PEN America Authors’ Evenings
PEN America Authors’ Evenings are signature fundraising events that bring together writers, filmmakers, readers, and activists and give our supporters the unique opportunity to engage with artists in an intimate setting. PEN America has hosted literary icons like Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, and Claudia Rankine as well as new generations of luminaries including PEN America President Ayad Akhtar, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, James McBride, Lynn Nottage, Hernan Diaz, Zadie Smith, and Ben Lerner.
In addition to discussions with artists about their craft, our guests enjoy thought-provoking conversations with novelists, poets, playwrights, journalists, and leading voices in politics, economics, social sciences, and history. Beyond the printed page, we’ve held Authors’ Evenings celebrating filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, Barry Jenkins, and the creators, directors, and casts of prestigious series such as The Queen’s Gambit and Succession.
These evenings not only raise vital funds for PEN America programs, they are an exemplar of our mission to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. All donations to attend these evenings are 100% tax-deductible.
If you are interested in hosting an Author’s Evening, whether in person or online, please contact Renee Lamarque at [email protected]. See our past Authors’ Evenings.
Authors’ Evenings Co-Chairs
Tom Healy • Evangeline Morphos • John Habich Solomon • Eve Stuart
Fall/Winter 2024 Authors’ Evenings
James Traub
September 24, 2024
7:00-9:00 pm ET
True Believer
In True Believer, Traub details how Hubert Humphrey was liberalism’s most dedicated defender, and its most public and tragic sacrifice.
Alan Govenar in conversation with Phaedra Michelle Scott
September 24, 2024
6:30-9:30 pm CT
Stompin' at the Savoy
In this invigorating, humorous, and thought-provoking oral autobiography, Govenar captures the sound and spirit of Norma Miller’s voice as she recalls her early years and coming of age as a determined young dancer during the heyday of swing.
David Levithan and E. Lockhart
October 16, 2024
6:00-8:00 pm ET
Every Day and We Were Liars
Young Adult novelists David Levithan and E. Lockhart discuss their film adaptations of Every Day and We Were Liars.
Sebastian Junger
October 17, 2024
7:00-9:00 pm ET
In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife.
From award-winning war reporter Sebastian Junger, In My Time of Dying is part medical drama, part searing autobiography, and part rational inquiry into the ultimate unknowable mystery.
Griffin Dunne
November 11, 2024
7:00-9:00 pm ET
The Friday Afternoon Club
Actor, producer, and director Griffin Dunne's family memoir The Friday Afternoon Club details his star-studded childhood growing up among larger-than-life characters in Hollywood and Manhattan.
Alison Espach
November 12, 2024
7:00-9:00 pm ET
The Wedding People
Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.
Jean Strouse
November 21, 2024
6:30-8:30 pm ET
Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers
Jean Strouse captures the dramas, mysteries, intrigues, and tragedies surrounding John Singer Sargent’s portraits of the Wertheimer family.
Rumaan Alam
December 5, 2024
7:00-9:00 pm ET
Entitlement
Taut, unsettling, and alive to the seductive distortions of money, Entitlement is a riveting tale for our new gilded age, a story that confidently considers questions about need and worth, race and privilege, philanthropy and generosity, passion and obsession.
Past Authors’ Evenings
Jeff Schaffer
May 29, 2024
6:00-9:00 pm PT
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Jeff Schaffer has worked on a number of cult-favorite television shows and movies, including EuroTrip, The Dictator, and Seinfeld, which brought him back around to working with the show’s co-creator, Larry David, on the premiere sitcom improvisational show, Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Colm Tóibín
April 24 2024
7:00-9:00 pm ET
Long Island
Long Island is a spectacularly moving and intense novel of secrecy, misunderstanding, and love, the story of Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of Brooklyn, Tóibín’s most popular work twenty years later.
Elizabeth Crook
April 24, 2024
6:30-9:30 pm CT
The Madstone
With its vivid characters and expansive canvas, The Madstone calls to mind Lonesome Dove, yet Elizabeth Crook’s new novel is a singular achievement.
