Join us for online presentations featuring acclaimed literary critics, historians, and other scholars.
• Watch past programs
• Sign up for invitations to future online events and monthly LOA news
Please note: A complete listing of LOA’s Lift Every Voice events centered on African American poetry can be found at africanamericanpoetry.org.
UPCOMING EVENTS

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1
6:00 pm ET
The Heart of American Poetry, with Edward Hirsch
In The Heart of American Poetry, his revelatory new book from Library of America, Edward Hirsch offers deeply personal readings of forty essential American poems we thought we knew. Hirsch joins LOA Live to discuss how these poems have sustained his own life and how they might uplift our diverse but divided nation.
REGISTER
PAST EVENTS
Maxine Hong Kingston and Viet Thanh Nguyen
May 18, 2022
Our Town for Our Time: How Thornton Wilder’s Play Speaks to a Changing America and Around the World
May 3, 2022
World War II Memoirs: The Pacific Theater, with Elizabeth D. Samet and Richard B. Frank
March 16, 2022
Filming Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred, with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
February 24, 2022
Vonnegut at 100, with Robert Weide
January 25, 2022
American Christmas Stories
December 15, 2021
Rediscovering Rachel Carson: The Oceans, the Climate Crisis, and the “Poet of the Sea”
November 22, 2021
Burning Boy: Paul Auster on the Extraordinary Life and Work of Stephen Crane
October 28, 2021
Virginia Hamilton and the Transformation of American Children’s Literature
October 6, 2021
The Light in the Piazza: From Page to Stage
July 14, 2021
On Extended Wings: American Birds and American Writing
June 17, 2021
Joan Didion: The Art of Storytelling
May 19, 2021
E. O. Wilson: An Earth Day Tribute
April 22, 2021
Richard Wright’s The Man Who Lived Underground
April 15, 2021
The Great American Western on Page and Screen
March 30, 2021
Women’s Liberation! Feminist Writings That Inspired a Revolution and Still Can
March 18, 2021
Reading James Baldwin Now: Gabrielle Bellot on If Beale Street Could Talk
March 3, 2021
Poet of the People: The Greatness of Langston Hughes
February 18, 2021
American Democracy: The Task Before Us
January 27, 2021
Peanuts at 70, with Sarah Boxer, Jonathan Lethem, Clifford Thompson, and Chris Ware, moderated by Andrew Blauner
December 16, 202
The Genius of Hemingway: Robert W. Trogdon, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein
December 2, 2020
The Nineteenth Amendment Turns 100: A New Look at the History of Women’s Suffrage, with Susan Ware and Stefanie Peters
November 19, 2020 (video not available
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, with Ruth Franklin, Francine Prose, and John Guare
October 29, 2020
Reading James Baldwin Now: Eddie Glaude Jr., on “The White Man’s Guilt”
September 23, 2020
Thirteen Days: Abraham Lincoln and the Crisis of Presidential Succession, with Ted Widmer
September 10, 2020
It’s a New World, Golde: Classic American Musicals in the 21st Century
August 26, 2020
The Fate of the Earth: Jonathan Schell and His Legacy
August 6, 2020
Who Tells Your Story: Joanne B. Freeman on Hamilton and History
July 28, 2020
Reading James Baldwin Now: Darryl Pinckney on No Name in the Street
July 16, 2020
Reading James Baldwin Now: Farah Jasmine Griffin on “Sonny’s Blues”
June 25, 2020
Harold Bloom and the American Canon from Emerson to Toni Morrison, with David Mikics
June 16, 2020
What Is American Conservatism?, with Andrew J. Bacevich and Sean Wilentz
June 4, 2020