Irish novelist, playwright, and essayist Colm Tóibín has written eleven novels, including the most recent, Long Island, which is the quietly heartbreaking sequel to his novel Brooklyn. Tóibín is a Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and was named the Laureate for Irish Fiction for 2022–2024 by the Arts Council of Ireland. Tóibín has been shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize. Silas House is a bestselling author of seven novels, one book of creative nonfiction, and four plays. His most recent novel, “Lark Ascending”, was a Booklist Editors' Choice and is the winner of the Southern Book Prize, and other honors. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, The New York Times, and many others.

Sebastian Junger is a bestselling author of many books, award-winning journalist, and documentary filmmaker. Junger’s bestselling book “The Perfect Storm” was made into a major motion picture. His latest book “In My Time of Dying” is part medical drama, part searing autobiography, and part rational inquiry into the mystery of death. Rachel Martin is the co-creator and host of the NPR podcast Wild Card, an interview game show about life’s biggest questions. Martin spent six years as a host of NPR’s Morning Edition and was the founding host of NPR’s award-winning morning news podcast Up First.

Jim Sciutto is an anchor for CNN Newsroom. He has reported from more than fifty countries across the globe and has earned Emmy Awards and the Edward R. Murrow Award, among many others. Sciutto’s latest book, “The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China, and the Next World War,” details the realities of this new post–post–Cold War era, the increasingly aligned Russian and Chinese governments, and the flashpoint of a new, global nuclear arms race.

Jane Perlez was a long-time foreign correspondent for The New York Times, serving as Beijing Bureau Chief until 2019. Perlez was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 2009 for coverage of the war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She is currently a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, and producer and host of the podcast Face-Off: U.S. vs China.

Joan Baez has performed for more than 60 years, releasing more than 30 albums. She has been honored with both the Recording Academy and the Latin Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award, and her 1960 debut album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Amnesty International presented her with its first Joan Baez Award for Outstanding Inspirational Service in the Global Fight for Human Rights. Her first book of poetry “When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance: Poems,” connects fans to the real heart of who Joan Baez is as a person, as a daughter and sister, and as an artist who has inspired millions.

Diane Rehm is a journalist and host of the Diane Rehm: On My Mind podcast. She also hosts a monthly book club series, Diane Rehm Book Club, at WAMU, the NPR member station in Washington, D.C. Rehm is the former NPR talk show host of The Diane Rehm Show, which was distributed nationally and internationally, with a weekly on-air audience of nearly three million.

Amor Towles is the author of The New York Times bestsellers “The Lincoln Highway,” “A Gentleman in Moscow,” and “Rules of Civility.” His novels have collectively sold millions of copies and have been translated into more than 35 languages. In “Table for Two,” Towles shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories based in New York City and a novella set in Golden Age Hollywood. Written with his signature wit, humor, and sophistication, “Table for Two” is another glittering addition to Towles’ canon of stylish and transporting fiction.

Alexandra Jacobs is a book critic for The New York Times and the author of “Still Here: The Madcap, Nervy, Singular Life of Elaine Stritch.” She has contributed to many other publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Observer, and Entertainment Weekly.

Bianca Bosker is The New York Times bestselling author of “Cork Dork” and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. In “Get the Picture,” Bosker throws herself into the nerve center of art, and the people who live for it: gallerists, collectors, curators, and of course artists themselves. Probing everything from cave paintings to Instagram, and the science of sight to the importance of beauty, Get the Picture examines art’s role in our culture, our economy, and our hearts. Bosker’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Best American Travel Writing, and has been recognized with awards from the New York Press Club, Society of Professional Journalists, and more.

Patrick Bringley is the author of “All the Beauty in the World,” a memoir about his decade working as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was named a best book of the year by the New York Public Library, NPR, the Financial Times, Audible, and The Sunday Times (London), which selected it as the outstanding art book of 2023. Bringley has spoken at museums across the country, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the National Gallery of Art, and is adapting his book into a one-man play premiering this fall at the Charleston Literary Festival.

Renée Fleming is one of the most acclaimed singers of our time, performing on the stages of the world’s greatest opera houses and concert halls. She is also a leading advocate for research at the intersection of arts, health, and neuroscience. Her book, “Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness” contains essays from preeminent scientists, therapists, educators, and physicians about the powerful impact of music and the arts on health and the human experience.