Lisa Grunwald
April 17, 2024
7:00-9:00 pm ET
The Evolution of Annabel Craig
From the author of Time After Time and The Irresistible Henry House, Grunwald’s The Evolution of Annabel Craig follows a young Southern woman sets out on a journey of self-discovery as the infamous 1925 Scopes Trial tests her faith and her marriage.
Simon Schama
April 16, 2024
7:00-10:00 pm ET
Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations
Delivered through gripping, page-turning stories set in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – smallpox strikes London; cholera hits Paris; plague comes to India – Foreign Bodies is a vibrant cultural history investigating pandemics and vaccines.
Anna Quindlen
April 9, 2024
7:00-10:00 pm ET
After Annie
Quindlen’s trademark wisdom on family, emotions, and the secrets of people in a small town are at the center of this novel about triumph over adversity and the power of love to transcend time, by the bestselling author of Alternate Side and Every Last One.
Jennifer Breheny Wallace
April 4, 2024
7:00-9:00 pm ET
Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—And What We Can Do About It
In Never Enough, award-winning reporter Jennifer Breheny Wallace investigates the deep roots of toxic achievement culture, and finds out what we must do to fight back.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
April 3, 2024
6:00-9:00 pm ET
The Black Box: Writing the Race
We are delighted to feature Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. for a special Author’s Evening in celebration of his new book, The Black Box: Writing the Race.
Jonathan Taplin
March 13, 2024
6:30-9:00 pm PST
The End of Reality
The End of Reality provides an insightful and important critique of the myths that four uniquely influential tech and finance giants have sold to the twenty-first century consumer.
Douglas Stuart
March 5, 2024
6:00-8:00 pm ET
Young Mungo
Stuart’s extraordinary second novel, Young Mungo, is both a page-turner and literary tour de force, a vivid portrayal of working-class life in Glasgow and a deeply moving and highly suspenseful story of the dangerous first love of two young men.
Prudence Peiffer
February 27, 2024
7:00-10:00 pm ET
The Slip
Longlisted for the National Book Award and named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, The Slip is the never-before-told story of an obscure little street at the lower tip of Manhattan and the remarkable artists who got their start there.
Ann Patchett
February 21, 2024
7:00-9:00 pm ET
Tom Lake
In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers in Tom Lake.
Susan Choi
February 6, 2024
6:00-8:00 pm ET
Trust Exercise
Choi's fifth novel, Trust Exercise, won the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, and in 2021 she received the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award for “Flashlight.”
S.A. Cosby
January 16, 2024
7:00-10:00 pm ET
All the Sinners Bleed
A “provocative and page-turning entry in the Southern noir genre” (Kirkus Reviews), All the Sinners Bleed features Titus Crown, the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia, a small, quiet town brimming with secrets under the surface.
Gabrielle Zevin
Sunday, December 10, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm PT
Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a decade-spanning feat in storytelling, switching perspectives as the story winds through the years.”
—Elena Nicolaou, TODAY Show
Drew Faust
Thursday, December 7, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury
Culminating in the upheavals of 1968, Necessary Trouble captures a time of rapid change and fierce reaction in one young woman’s life, tracing the transformations and aftershocks that we continue to grapple with today.
Esmeralda Santiago
Wednesday, November 15, 2023
6:00-7:30 pm ET
Las Madres
From the award-winning, best-selling author of When I Was Puerto Rican, comes a powerful novel of family, race, faith, sex, and disaster that moves between Puerto Rico and the Bronx, revealing the lives and loves of five women and the secret that binds them together.
Christine Coulson
Thursday, November 9, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm CT
Dallas, Texas
One Woman Show: A Novel
One Woman Show is a sly and stylish novel—remarkably told through museum wall labels—about a twentieth-century woman who transforms herself from a precious object into an unforgettable protagonist.
James McBride
Wednesday, November 8, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them.
