During yet another challenging year for many of us, we once again found comfort in the words and stories of the writers we hosted for author programs and podcast episodes. Take a look back at some of our favorite moments in 2023.
Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of A Man of Two Faces
AWM Author Talks
“That is the power of ‘America’ and the ‘American Dream.’ To get us to say the ‘American Dream’ without realizing it is a euphemism for settler colonialism, for genocide, for enslavement, for war, for appropriation. These are the open secrets of our country.“
Barbara McCaskill, co-director of the Wheatley Peters Project
Nation of Writers: Phillis Wheatley Peters
“Yes she was extraordinarily gifted, precocious, accomplished, talented. All of those words apply. But she also exhibited something that was consistent among so many other Africans in America, particularly enslaved Africans in America, and that was a resilience and ability to find meaning in struggle, to find meaning in trauma.“
Juno Dawson, author of This Book Is Gay
AWM Author Talks
“The young, queer youth of America are being told there is something inherently controversial about them. They’re not trying to ban the books. They’re trying to ban them. That’s what it’s really about. It’s about [people in the U.S.] saying, ‘We don’t want a culture where young, queer people can thrive’ … I don’t think they’re going to win.“
Drew Lopenzina, author of Through an Indian’s Looking-Glass: A Cultural Biography of William Apess, Pequot
Nation of Writers: William Apess
“William Apess says, ‘What to the Native American is the Fourth of July?’ So what Apess is doing in his writings, is he is developing this rhetoric of resistance that literally doesn’t exist yet … He’s trying to figure out what is the rhetorical strategy to get people to understand. And so he’s creating this language that other people like Frederick Douglass will later pick up on.“
Juneteenth Celebration with writer Jaha Nailah Avery; and artists Dorothy Burge, Damon Reed, and Dorian Sylvain
Presented in conjunction with Dark Testament: A Century of Black Writers on Justice
“I truly believe that the African American story is one of joy. Underlying, overall, that it is rooted in joy.“
—Jaha Nailah Avery, author of Those Who Saw the Sun: African American Oral Histories from the Jim Crow South
Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage
Nation of Writers: Zora Neale Hurston
“[For Hurston’s] nonfiction, I would have someone read it because it’s still relevant to how we look at the experiences we’re having today. And how do you still tell your experience and document your pleasure, even in the midst of the horrific time in which we find ourselves.“
Patty Lin, author of End Credits: How I Broke Up with Hollywood
AWM Author Talks
“When I left [Hollywood] in 2009, I had gotten to this point where I didn’t even want to write anymore. This lifelong passion that I had for storytelling had been extinguished by the business of entertainment. And I knew the only way that I would ever be able to rediscover that passion was to work through all this baggage I had and to process these experiences I’d had through writing. So I just started writing about it.“
Theo Downes-Le Guin, trustee of the Ursula K. Le Guin Literary Trust and son of Ursula K. Le Guin
Nation of Writers: Ursula K. Le Guin
“I have spoken with many readers who have seen in The Left Hand of Darkness and Ursula’s other writing on gender, a path forward for their own lives that they might not have found as quickly or in the way they did had it not been for reading that. It speaks to the power of writerly imagination to change the world at an individual level.“
Nicole Chung, author of A Living Remedy
AWM Author Talks
“This book just demanded so much. It demanded everything that I had. And I had to show myself a lot more patience and grace and actually learn to take breaks … I think we all deserve those things. And not because it makes us more productive, makes the writing better, but just because we’re human and we deserve them. The big thing was just recognizing, like, I’m a human. I’m not a robot after all. I need to write like a human and treat myself like a human.“
Nora Brooks Blakely, poet, educator, and daughter of Gwendolyn Brooks
Nation of Writers: Gwendolyn Brooks
“And of course the ‘Paul Robeson’ poem because it ends in those important three lines: ‘We are each others harvest / we are each other’s business / we are each other’s magnitude and bond.’ And I think that all of those are things we need to keep at the forefront of our brains in times like these. These are the things that move us forward, that inspire us, that give us a goalpost to reach toward and a standing pole to hang on to.“