Featured Speakers

Stephanie Land

Stephanie Land


Bestselling Author • Memoirist • Economic Justice Advocate

Both Land’s bestselling debut memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive and the hit Netflix series adaptation of the same name, recount her story as a single mom navigating the physical, economic, and social brutalities that domestic workers face, all while radiating a parent’s hope and resilience. In her second memoir Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education, she picks up where Maid left off, facing the new challenges of being a poor college student and single parent.

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Casey Parks

Casey Parks


Journalist • Author

Casey Parks is the author of Diary of a Misfit: A Memoir and Mystery (winner of the 2021 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award from the Columbia School of Journalism and Harvard’s Nieman Foundation). She reports on gender and family issues for The Washington Post.

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Rachel Louise Snyder

Rachel Louise Snyder


Journalist • Author • Domestic Violence Advocate

For decades, Snyder has been an outspoken reporter on the darkest issues that impact women’s lives. She is the author of the memoir Women We Buried, Women We Burned, and the award-winning No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us.

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Dr. Ricardo Nuila

Dr. Ricardo Nuila


Educator • Author • Physician

Over his decade-long career as a practicing physician, Dr. Ricardo Nuila’s first-hand experiences have fueled his writing on health disparities, healthcare policy, and the interface between art and medicine. His stunning debut, The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine, details the stories of five Houstonians unable to access healthcare in his hometown of Houston, […]

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Eli Saslow

Eli Saslow


Pulitzer Prize Winner • Journalist • Author

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Eli Saslow reveals the human stories behind the most divisive issues of our time. His books include Rising Out of Hatred, which charts the rise of white nationalism in America through the experiences of one person who abandoned everything he was taught to believe.; and Voices from the Pandemic.

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Alex Kotlowitz

Alex Kotlowitz


Bestselling Author • Journalist • Documentary Filmmaker

Kotlowitz, bestselling author and Peabody Award-winning journalist, is recognized for his unflinching portrayals of race and poverty in America. His new book, An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago profiles people and communities affected by gun violence. He is the author of There Are No Children Here and was a producer of the critically acclaimed documentary The Interrupters.

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Andrea Elliott

Andrea Elliott


Pulitzer Prize Winner • Bestselling Author • Journalist

Andrea Elliott is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist who has documented the lives of poor Americans, Muslim immigrants and other people on the margins of power. She is an investigative reporter for The New York Times and the author of Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City, which won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.

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Speakers by Subject

New & Noteworthy

Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education

Praise for Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education

Captivating….Eye-opening and heartrending, [CLASS] will provide succor for readers who’ve faced similar hardships and essential education for anyone who hasn’t. It’s another stirring personal history from one of the foremost chroniclers of 21st-century economic anxiety.

Publishers Weekly, starred review

Let Us Descend

Praise for Let Us Descend

Annis’s story, told in Ward’s musical prose, is nothing short of epic, magical, and intensely moving.

Vogue

Remember Us

Praise for Remember Us

[Woodson’s] ability to evoke time and place is masterful; every word feels perfectly chosen… An exquisitely wrought story of self and community.

Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Brooklyn Crime Novel

Praise for Brooklyn Crime Novel

[T]he momentum in the book, a social mystery hurtling toward its personal, silent solutions, never flags…I’ve read it twice and I’ll read it again.

Greil Marcus, award-winning author and critic

The Unsettled

Praise for The Unsettled

Expansive and explosive, this beauty of a novel showcases Ayana Mathis’s grace on the page, as writer, as storyteller. A book to be read and re-read.

Jesmyn Ward, two-time National Book Award-winning author of Let Us Descend

 Fly The Big Book of Basketball Fashion

Praise for Fly The Big Book of Basketball Fashion

In Fly, Jackson does more than compile a basketball/fashion lookbook, and it’s more than a timeline and a history. To me, what he explores is the evergreen push to remind people that the talented are more than their talents. That there’s a burning creativity and a relentless desire to express onself, not as a highlight but as a human.

Jason Reynolds

The Invisible Hour

Praise for The Invisible Hour

What delight to experience the melding, across the centuries, of two prodigious American literary imaginations—Hoffman’s and Hawthorne’s—in this redemptive tale of daughters and mothers and one true love for a man and his book.

Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Peabody Sisters

The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet

Praise for The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet

This is a propulsive book, one to be raced through; the planet is burning, and we are running out of time.

Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

The House of Lincoln

Praise for The House of Lincoln

A compelling reminder that events of the past are indelibly connected to attitudes that persist today.

Booklist

Lady Tan's Circle of Women

Praise for Lady Tan's Circle of Women

See is one of those special writers capable of delivering both poetry and plot.

New York Times Book Review

Be Mine

Praise for Be Mine

A fitting finale to the landmark Bascombe saga, this ranks among Ford’s best.

Booklist (starred review)

Women We Buried, Women We Burned

Praise for Women We Buried, Women We Burned

Women We Buried, Women We Burned is a gorgeous memoir that parses the patriarchy with an endearing frankness as fierce as it is, astonishingly, forgiving.

Beth Macy, New York Times bestselling author of Dopesick

The Ferryman

Praise for The Ferryman

Next to impossible to put down once you’ve read the first few pages.

Stephen King

The Humble Lover

Praise for The Humble Lover

“Audacious…. As ever, White is a master of social comedy and wry observations.”

Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

The Bad Angel Brothers

Praise for The Bad Angel Brothers

Theroux is at his masterly best.

The New York Times

American Mother

Praise for American Mother

An extraordinary story of grace, forgiveness and moral courage.

Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain

The Morningside

Praise for The Morningside

Forthcoming

The Princess of Las Vegas

Praise for The Princess of Las Vegas

Forthcoming

Thank You for Your Service

Praise for Thank You for Your Service

Finkel’s keen firsthand reportage, its grit and impact only heightened by the literary polish of his prose, gives us one of the best accounts yet of the American experience in Iraq.

 Publishers Weekly (starred review)