred, with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
February 24, 2022—Octavia E. Butler’s 1979 novel Kindred, a time-travel thriller that transports its heroine from Southern California in the 1970...
Kurt Vonnegut at 100, with Robert Weide
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
January 25, 2022—Producer and director Robert Weide (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth) became obsessed with Kurt Vonneg...
American Christmas Stories
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
December 15, 2021—Acclaimed bestselling SF and fantasy writer Connie Willis, editor of the just-released Library of America anthology American Chri...
Rediscovering Rachel Carson: The Oceans, the Climate Crisis, and the “Poet of the Sea”
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
November 22, 2021—Before her landmark book Silent Spring catalyzed the modern environmental movement, Rachel Carson was internationally celebrated...
Burning Boy: Paul Auster on the Extraordinary Life and Work of Stephen Crane
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
October 28, 2021—In a remarkable ten-year career cut short by death from tuberculosis at twenty-eight, Stephen Crane ushered American literature i...
Virginia Hamilton and the Transformation of American Children’s Literature
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
October 6, 2021 — Winner of the National Book Award, the Newbery Medal, and a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, Virginia Hamilton (1934–2...
The Light in the Piazza: From Page to Stage
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
July 14, 2021—Elizabeth Spencer’s The Light in the Piazza is an exceptionally beautiful and memorable work in the literature of Americans abro...
On Extended Wings: American Birds and American Writing
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
June 17, 2021—Like their counterparts in English Romantic poetry and elsewhere, American poets and writers have been fascinated by birds, compelled ...
Joan Didion: The Art of Storytelling
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
May 19, 2021 — An iconic voice in contemporary American writing, Joan Didion through her novels and literary nonfiction reimagined the way stories a...
E. O. Wilson: An Earth Day Tribute
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
April 22, 2021—Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward O. Wilson has transformed our sense of the natural world and humanity’s place in it. In a tim...
Richard Wright’s The Man Who Lived Underground
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
April 15, 2021—Richard Wright’s daughter Julia Wright and grandson Malcolm Wright join bestselling author Kiese Laymon for a special program to ma...
The Great American Western on Page and Screen
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
March 30, 2021—The Western, with its tales of adventure, honor, and violence set against the magnificent landscapes of the frontier, has had an endu...
Women’s Liberation! Feminist Writings That Inspired a Revolution and Still Can
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
March 18, 2021—Feminist writer-activists of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s sparked a diverse, visionary, and revolutionary movement for freedom and s...
Reading James Baldwin Now: Gabrielle Bellot on If Beale Street Could Talk
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
March 3, 2021 — Published to a mixed reception in 1974, James Baldwin’s novel If Beale Street Could Talk has undergone a marked critical reappra...
Poet of the People: The Greatness of Langston Hughes
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
February 18, 2021 — One hundred years ago Langston Hughes published his now-famous first poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” In the decades that...
American Democracy: The Task Before Us
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
January 27, 2021 — The past year has been a historic stress test for American democracy. Where do we stand now? What can our tradition of political ...
Peanuts at 70
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
December 16, 2020—In 1950 Charles M. Schulz debuted a comic strip that is one of the indisputable glories of American popular culture—hilarious, ...
The Genius of Hemingway
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
December 2, 2020 — Ernest Hemingway, one of the towering presences in American literature, is published this season in the Library of America and ex...
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
October 29, 2020 — Known to millions for her classic story “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson took the American gothic tradition of Poe, Hawthorne,...
The Paranoid Style in American Politics: Revisiting Richard Hofstadter in the Time of Trump
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
October 13, 2020 — In his Pulitzer Prize–winning Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963) and in The Paranoid Style in American Politics ...
Reading James Baldwin Now: Eddie Glaude, Jr., on “The White Man’s Guilt”
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
September 23, 2020 — In 1965, at a critical juncture in the Civil Rights Movement, James Baldwin’s essay “The White Man’s Guilt" unmasked...
Abraham Lincoln and the Crisis of Presidential Succession, with Ted Widmer
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
September 10, 2020 — On February 11, 1861, Abraham Lincoln boarded a train in Springfield, Illinois, bound for Washington and his inauguration as le...
It’s a New World, Golde: Classic American Musicals in the 21st Century
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
August 26, 2020 — New productions are reassessing and updating great Golden Age Broadway musicals like Oklahoma!, South Pacific, and My Fair Lady...
The Fate of the Earth: Jonathan Schell and His Legacy
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
August 6, 2020 — To mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the fiftieth anniversary of the first Earth Day...
Who Tells Your Story: Joanne B. Freeman on Hamilton and History
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
July 28, 2020 — As Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton streams on Disney+, Joanne B. Freeman, Professor of History and American Studies at Yale Univer...
Reading James Baldwin Now: Darryl Pinckney on No Name in the Street
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
July 16, 2020 — Novelist and cultural critic Darryl Pinckney offers a close reading of Baldwin’s beautiful, blistering memoir of the events that f...
Reading James Baldwin Now: Farah Jasmine Griffin on “Sonny’s Blues”
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
June 25, 2020 — The prophetic power of James Baldwin’s explorations of race and America’s unfulfilled promise has never been more illuminating o...
Harold Bloom and the American Canon, with David Mikics
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
June 16, 2020 — Literary scholar David Mikics, editor of the Library of America volume Harold Bloom: The American Canon: Literary Genius from Emers...
Andrew J. Bacevich and Sean Wilentz: What Is American Conservatism?
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
June 4, 2020 — Andrew J. Bacevich, editor of Library of America’s American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition, and historian Sean...