Richard Powers is the author of 13 novels. His 2019 book, “The Overstory” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

ANN PATCHETT is the author of nine novels, four books of nonfiction and one children’s book. Patchett has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a National Humanities Medal, England’s Women’s Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Book Sense Book of the Year, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her novel “The Dutch House” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In November, 2011, she opened Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee. She has since become a spokesperson for independent booksellers, championing books and bookstores.

KEVIN WILSON is the author of two story collections, and four novels. His book “Nothing to See Here” was a New York Times bestseller and a “Read with Jenna” book club selection. His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Southern Review, One Story, A Public Space, and has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2020 and 2021, as well as The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012. Wilson is an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of the South.

Bright is a Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and a Visiting Professor at Georgetown Law. He has tried capital cases in many states, including four capital cases before the United States Supreme Court. He previously served as president of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta. Subjects of his litigation, teaching and writing include capital punishment, legal representation for the poor, and racial discrimination in the criminal courts. Bright has received the American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall Award.

Social Justice activist Bryan Stevenson, in the foreword, called Bright’s new book “an urgently needed analysis of our collective failure…”

James Forman Jr. is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Forman’s scholarship focuses on schools, police, and prisons. Forman’s first book, “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America", was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Forman was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He is the son of renowned civil rights leader James Forman.

Jill Lepore is a professor of history and of law at Harvard University. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her many books include the best-selling “These Truths: A History of the United States,” was named one of Time magazine’s top ten non-fiction books of the decade. Lepore’s “The Deadline: Essays” collects forty-six of her essays that offer a prismatic portrait of Americans’ techno-utopianism, frantic fractiousness, and unprecedented yet armed aimlessness.

Congressman Jamie Raskin represents Maryland’s 8th Congressional District. He serves as the Ranking Member on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. Raskin also served on the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. He has authored several books, including the New York Times #1 best-seller, “Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy.”

Geraldine Brooks grew up in Australia and became a journalist with The Sydney Morning Herald, and later with The Wall Street Journal. Brooks was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 2006 for her novel “March”. Many of her novels and nonfiction books have been New York Times bestsellers. Her first novel, “Year of Wonders”, is an international bestseller. It has been translated into more than 25 languages. In 2016, Brooks was named an Officer in the Order of Australia.

Jacki Lyden is an award-winning former NPR host and foreign correspondent of over three decades. She is the author of the bestselling memoir “Daughter of the Queen of Sheba”, which was published in twelve countries. A frequent speaker on the topic of mental health, the American Psychiatric Association named her “Patient Advocate of the Year” in 2021. Lyden is a proud board member of the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center and Writers for Democratic Action, both groups promoting democracy through literature.

New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman, wrote “Confidence Man” in 2022. Ms. Haberman joined The New York Times in 2015 and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on the investigations into Donald Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. She has twice been a member of a team that was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, in 2021 for reporting on the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus, and in 2022 for coverage related to the January 6th riot at the Capitol.

Laura Coates is a CNN Host and Senior Legal Analyst who specializes in the intersection of civil rights and criminal prosecution. A former federal prosecutor, she served as Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, as well as a Trial Attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice during the Bush and Obama administrations. She is the bestselling author of “Just Pursuit: A Black Prosecutor’s Fight for Fairness.”

Josh Chin wrote “Surveillance State: Inside China’s Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control” with fellow Wall Street Journal writer, Liza Lin. He tells the gripping story of how China’s Communist Party is building a new kind of political control: shaping the will of the people through the sophisticated—and often brutal—harnessing of data. For more than a decade, Chin has covered politics and tech in China for The Wall Street Journal. He led an investigative team that won The Gerald Loeb Award for international reporting in 2018 for a series exposing the Chinese government’s pioneering embrace of digital surveillance. He was named a National Fellow at New America in 2020, and is a recipient of the Don Bolles Medal, awarded to investigative journalists who have exhibited courage in standing up against intimidation.

Evan Osnos joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2008 and covers politics and foreign affairs. His book “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China'', is based on eight years of living in Beijing. “Age of Ambition'' won the 2014 National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Previously, Osnos worked as Beijing Bureau Chief for the Chicago Tribune, where he was part of a team that won a 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting. He is a CNN contributor and a frequent guest on The Daily Show, Fresh Air, and other programs.

