Beyond the Page

with Percival Everett

 Thursday, March 19th @ 7PM

Industrious, irreverent, humble–though he may deny the accusation–Percival Everett, like his fiction, defies categorization. His most recent novel, James, earned both the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the National Book Award, and his 2001 novel Erasure inspired the film American Fiction, which received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2024.

Register for this virtual event at:
https://bit.ly/ILPPercivalEverett

Everett’s other titles include Dr. No, The Trees (finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction), Telephone (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), So Much Blue, and I Am Not Sidney Poitier. Despite these accomplishments, he remains devoted to reviewing his own work critically, and indeed his writing process involves intensive research and revision. Tune in for our conversation with Percival Everett to get a glimpse beyond the page.

Brandis Friedman will moderate the event. Friedman is a writer and anchor for WTTW’s Chicago Tonight and Chicago Tonight: Black Voices, and also serves as a champion for libraries.

This event is intended for adults.

Cristina Heníquez:
Voice, Culture, and Human Connection

Thursday, April 16 at 7 PM

Join critically acclaimed, bestselling author, Cristina Henríquez, for a compelling conversation about her work. Henríquez’s newest book, The Great Divide, is a moving exploration of the people who lived, loved, and labored during the construction of the Panama Canal. Named a New York Times’ Editors’ Choice selection and TIME Magazine “100 Must-Read Books of 2024,” The Great Divide explores history and adversity in a place very special to her – her father’s homeland of Panama.

Henríquez has also authored The Book of Unknown Americans, The World in Half, and Come Together, Fall Apart, all to significant acclaim. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Best American Short Stories 2018, and she is a recipient of the 21st Century Award given by The Chicago Public Library Foundation. She is a graduate of Northwestern University and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and lives in the Chicago suburbs with her family.

Carmen Álvarez will join Henríquez as moderator. Álvarez is an advocate for libraries and Latinx representation in the publishing industry. Her work has appeared in Glamour, Elle, and Vogue and she has a social media presence surpassing 180k followers across platforms.

Register for this virtual event at:
https://bit.ly/ILPCristinaHenríquez

Babel-on
with R.F. Kuang

Tuesday, May 19 at 7PM

R.F. Kuang’s genre-bending fiction broaches ordinarily serious topics from a satirical and fantastical perspective. Academic yet approachable, Kuang’s work combines history, magic, and classical literary tradition to render powerful critiques of academia, the publishing industry, and even contemporary popular culture. 

Her most recent novel, Katabasis, follows two graduate students as they descend into hell after the death of their professor, and the screen rights options to the novel were sold to Amazon MGM Studios for an upcoming TV series before its publication. Kuang’s other bestselling titles include Yellowface, Babel, and The Poppy War trilogy, and she is the recipient of the Nebula Award for Best Novel, the Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Fiction, and the American Book Award. 

Kelly Jensen, an anti-censorship advocate, a senior editor at Book Riot, and writer who has compiled such anthologies as Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World and (Don’t) Call Me Crazy, will be joining Kuang in conversation.

This event is intended for adults.

Register for this virtual event at:
https://bit.ly/ILPKuang