Frederick Douglass’s first recorded speech, “I Have Come to Tell You Something About Slavery,” inaugurated a five-decade career as the fiery, eloquent champion of abolition and emancipation, equal rights and human dignity. Join David W. Blight, Douglass’s Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer and editor of a revelatory new LOA collection, for an exploration of the genius of an extraordinary man who escaped slavery to become one of the greatest orators and writers in American history.

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

From Pulp Era pioneers to the radical innovators of the 1960s and ’70s, visionary women writers have been a transformative force in American science fiction. For Women’s History Month, acclaimed SF authors Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Pamela Sargent, and Sheree Renée Thomas join Lisa Yaszek, editor of LOA’s The Future Is Female!, for a conversation about the writers who smashed the genre’s gender barrier to create worlds and works that remain revolutionary.

We thank our promotional partners: the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers, Dottir Press, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.

Back to the Future Is Female!

An unparalleled master of the short story, Bernard Malamud ranks among America’s greatest mythmakers and illuminators of the human heart, blending humor and truth in works that, to quote Saul Bellow, “discovered a sort of communicative genius in the impoverished, harsh jargon of immigrant New York.” To mark publication of the third and final volume of LOA’s Malamud edition, join biographer and editor Philip Davis and acclaimed writers Tobias Wolff and Nicole Krauss for a master class in “The Magic Barrel,” one of Malamud’s most brilliant and beloved tales.

Small Miracles: The Stories of Bernard Malamud

In the hundred years since The Great Gatsby was published, American society and culture have been utterly transformed. Why then do readers and writers continue to turn to this luminous novel of money, class, 1920s glamour, and reckless love to find the elusive key to the meaning of America? What is the secret of its astonishing staying power?

To kick off the Fall 2023 season of LOA LIVE, join Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Wesley Morris (The New York Times) and National Book Award finalist Min Jin Lee (Pachinko) for a conversation with LOA Fitzgerald editor James L. W. West III. What do the immortal figures of Nick Carraway, Daisy and Tom Buchanan, Jordan Baker, and Jay Gatsby have to tell us about what changes and what remains the same in the American experience?

The Mysterious Greatness of Gatsby

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