Genre: Creative Nonfiction

Time Capsule

11.12.15

Imagine that you’ve been chosen to be the representative of your neighborhood and tasked to fill a time capsule that will be sealed and buried for one hundred years. Write a letter to future inhabitants who may unearth and open your time capsule. Describe the items you've included and explain their value and importance in the world today. Would you choose technological products, favorites books, or personal photographs or letters? What would you hope to offer the future through your selections?

Bluets

Bluets performed by The Living Earth Show

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Composer Luis Escareño's multimedia performance piece is based on Maggie Nelson's book Bluets (Wave Books, 2009) and was recorded live at the Center for New Music in San Francisco. Written as a series of vignettes, the performance features text and narrated monologue adapted from the book, images, and music performed by the Living Earth Show.

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Ta-Nehisi Coates and Poetic Language

"Arguing with poetic language," Ta-Nehisi Coates | LIVE from the NYPL

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"Within that economy of words, you choose words that have certain angles, that have certain edges, that effect people in a certain way." Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose memoir Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, 2015) is a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award, speaks with Khalil Gibran Muhammad about what he learned as a poet and how those skills continue to influence his writing.

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Between the World and Me

Spiegel & Grau

LIVE From NYPL

Khalil Gibran Muhammad

Trumbo

Trumbo Official Trailer #1 (2015) - Bryan Cranston, Diane Lane, Helen Mirren Biopic HD

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"We do what everyone says we can't. We write." Trumbo tells the story of legendary screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo, played by Bryan Cranston, who was blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1940s after he was accused of being a Communist. The film is directed by Jay Roach with a screenplay by John McNamara.

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A Celebration of Primo Levi

Ann Goldstein, David Remnick, John Turturro and Robert Weil: A Celebration of Primo Levi

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"I was captured by the Facist Militia on December 13 1943." So begins Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, republished as If This Is a Man in the new three-volume collection, The Complete Works of Primo Levi (Liveright, 2015), edited by Ann Goldstein. Robert Weil, David Remnick, and John Turturro read selections from the edition at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.

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Sad Songs Say So Much

The Time Is Now

11.5.15

Think of a song that you would consider a lifelong favorite, even if your love for it now is attributed more to a strong sense of nostalgia than to your current musical tastes. Does hearing the song unexpectedly on the car radio or in a restaurant suddenly transport you to a different time or instantly change your mood? Write a personal essay about the memories you have associated with the song, and how the lyrics might have resonated with a certain significance in your past. How has your understanding and appreciation of the song evolved?

Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery: The Soul of an Octopus

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"She could taste with all of her skin, including her eyelids." Author and naturalist Sy Montgomery describes her first meeting with Athena, a giant Pacific octopus, at the New England Aquarium in Boston. This encounter spurred her to write The Soul of an Octopus (Atria Books, 2015), a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

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The Soul of an Octopus

Sally Mann

Reading from “Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs” by Sally Mann

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"Whether I was born this way or my personality was formed by circumstance, I don't think anyone would call me an easy person to deal with..." Photographer Sally Mann reads from her memoir, Hold Still (Little, Brown, 2015), a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

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Paranormal Investigation

The Time Is Now

10.29.15

Research a paranormal story or legend native to your community. Write an essay that meditates on its origins, its historical context, how it characterizes your community today, and what reservations or questions it stirs up in you. Whether you’re the deepest skeptic or the most willing believer, how you engage with these supernatural tales can reveal a lot about your mind and imagination.

The State of Filipino American Literature

The State of Filipino-American Literature

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"When we think of Asian American literature... my hope is that you have makers, but then you have people that are there to receive it." Sarah Gambito talks with Anna Alves, Melissa R. Sipin, and Jessica Hagedorn about the growing audience for Filipino American literature at the launch party for Kuwento: Lost Things (Carayan Press, 2015), a new anthology of Filipino myths, at the Asian American Writers' Workshop in New York City.

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Asian American Writers' Workshop

Carayan Press