Richard Haass
Wednesday, November 1, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
The Bill of Obligations
The Bill of Obligations is a bold call for change. In these pages, New York Times bestselling author Richard Haass argues that the very idea of citizenship must be revised and expanded.
Gay Talese
Thursday, October 26, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
Bartleby and Me: Reflections of an Old Scrivener
‘A smooth and enchanting wordsmith, Talese delivers a lovely testament to the ‘unobtrusive if not kindred Bartleby personalities’ of New York City. It’s a delight.’ — Publishers Weekly
Chelsea G. Summers
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
A Certain Hunger
“One of the most uniquely fun and campily gory books in my recent memory… A Certain Hunger has the voice of a hard-boiled detective novel, as if metaphor-happy Raymond Chandler handed the reins over to the sexed-up femme fatale and really let her fly.” —The New York Times
Al Franken
Monday, October 23, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
An Evening with Al Franken
Join us for an intimate evening with Al Franken! He will discussing his remarkable career as a five-time Emmy winning Saturday Night Live writer/producer, a four-time #1 New York Times bestselling author, a three-time highest-rated national progressive radio host, a two-time Grammy winning artist, and a former US Senator.
Kai Bird
Thursday, October 12, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
An Evening with Kai Bird and Special Guest Christopher Nolan
Join us for an intimate dinner with author Kai Bird and filmmaker Christopher Nolan and discussing the Pulitzer Prize winning 2005 biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.
Ned Blackhawk
Thursday, October 5, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History
In The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History, Ned Blackhawk "...[shows] that Native communities have, instead, been inseparable from the American story all along.”—Washington Post Book World, “Books to Read in 2023”
Ayad Akhtar
Wednesday, October 4, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
Homeland Elegies
PEN America President Ayad Akhtar will discuss his remarkable career including his novel Homeland Elegies, which The New York Times called “a beautiful novel…that had echoes of The Great Gatsby and that circles, with pointed intellect, the possibilities and limitations of American life.”
Adam Nagourney
Monday, October 2, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
The Times: How the Newspaper of Record Survived Scandal, Scorn and the Transformation of Journalism
The Times is a sweeping behind-the-scenes look at the last four turbulent decades of “the paper of record,” The New York Times, as it confronted world-changing events, internal scandals, and faced the existential threat of the internet.
Felix Gillette and John Koblin
Tuesday, September 26, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
It's Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution and Future of HBO
HBO’s own behind-the-scenes story told by veteran media reporters Gillette and Koblin is as complex, compelling, and innovative as the dramas the network created, driven by unorthodox executives who pushed the boundaries of what viewers understood as television at the turn of the century.
Kate Manning
Tuesday, September 26, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
Gilded Mountain
The New York Times raves that “Kate Manning’s fat, immersive novel transfixed me… Manning builds her characters’ challenges with such empathy, I didn’t even realize I was getting a crash course in the history of labor relations… There are views to admire, mysteries to be solved and love stories to escape into… awe-inspiring.”
Hernan Diaz
Thursday, September 21, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
Trust
“A riveting novel set in a bygone America that explores family, wealth and ambition through linked narratives rendered in different literary styles, a complex examination of love and power in a country where capitalism is king.” –The Pulitzer Prizes
Cynt Marshall
Tuesday, September 19, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm CT
Dallas, Texas
You've Been Chosen: Thriving Through the Unexpected
Marshall, the CEO of the Dallas Mavericks has written a relentlessly optimistic memoir. One of the most influential Black business leaders in America today, Marshall offers hope and practical guidance for navigating life’s most difficult challenges.
William Gibson
Monday, July 10, 2023
7:00-8:30 pm ET
Virtual Author's Evening with William Gibson
Join us for an intimate evening with William Gibson in conversation about his remarkable career. William Gibson is credited with having coined the term “cyberspace” and having envisioned both the Internet and virtual reality before either existed.
