AG Events
Monday, May 13, 2024
6:30 pm Eastern
McNally Jackson Seaport, 4 Fulton St., New York, New York
RSVPs are required for this event. Please click above to register.
“There is something valuable about wanting the small world around you to know how richly you are being moved, so that maybe some total stranger might encounter your stomp, your clap, your shout, and find themselves moved in return,” writes Hanif Abdurraqib. Join him and Jennifer Wilson, two of our most ardent and attuned culture writers, as they talk about writing what they love—from music and literature to home courts, homecomings, and hometown heroes upon the publication of There’s Always This Year, Abdurraqib’s new memoir of basketball and belonging.
“Abdurraqib again shows us new ways to be a social critic, a dreamer, a historian, and a lover of hoop,” writes Ross Gay. “He shows us how he wonders about, and how he is transformed in the wondering about, what it means to belong to a place. And by place I mean the people, the memories, the sorrows, and the tomorrows who are that place.”
This event is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Authors Guild Foundation and McNally Jackson, where we gather writers for conversations that highlight the importance of a rich, diverse literary culture and the authors who contribute to it, and provide a space for writers and readers to connect in-person.
Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His new book is There is Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension. His recent collection of essays, A Little Devil in America, was the winner of the Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burns Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award. His first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was named one of the books of the year by NPR, Esquire, BuzzFeed, O: The Oprah Magazine, Pitchfork, and Chicago Tribune, among others. Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest was a New York Times bestseller and a National Book Critics Circle Award and Kirkus Prize finalist and was longlisted for the National Book Award. His books of poetry include The Crown Ain’t Worth Much and Vintage Sadness. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant.
Jennifer Wilson, winner of the 2022 Nona Balakian Citation for Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle, writes regularly for The Nation and The New Yorker. She teaches arts and culture reporting at the Craig J. Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