Maggie Nelson is a writer working in autobiography, art criticism, theory, feminism, history, aesthetic theory, philosophy, scholarship, and poetry. Nelson received a 2016 MacArthur Fellowship, a 2012 Creative Capital Literature Fellowship, a 2011 NEA Fellowship in Poetry, and a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction. Other honors include a 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation/Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant. Nelson has written several acclaimed books of poetry and prose, including the National Book Critics Circle Award winner The Argonauts. She currently teaches at the University of Southern California.

Eula Biss is the author of four books and has been recognized with a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library. Biss’ books have been translated into a dozen languages. As a 2023 National Fellow at New America, she is at work on a collection of essays about how private property has shaped our world. She currently teaches nonfiction for the Bennington Writing Seminars.

Charles Booker represented the 43rd District in the Kentucky House of Representatives, where he served on the economic development and workforce, judiciary, and natural resources and energy committees. A graduate of the University of Louisville and its Brandeis School of Law, Booker is a Bingham Fellow and a Bloomberg Innovation Delivery Team fellow. He is the founder of the advocacy group Hood to the Holler, which continues the work of his campaign, building bridges between previously siloed communities.

Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and Chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. He is a former president of the American Academy of Religion. Glaude is the author of several important books including “Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul.” Glaude is a columnist for Time magazine and an MSNBC contributor on programs like Morning Joe, and Deadline Whitehouse. He also regularly appears on Meet the Press.

James Bridle is an artist, technologist and philosopher whose artworks have been commissioned by galleries and institutions and exhibited worldwide, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Oslo Architecture Triennale, the Istanbul Design Biennial, and the Design Museum, London. Bridle’s writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Wired, The Atlantic, The New Statesman, The Guardian, and the Financial Times. They lecture regularly on radio, at conferences, universities, and events, including South by Southwest, the Global Art Forum, and TED.

Claire Evans is a writer and musician exploring ecology, technology, and culture. She is the singer of the Grammy-nominated pop group YACHT, and co-founder of VICE’s imprint for speculative fiction, Terraform. Evans’ 2018 book, Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet, has been translated into five languages. Her writing has appeared in VICE, The Guardian, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Eye on Design, among others.

Geraldine Brooks grew up in Australia and became a journalist with The Sydney Morning Herald, and later with The Wall Street Journal. Brooks was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 2006 for her novel “March.” Many of her novels and nonfiction books have been New York Times bestsellers. Her first novel, “Year of Wonders,” is an international bestseller, translated into more than 25 languages. In 2016, Brooks was named an Officer in the Order of Australia.

Gal Beckerman is an author and the senior editor for books at The Atlantic. Before joining The Atlantic, Beckerman was an editor at The New York Times Book Review for six years. He also served as the opinion editor at the Forward newspaper and a staff editor and writer at the Columbia Journalism Review. Beckerman’s writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The New Republic, and Bookforum. His first book, “When They Come for Us We’ll Be Gone,” was chosen as a book of the year by The New Yorker and The Washington Post.

Keri Blakinger is an investigative reporter based in Texas, covering criminal justice and injustice for The Marshall Project. She previously worked for the Houston Chronicle and her writing has appeared in the New York Daily News, the BBC, VICE, and The New York Times. Blakinger was a member of the Houston Chronicle's Pulitzer-finalist team in 2018, and her 2019 coverage of women's jails for The Washington Post Magazine helped earn a National Magazine Award.

Piper Kerman is the author of the memoir “Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison.” The book has been adapted by Jenji Kohan into an Emmy Award-winning original series for Netflix, which ran for seven seasons. Kerman collaborates with nonprofits, and philanthropies, and serves on the board of directors of the Women’s Prison Association. She is also on the advisory boards of the PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship, InsideOUT Writers, Healing Broken Circles, and JustLeadershipUSA.

Anna Quindlen is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, novelist, and opinion columnist. She is the best-selling author of nine novels, including “Every Last One,” and “Still Life with Bread Crumbs.” Her memoir “Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake”, published in 2012, was a #1 New York Times bestseller.

Quindlen’s book “A Short Guide to a Happy Life” has sold more than a million copies. While a columnist at The New York Times, Quindlen won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

Amy Bloom is the author of four novels and three collections of short stories. Her first book of nonfiction, “Normal: Transsexual CEOs, Crossdressing Cops and Hermaphrodites with Attitudes,” is a staple of university sociology and biology courses. Her most recent book is the widely acclaimed New York Times best-selling memoir, “In Love”.

