Library of America presents LOA LIVE

episodes

Library of America is a nonprofit organization that champions our nation’s cultural heritage by publishing what is widely recognized as the definitive collection of great American writing. Hosted by LOA president and publisher Max Rudin, LOA LIVE features illuminating and entertaining talks with acclaimed authors, critics, historians, and other special guests. To learn more and browse our catalog, visit loa.org. LOA LIVE programs are made possible by contributions from friends like you, and we encourage you to consider making a donation at loa.org/loalive to support future presentations.

March 20, 2026

Imagining Independence; or, Why Does Rip Van Winkle Sleep Through the Revolution?

Hosted by Max Rudin

Thursday, March 12—Inaugurating a series of programs to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, authors and scholars Michael Go…

March 7, 2026

Look & See

Hosted by Ben Lasman

February 24—Following a screening of the documentary Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry during the weekend of Feb. 20–22, 2026, filmmaker Laura D…

February 23, 2026

American Masterpiece

Brenda Wineapple and Geoff Wisner

Hosted by Max Rudin

Wednesday, February 18—Called “the greatest American diary of the nineteenth century,” the journal of the patrician New York City lawyer George Temple…

December 23, 2025

Liberation & the Literature of the Women’s Movement

Bess Wohl and Honor Moore

Hosted by Max Rudin

Wednesday, December 17—“The best play I’ve seen this season,” says New York Magazine’s Sara Holdren about Liberation, Bess Wohl’s moving exploration o…

December 3, 2025

Helen Vendler’s Sixth Sense

Stephanie Burt, Dan Chiasson, Christopher Spaide, and Kamran Javadizadeh

Hosted by Max Rudin

December 2—Groundbreaking critic and revered scholar Helen Vendler could “second-guess the sixth sense of the poem,” wrote Nobel laureate Seamus Heane…

November 25, 2025

The Radical Imagination of Octavia E. Butler

Imani Perry and Tananarive Due

Hosted by Max Rudin

Monday, November 24—Like a signal from a distant star, Octavia E. Butler’s luminous fiction jumps galactic distances to relay searing, often surprisin…

September 11, 2025

Reading Democracy in America Now

Joanne Freeman, Steven Hahn, James T. Kloppenberg, and Olivier Zunz

Hosted by Max Rudin

Wednesday, September 10—Two centuries on, Alexis de Tocqueville’s brilliant ⁠Democracy in America⁠ remains the most prescient account of the virtues, …

May 9, 2025

Remembering Victory

Elizabeth D. Samet and Phil Klay

Hosted by Max Rudin

Thursday, May 8—Eighty years ago the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany closed the curtain on six years of total war in Europe, a conflict that t…

April 18, 2025

The Greatness of Sylvia Plath

Sarah Ruden

Hosted by Max Rudin

Thursday, April 17—Sylvia Plath’s bold and incandescent poems have struck a deep chord with generations of readers. A visionary writer who scaled asto…

March 12, 2025

What Is Totalitarianism?

David Bromwich, Seyla Benhabib, Roger Berkowitz, and Thomas Wild

Hosted by Max Rudin

Tuesday, March 11—“The rise of totalitarian governments,” Hannah Arendt wrote, “is the central event of our world.” In her masterpiece, The Origins of…

November 15, 2024

“A Place None of Us Know”

Honor Moore and David L. Ulin

Hosted by Max Rudin

Thursday, November 14—Grief, Joan Didion wrote, “turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” In two luminous memoirs, The Year of Magi…

May 22, 2024

Faith, Fiction, and Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer

Paul Elie and Ayana Mathis

Hosted by Max Rudin

Tuesday, May 21—Published in 1961, Walker Percy’s ⁠The Moviegoer⁠ announced a major new voice in American fiction. In this lush, New Orleans–based nov…

April 16, 2024

Robert Frost

Tracy K. Smith and Jay Parini

Hosted by Max Rudin

Monday, April 15—Why does the poet Robert Frost continue to beguile and intrigue readers 150 years after his birth? What is it about the four-time Pul…

March 7, 2024

Deadline Artist

Dan Barry, Mike Barnicle, and Mike Lupica

Hosted by Max Rudin

Wednesday, March 6—Brash, opinionated, funny, and an indefatigable champion of the vulnerable over the rich and well-connected, Jimmy Breslin brought …

February 7, 2024

Black Writers of the Founding Era

James G. Basker and Annette Gordon-Reed

Hosted by Max Rudin

Tuesday, February 6—The story told and retold about America’s founding often excludes the Black communities that existed during the Revolution and the…

January 18, 2024

Why Don DeLillo Deserves the Nobel

Gerald Howard and Mark Osteen

Hosted by Max Rudin

Wednesday, January 17, 2024—Don DeLillo is “our most necessary writer,” says his longtime editor Gerald Howard, one whose “intuitions and sentences ha…

December 6, 2023

I’m Dreaming of a Noir Christmas

Hosted by Max Rudin

Tuesday, December 5, 2023—To cap LOA LIVE’s fall season, a killer lineup of panelists explores classic crime fiction of the 1960s, from Donald Westlak…

November 9, 2023

Black Writers in Paris, the FBI, and a Lost 1960s Classic

Merve Emre, Adam Bradley, and William Maxwell

Hosted by Max Rudin

Wednesday, November 8—The expatriate literary scene in Paris that flourished around Richard Wright and James Baldwin produced brilliant writing, intel…

October 26, 2023

The Startling Theater of Adrienne Kennedy

Margo Jefferson, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Marc Robinson

Hosted by Max Rudin

Wednesday, October 25—For more than sixty years, in such works as Funnyhouse of a Negro and Ohio State Murders, Adrienne Kennedy has bewitched audienc…

September 25, 2023

The Mysterious Greatness of Gatsby

Wesley Morris, Min Jin Lee, and James L. W. West III

Hosted by Max Rudin

Thursday, September 21—In the hundred years since ⁠The Great Gatsby⁠ was published, American society and culture have been utterly transformed. Why th…