Xochitl Gonzalez
Thursday, June 8, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
Olga Dies Dreaming
Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico’s history, Xochitl Gonzalez’s New York Times bestseller Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife, and the very notion of the American dream.
Priscilla Gilman
Tuesday, May 9, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
The Critic's Daughter: A Memoir
Gilman’s memoir is an exquisitely rendered portrait of a unique father-daughter relationship and a moving memoir of family and identity.
Brooke Kroeger
Thursday, May 4, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism
In Undaunted, Brooke Kroeger examines the lives of the best-remembered and long-forgotten woman journalists and their effect on American journalism.
Bill Buford
Friday, April 28, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
Dirt
Join us in Connecticut for an intimate dinner with Bill Buford. Renowned journalist, editor, food writer, and bestselling author Buford will discuss his work and remarkable career.
Lynn Nottage
Thursday, April 27, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
Playwright and screenwriter Lynn Nottage will be discussing her remarkable career. She is the first, and remains the only, woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice. Her plays have been produced widely in the United States and throughout the world.
Chachi D. Hauser
Tuesday April 25, 2023
6:00-8:00 pm ET
Chachi Hauser's It's Fun to Be a Person I Don't Know, which Gloria Steinem hails as a "rare gift", is an innovative and multifaceted narrative that navigates a variety of terrains, seeking truth as its final destination.
Andrea Elliott
Tuesday, April 18, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City
Andrea Elliott discusses her Pulitzer-prize winning book, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an America City. By turns heartbreaking and revelatory, provocative and inspiring, Invisible Child tells an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family, and the cost of inequality.
Colm Tóibín
Thursday, April 13, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
A Guest at the Feast: Essays
From one of the most engaging and brilliant writers of our time comes a collection of essays about growing up in Ireland during radical change; about cancer, priests, popes, homosexuality, and literature.
Stacy Schiff
Thursday, March 23, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams
The Revolutionary is a revelatory biography from a Pulitzer Prize-winner about the most essential Founding Father—the one who stood behind the change in thinking that produced the American Revolution.
Paul Goldberger
Tuesday, March 21, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
Why Architecture Matters
In Why Architecture Matters, Goldberger shows us how that works in examples ranging from a small Cape Cod cottage to the vast, flowing Prairie houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, from the Lincoln Memorial to the Guggenheim Bilbao.
Susan Wilner Golden
Thursday, February 23, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
Stage (Not Age): How to Understand and Serve People Over 60
Golden, Lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Director of the dciX impact initiative at the Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute, thinks people 60+ are the fastest growing, most dynamic market in the world and her book argues for the ways in which businesses can best reach this diverse group.
Jon Meacham
Thursday, February 16, 2023
7:30-10:00 pm ET
And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle
Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer and #1 New York Times bestselling author Jon Meacham chronicles the life of Abraham Lincoln, charting how—and why—he confronted secession, threats to democracy, and the tragedy of slavery to expand the possibilities of America.
Catherine Grace Katz
Wednesday, February 15, 2023
Virtual Event: 2:00-3:30 pm ET
The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans – A Story of Love and War
In The Daughters of Yalta, Katz tells the amazing story of tensions during the Yalta Conference in February 1945 which threatened to tear apart the wartime alliance among Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin just as victory was close at hand and the three young women who played a part in this historic moment.
Mark Whitaker
Thursday, February 9, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
Saying It Loud: 1966—The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement
Journalist and author Mark Whitaker explores the momentous year that redefined the civil rights movement as a new sense of Black identity expressed in the slogan “Black Power” challenged the nonviolent philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis.
Raven Leilani
Tuesday, February 7, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
Luster
Leilani's debut novel, Luster "shines with sharp wit and dark humor" (NPR). Join us for an evening with Leilani and PEN America's Young Patrons group.
Patrick Radden Keefe
Thursday, January 5, 2023
7:00-10:00 pm ET
Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks
Patrick Radden Keefe, the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain, explores colorful characters, from whistleblowers and con men to Anthony Bourdain in his latest book, Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks.