Literature for Justice: Five Books that Will Change the Way We Think About Mass Incarceration
Channel: National Book Foundation
Date: 2019-06-14

Launch Event 
FEATURING: RACHEL KUSHNER, DR. HEATHER ANN THOMPSON, JAMES KILGORE, AYELET WALDMAN, THERESA MARTINEZ, KALISHA BUCKHANON, AND ANTONIO BACA

Recorded: October 24, 2018 | 7 p.m.
Los Angeles Public Library, Los Angeles, CA

2008 and 2013 National Book Award Fiction Finalist Rachel Kushner moderated the panel discussion and 2016 Nonfiction Finalist Dr. Heather Ann Thompson hosted the evening.  

Featured authors include James Kilgore (Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time), Ayelet Waldman and Theresa Martinez (Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives From Women’s Prisons), Kalisha Buckhanon (Upstate: A Novel), and Antonio Baca (Jimmy Santiago Baca’s son, A Place to Stand).

Literature can transform the way we look at the world, deepening our understanding of even the most complex issues of today. Recognizing the strength of the written word, the National Book Foundation is launching its Literature for Justice program, which is designed to bring broad awareness to the issue of mass incarceration in America through the power of books. Every year for the next three years the Foundation will announce a list of five books, selected by a committee of writers and experts, that will humanize, contextualize, and render more real the causes, consequences, and complexities of mass incarceration. Join us for the launch of this program at the Los Angeles Public Library, where committee members, authors, experts, activists, and other well-known figures will help announce these illuminating and urgent works.

This event is made possible by the Art for Justice Fund and presented in partnership with the Los Angeles Public Library.