[VIRTUAL] PEN Out Loud: Claudia Rankine with Lauren Michele Jackson

Critically acclaimed poet, essayist, and playwright Claudia Rankine joins PEN Out Loud to commemorate the release of her hybrid book, Just Us: An American Conversation. Completing the trilogy that began with Don’t Let Me Be Lonely and the formidable Citizen, Rankine arranges essays, poems, and images that challenge society to have dynamic and substantive conversations about race and whiteness in America, and “what it takes to stay in the room together.” She will be joined in conversation with professor, author, and culture critic Lauren Michele Jackson for an intimate discussion about a path forward.

This digital event will start at 8pm ET / 5pm PT.

Presented in collaboration with Strand Book Store and Scripps Presents.

ASL interpretive services are provided by ProBono ASL.

Claudia Rankine is a poet, essayist, and playwright. Just Us completes her groundbreaking trilogy, which began with Don’t Let Me Be Lonely and Citizen. She is a MacArthur Fellow and teaches at Yale University.

Lauren Michele Jackson is an assistant professor of English at Northwestern University. She is the author of the critical collection White Negroes and is currently at work on an essay collection about the back. Her essays and criticism have appeared in New York Magazine and The New Yorker, among other places. She lives in Chicago.

About Strand Book Store

Located on 12th and Broadway in New York City, the Strand Book Store is a family-owned, iconic literary destination with more than 90 years of history and 18 miles of books to prove it. Its events feature some of today’s most interesting and provocative authors. Its unparalleled inventory of 2.5 million new, used, and rare books and locally designed totes, gifts, and apparel makes it easy and exciting to get lost in the stacks.

About Scripps Presents

Scripps Presents is an electrifying mix of storytellers and artists, policymakers and musicians—and everything in between. Based at Scripps College, Scripps Presents provides a forum the Claremont Colleges and audiences across Southern California to engage with eye-opening, mind-bending, genre-defying tête-à-têtes with the thinkers and doers, writers and performers, whose passions and perspectives are changing the way we see the world.

The New Republic is an official media partner of PEN Out Loud’s Fall 2020 season, and this program is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

The Asian American Writers’ Workshop, the Austin Public Library Foundation, and Magic City Poetry Festival are regional partners for the fall 2020 season of PEN Out Loud.