Bloom has written for magazines such as The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Elle, The Atlantic Monthly, Slate, and Salon, and her work has been translated into fifteen languages. She is the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing at Wesleyan University.

Moisés Naím is an internationally-syndicated columnist and best-selling author. He is the chief international columnist for El País and La Repubblica, the largest daily newspapers in Spain and Italy. His columns have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg Businessweek, Newsweek, Time, Le Monde, El Estadão, and Berliner Zeitung. Dr. Naím is a Distinguished Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC. He is the founder and Chairman of the Board of the Group of Fifty (G50), which brings together top-flight progressive Latin American business leaders, and is a member of the board of directors of several global companies.

Ari Shapiro has been one of the hosts of All Things Considered, NPR's award-winning afternoon newsmagazine, since 2015. Shapiro has reported from above the Arctic Circle and aboard Air Force One. He has covered wars in Iraq, Ukraine, and Israel, and he has filed stories from dozens of countries and most of the 50 states. Shapiro's reporting has been consistently recognized by his peers. He has won two national Edward R. Murrow awards, and additional awards from the Columbia Journalism Review, The American Bar Association, and the American Judges Association.

Jamie Raskin represents Maryland’s 8th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was renamed Chair of the Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties for the 117th Congress. Representative Raskin’s moving memoir “Unthinkable,” tells the story of the forty-five days at the start of 2021 that permanently changed Raskin’s life as he confronted the painful loss of his son to suicide, lived through the violent insurrection in our nation’s Capitol, and was appointed House lead impeachment manager in the effort to hold President Trump accountable for inciting the political violence. He is a former constitutional law professor.

Fiona Hill is recognizable to many Americans as the key impeachment witness during the U.S. House of Representatives Trump-Ukraine impeachment inquiry, and its investigation into charges of presidential misconduct. Growing up in a working-class town in northeast England, she rose to become Senior Director of European and Russian Affairs at the U. S. National Security Council. She served three presidents: two Republicans and one Democrat. Her poignant memoir “There Is Nothing for You Here” reveals how declining opportunity has set America on the grim path of modern Russia. Dr. Hill is a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at The Brookings Institution

Roya Hakakian is the author of three books in English and has published two collections of poetry in Persian. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and on NPR’s All Things Considered. Hakakian has collaborated on journalistic programming for network television, including 60 Minutes. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and served on the editorial board of World Affairs. Since 2015, she has taught at THREAD, a writing workshop at Yale, and is a fellow at the Davenport College at Yale.

Jen Balderama is an editor in the Opinions section of The Washington Post, where she edits columns and essays by staff and contributing writers. Previously, she was an editor at The New York Times Book Review and on the national desk of The Times. For several years Balderama worked as a freelance editor of book-length nonfiction, novels, and essays. She was also a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, where she studied literary and cultural criticism. Her writing has appeared in Slate, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other publications.

Amy Zegart is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, as well as a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies at Stanford University. She is a contributing writer to The Atlantic and has written five previous books, including co-authoring with Condoleezza Rice “Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity,” based on their popular Stanford MBA course. Zegart specializes in U.S. intelligence, emerging technologies, national security, grand strategy, and global political risk management.

Scott Shane is a journalist and author who spent 15 years covering national security and other subjects for The New York Times, where he won the Pulitzer Prize with Times colleagues in 2017 and in 2018 for stories on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. His most recent book is “Objective Troy: A Terrorist, A President, and the Rise of the Drone.” Shane has written on interrogation and torture, terrorism and targeted killing, WikiLeaks and secrecy, the National Security Agency and many other topics. He reported for 21 years for The Baltimore Sun and is a former Moscow correspondent whose first book, “Dismantling Utopia,” is a firsthand account of the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Laurence Leamer is a New York Times best-selling writer and journalist. He is a former Ford Fellow in International Development at the University of Oregon and an International Fellow at Columbia University. In addition to Leamer’s eighteen books, he has written for New York Magazine, The Washingtonian, Harper’s, and The New York Times Magazine. He is regarded as an expert on the Kennedy family and has appeared on NBC Nightly News, CNN, and NPR discussing American politics. Leamer has written several best-selling biographies of other Americans, including Johnny Carson, the Reagan family, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Leo Braudy is a cultural historian and film critic. He is a professor of English and American Literature at the University of Southern California. His work appears in journals such as American Film, Film Quarterly, Genre, Novel, Partisan Review, and Prose Studies—to name a few. Braudy’s book “Jean Renoir: The World of His Films” was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Harper’s.

