ALOUD @ Los Angeles Public Library

Rachel Cusk is an international literary superstar. Her most recent trilogy–Outline, Transit, and Kudos–draws its hero, Faye, through a collage of vignettes. Through tales told by the people Faye encounters–an airline companion, a disgruntled neighbor, and a fellow writer, among others–Faye’s own haunting past is stealthily revealed, making for an artful and hypnotic reading experience. “After her controversial memoirs of motherhood and marriage, the writer has a new design for fiction,” writes Judith Thurman in the New Yorker in a profile titled “Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel.” Now, the UK-based writer brings the work that has captivated the writing (and reading) community to Los Angeles for a rare Stateside reading and conversation.

ALOUD welcomes two-time Poet Laureate of the United States and Pulitzer Prize–winner Tracy K. Smith with her remarkable book To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul. In 2020, heartsick from consistent assaults on Black life, Tracy K. Smith found herself soul-searching and digging into the historical archive for help navigating the "din of human division and strife." Bearing witness to the terms of freedom afforded her as a Black woman, a mother, and an educator in the twenty-first century, Smith etches a portrait of where we find ourselves four hundred years into the American experiment. Smith was in conversation with poet, essayist, and Morgan Parker.

Arax, a native son, spent four years traveling the breadth of the Golden State to explore its singular place in the world. From the marijuana growing capital of the U.S. to the town that inspired The Grapes of Wrath, Arax offers a stunning panorama of California in a new century.

Award-winning journalist Santi Elijah Holley brings us a long overdue look at the Shakur family, who, for over fifty years, have inspired generations of activists, scholars, and music fans. An Amerikan Family is the history of the fight for Black liberation in the United States, as experienced by the Shakurs. From Assata Shakur, the popular author and thinker living for three decades in Cuban exile, to the late, great rapper Tupac to roots in the Black Panther movement and beyond, the Shakurs have been at the forefront of fighting for racial justice in the United States. Holley was in conversation with American academic, civic leader, and founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter, Dr. Melina Abdullah.

From former White House aide to President Obama and Harvard graduate Alejandra Campoverdi comes a riveting, unflinching memoir on navigating social mobility as a first gen Latina. She offers a broad examination of the unacknowledged emotional tolls of being a trailblazer. Join us as we follow Campoverdi’s journey from being a child of welfare to becoming a candidate for U.S. Congress. Part memoir, part manifesto, First Gen is a story of generational inheritance, aspiration, and belonging–a poignant journey to "reclaim the parts of ourselves we sacrificed in order to survive."Campoverdi was in conversation with author and l columnist with Jean Guerrero.