Janna Levin is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University. A Guggenheim Fellow, Janna has contributed to an understanding of black holes, the cosmology of extra dimensions, and gravitational waves in the shape of spacetime. She is the presenter of NOVA’s Black Hole Apocalypse special, aired on PBS. Levin’s Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space explains the discovery of the century: the sound of spacetime ringing from the collision of two black holes over a billion years ago.

Physicist Frank Wilczek and Professor Janna Levin discuss Wilczek’s book, “Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality.” Frank Wilczek jointly won The Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004, for his graduate work at Princeton with David Gross. He was among the earliest MacArthur Fellows and has won many awards both for his scientific work and his writing, which includes hundreds of articles in leading scientific journals. His “Wilczek’s Universe” column appears regularly in the Wall Street Journal. Wilczek is the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Janna Levin is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University. A Guggenheim Fellow, Janna has contributed to an understanding of black holes, the cosmology of extra dimensions, and gravitational waves in the shape of spacetime. She is the presenter of NOVA’s Black Hole Apocalypse special, aired on PBS. Levin’s Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space explains the discovery of the century: the sound of spacetime ringing from the collision of two black holes over a billion years ago.

Peter Sagal is the host of the Peabody Award-winning NPR news quiz show “Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!” He is a playwright, screenwriter, amateur athlete, and host of several documentaries, including Constitution USA with Peter Sagal on PBS. Sagal has contributed to Opera News, Saveur, Finesse, The New York Times Magazine, Chicago magazine, and was the "Road Scholar" columnist for Runner’s World. He's also won the Kurt Vonnegut Humor Award from the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. Sagal is host to a number of podcasts, including HBO’s “The Chernobyl Podcast” and “The Plot Against America Podcast.”

Kathryn Paige Harden is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, where she leads the Developmental Behavior Genetics lab and co-directs the Texas Twin Project. Her research has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Huffington Post, among others. In 2017, Harden was honored with an award from the American Psychological Association for her distinguished scientific contributions to the study of genetics and human individual differences.

Carl Zimmer writes the "Matter" column for The New York Times and has frequently contributed to The Atlantic, National Geographic, Time, and Scientific American. He has won the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Journalism Award three times. Zimmer teaches science writing at Yale, and has been a guest on NPR’s "RadioLab," "Science Friday," and "Fresh Air." Zimmer is the author of fourteen books about science.

Kurt Andersen is the bestselling author of the novels “Heyday, “Turn of the Century,” and “True Believers.” He is also a contributor to Vanity Fair and The New York Times and was the host and co-creator of Studio 360, the Peabody Award-winning public radio show and podcast. Andersen writes for television, film, and the stage. He regularly appears as a commentator on MSNBC. Andersen co-founded Spy magazine, served as editor in chief of New York Magazine, and was a cultural columnist and critic for Time Magazine and The New Yorker.

Daron Acemoglu is an Institute Professor at MIT and an elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, the British Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, the European Economic Association, and the Society of Labor Economists. Acemoglu is the author of five books. His academic work covers a wide range of areas, including political economy, economic development, economic growth, technological change, inequality, labor economics, and economics of networks. Daron Acemoglu has received numerous awards including the inaugural T. W. Schultz Prize from the University of Chicago, the Carnegie Fellowship in 2017, the Global Economy Prize in 2019, and the 'CME Group-Mathematical and Statistical Research Institute Prize in 2021.

Maria Konnikova is the author, most recently of “The Biggest Bluff'', a New York Times bestseller, one of the Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2020, and a finalist for The Telegraph Best Sports Writing Award for 2021. She is a regularly contributing writer for The New Yorker and has won numerous awards, including the 2019 Excellence in Science Journalism Award. Konnikova’s writing has been featured in The Best American Science and Nature Writing and translated into over twenty languages. She also hosts the podcast “The Grift”. Konnikova’s podcasting work earned her a National Magazine Award nomination in 2019.

Dr. Slaughter has written or edited seven other books. She is also a frequent contributor to various publications, including The Atlantic, the Financial Times, and Project Syndicate. Sarah J. Jackson is a Presidential Associate Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and Co-Director of the Media, Inequality, & Change Center. Dr. Jackson is the author of two books, a 2019 New America National Fellow and 2020 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Her next book traces the contributions of Black media-makers to American democracy.

Caitlin Dickerson is a staff writer for The Atlantic, where she writes about immigration and the American experience. Dickerson joined The Atlantic in 2021 after four years at The New York Times, where she broke news about changes in deportation and detention policy, and profiled the lives of immigrants. Dickerson has also contributed to the Times’ audio work, as a frequent guest and guest-host for The Daily. Dickerson was previously an investigative reporter at NPR, where she won a Peabody Award.

Thom Shanker was named director of the Project for Media and National Security at George Washington University in June 2021, after nearly 25 years with The New York Times, including 13 years as Pentagon correspondent covering the Department of Defense, overseas combat operations and national security policy. Most recently, he had served as Deputy Washington Editor, managing coverage of the military, diplomacy, and veterans affairs.

Mr. Shanker is co-author of the best-seller "Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda."

Francis Fukuyama is a Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Mosbacher Director of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy. Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, “The End of History and the Last Man,” has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His most recent book, “Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment,” was published in Sept. 2018. Dr. Fukuyama is a member of the American Political Science Association and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Amy Edmondson is a Professor at the Harvard Business School. She has been recognized by the biannual Thinkers 50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and most recently was ranked #3. Her most recent book, “The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth”, offers a practical guide for organizations serious about success in the modern economy and has been translated into 11 languages.

Jason Stanley is a best-selling author of five books, including “How Propaganda Works,” winner of the Prose Award in Philosophy from the Association of American Publishers, and “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.” Stanley serves on the Advisory Board of the Prison Policy Initiative and writes frequently about propaganda, free speech, mass incarceration, democracy, and authoritarianism for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Boston Review.

Ellen Nakashima is a national security reporter for The Washington Post who writes about cyber, intelligence and related issues. In 2018, she and her colleagues won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of Russia’s efforts to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. In 2014, she was part of a team awarded a Pulitzer for reporting on the hidden scope of National Security Agency surveillance and its policy implications. Since joining The Washington Post in 1995, she also has served as a Southeast Asia correspondent and reported on the White House and Virginia politics.

Rob Stein is a correspondent and senior editor on NPR's science desk. Stein covers health and medicine, focusing on stories that illustrate the intersection of science, health, politics, social trends, ethics, and federal science policy. Stein's work has been honored by many organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Association for Cancer Research, and the Association of Health Care Journalists. He was twice part of NPR teams that won Peabody Awards.

Elizabeth Kolbert is a staff writer for The New Yorker. Her most recent book, “Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future,” was published in February. In it, Kolbert explores whether we can change nature to save it, in Earth's new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. She meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth. The New York Times praises “Under a White Sky” as: "...important, necessary, urgent, and phenomenally interesting."

Kolbert is also the author of “The Sixth Extinction,” which received the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 2015, and “Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change.” She is a two-time National Magazine Award winner, and has received a Heinz Award , a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Academies communications award. Kolbert is a visiting fellow at the Center for Environmental Studies at Williams College, and was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at The New Republic and the author of “Overheated: How Capitalism Broke The Planet—And How We Fight Back.” Her work has appeared in The Intercept, The New York Times, The Nation, Rolling Stone, and The Guardian, among other outlets. Aronoff is the co-editor of “We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style and the co-author of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal.” She sits on the editorial board of Dissent and the advisory board of Jewish Currents.

Nicole Krauss is best known for her novels "Forest Dark," and "Great House," and a finalist for the National Book Award and the Orange Prize. Her fiction has been published in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, and The Best American Short Stories, and her books have been translated into thirty-seven languages. She is currently the first Writer-in-Residence at the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University.

Elizabeth Blair is an Award-winning senior producer and reporter on the Arts Desk of NPR. Blair produces, edits, and reports arts and cultural segments for NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. She has reported on a range of topics from arts funding to the MeToo movement. Blair has overseen several large-scale series including The NPR 100, which explored landmark musical works of the 20th Century, and In Character, which probed the origins of iconic American fictional characters. Blair's work has received several honors, including two Peabody Awards and a Gracie.

Yo-Yo Ma has recorded more than 100 albums, is the winner of 18 Grammy Awards, and has performed for nine American presidents, most recently on the occasion of President Biden’s inauguration. He has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of the Arts, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Kennedy Center Honors. He has been a UN Messenger of Peace since 2006, and was recognized as one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020.

Teddy Abrams is the acclaimed Music Director of both the Louisville Orchestra and the Britt Festival Orchestra. Abrams has fostered interdisciplinary collaborations with organizations including the Louisville Ballet, the Center for Interfaith Relations, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Speed Art Museum, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. His rap-opera, ‘The Greatest: Muhammad Ali,” premiered in 2017, celebrating Louisville’s hometown hero. Abrams’ work with the Louisville Orchestra has been profiled on CBS News Sunday Morning, NPR, and in The Wall Street Journal.

Mara Liasson is a national political correspondent for NPR. Her reports can be heard regularly on NPR's award-winning newsmagazine programs Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Liasson provides extensive coverage of politics and policy from Washington, DC — focusing on the White House and Congress — and on political trends beyond the Beltway.

Nathaniel Rich is the author of several books and a journalist at The New York Times Magazine. Mr. Rich’s 2019 book "Losing Earth: A Recent History" received awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists and the American Institute of Physicists and was a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. He is a regular contributor to The Atlantic, Harper's, and The New York Review of Books. Rich’s next book, titled "Second Nature," will be published in March 2021.

Terry Tempest Williams writes about social and environmental justice, including ecology and the protection of public lands. She has received a John Muir Award for American Conservation and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Ms. Williams 2019 book "Erosion: Essays of Undoing" examines the cultural and environmental issues of public land, and climate crisis. She is the current writer-in-residence at Harvard Divinity School.

Daphne Merkin has written as a book critic for The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. She is also an author of essay collections and a novel titled "Enchantment." She is a contributing editor to Tablet Magazine.

Danielle Allen is a classicist, political scientist, and professor at Harvard University where she is also the Director of the Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics. She has written for The Washington Post and published several books and scholarly articles. Professor Allen chaired the bipartisan Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Wright Thompson is a senior writer at ESPN, and author of two books. His writing covers a wide range of topics from sports to history, to his latest book about Bourbon and the history of the Van Winkle family.

Andrew Zimmern is a four-time James Beard Award-winning TV personality, chef, writer and teacher, and is regarded as one of the most knowledgeable personalities in the food world. Zimmern is the creator, executive producer and host of Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods franchise, Andrew Zimmern’s Driven by Food and the Emmy award-winning The Zimmern List.

Amanda Little is the author of two books, and her articles have been published in the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Wired, and The Washington Post. Little is a professor of investigative journalism and science writing at Vanderbilt University. She has received a number of awards for excellence in environmental journalism.

Alison Aubrey is a correspondent for NPR News, where her stories can be heard on Morning Edition and All Things Considered. She's also a contributor to the PBS NewsHour and is a co-host of NPR's Life Kit podcast. Along with her NPR science desk colleagues, Aubrey won a 2019 Gracie Award. She is the recipient of a 2018 James Beard broadcast award, and a 2016 James Beard Award for a PBS/NPR collaboration.

Amaryllis Fox is a writer, television host, public speaker, and former CIA officer. Fox’s memoir, Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA, examines her ten years hunting the world’s terrorists in sixteen countries while marrying and giving birth to a daughter. Fox has covered current events and offered analysis for CNN, National Geographic, Al Jazeera, and the BBC. She is the co-host of History Channel’s series American Ripper and the host of the Netflix documentary series The Business of Drugs.

Melissa Block was the host of All Things Considered on NPR for many years. She now brings her signature combination of warmth and incisive reporting as special correspondent and guest host to NPR’s news programs. She has earned some of the top honors in broadcast journalism. Her reporting has taken her everywhere from the Mississippi Gulf Coast to the heart of Rio de Janeiro; from rural Mozambique to the farthest reaches of Alaska and Sichuan, China.

Ms. Keane was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship for fiction, and has published two other books. Most recently, Ask Again, Yes, was an instant New York Times bestseller, and has been translated in twenty-one languages.

Maureen Corrigan is the book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air and writes the ‘Book World’ column for the Washington Post. She is a professor of literary criticism at Georgetown University and an author herself.

Groopman holds an endowed Chair of Medicine and Chief of Experimental Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Snyder is the Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at The Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.

This interview podcast will feature carefully matched pairs of nationally recognized writers in the kind of thoughtful and candid conversations you have come to expect from Kentucky Author Forum. Our guest authors and experts will discuss literature, politics, history, economics, science, and culture, and every episode will be introduced by NPR's Robert Siegel.

Watch for our first new episode. which features MSNBC political analyst Chuck Rosenberg in conversation with The Atlantic columnist David Frum. These two experts will

discuss politics and government during these challenging times, and much more.