From the Editors Archives - Page 17 of 170

Announcements

Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World

A Book Talk with Jaclyn Friedman, Samantha Irby, Tatiana Maslany, and Sabrina Hersi Issa, May 4, 2020, 7:00-8:00 pm EDT

April 29, 2020 • by Claire Potter

Moderator, Claire Potter, co-Executive Editor, Public Seminar Jaclyn Friedman, author, activist, and editor of Believe Me Samantha Irby, New York Times best-selling author Tatiana Maslany, Emmy-winning actor Sabrina Hersi Issa, CEO of Be Bold Media, and founder of Survivor Fund This webinar is sponsored by Public Seminar, a journal of politics and culture based at The ...

Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World

From the Editors

The Most Beautiful Economy in the World

We saw it coming, but the collapse was swifter and more brutal than we ever imagined

April 28, 2020 • by Claire Potter

“It was a terrible relationship,” a pal of mine commented after a couple we knew suddenly announced that they were divorcing; “but I thought they would be together forever.” We feel that way about the whole house of cards that is the American economy. What has happened to our world three ...

Interviews

America’s Epidemic of Domestic Violence

An interview with Rachel Louise Snyder

April 28, 2020 • by Rachel Louise Snyder and LaVonne Elaine Roberts

LaVonne Roberts [LR]: You point out that most (54 percent) of mass shootings intersect with domestic violence. As a Texan, I grew up hearing about Charles Whitman, who, on August 1, 1966, after fatally stabbing his mother and his wife, killed 14 people and wounded 31 others. Is there any hope that convicted domestic ...

Democracy

Why Egypt Didn’t Get the Revolution it Needed

An interview with Peter Hessler

April 27, 2020 • by Peter Hessler and Michael Schmale

For American expatriates living in China in the first decade of the 2000s, Peter Hessler was already something of a household name, not just as the New Yorker’s China correspondent, but as a public intellectual. His books became fixtures of laowai bookshelves almost as soon as they were published. His ...

Why Egypt Didn’t Get the Revolution it Needed

Interviews

When Anthropology Overturned a Way of Seeing the World

An interview with Charles King

April 24, 2020 • by Charles King and Zach Schwab

Zach Schwab [ZS]: In the Acknowledgements section of this book you attribute the original inspiration behind it to a series of conversations that you had with your wife. I was wondering if you could elaborate on how that took place, and maybe the moment when you first realized that this ...

When Anthropology Overturned a Way of Seeing the World

Art & Design

Evoking Artist As Mother

An Interview With Myla Goldberg

April 23, 2020 • by Myla Goldberg and Hayleigh Santra

Hayleigh Santra [HS]: How did you come up with the idea for Feast Your Eyes? Myla Goldberg [MG]: For me, the book started with a question: Is it possible to be both an excellent artist and an excellent parent, or to be one of those, do you have to kick the ...

From the Editors

What We Are Capable Of

As the pandemic reshapes our lives, we read, bake, sew and hope

April 22, 2020 • by Claire Potter

We have become resilient. We know that we can continue to produce Public Seminar from our homes; and that we can teach our students on Zoom, organized as if they were contestants on the classic television game show, Hollywood Squares. We are accustomed to new forms of uncertainty: for example, ...

Interviews

Donald Trump’s Former Book Agent Comes Clean

UTA’s Byrd Leavell calls Caroline Calloway “unwell” and regrets his association with the President

April 21, 2020 • by Alexa Mauzy

Leavell is a literary agent, currently at United Talent Agency (UTA), one of Hollywood’s most powerful agencies, representing artists and other professionals in the entertainment industry. Based in Beverly Hills, it has divisions focused on film, television, digital, video games, and music, in addition to books. As the agency’s mission statement puts it, “We help ...

Donald Trump’s Former Book Agent Comes Clean

Interviews

Spend More Time Listening to Kids

An Interview With Naomi Shihab Nye, Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award

April 21, 2020 • by Naomi Shihab Nye and Aekta Khubchandani

Naomi Shihab Nye [NSN]: Thank you so much for this generous vote of confidence. It makes me feel deeply touched and stunned. AK: I wanted to talk about your appetite for tenderness. You’ve been brought up in a house where newspapers announced mornings, your father was an immigrant newspaper journalist ...

History

Challenging the Perception of the Wayward Girl

An interview with Saidiya Hartman

April 21, 2020 • by Saidiya Hartman and Yannise Jean

Yannise Jean [YJ]: For this book, you took a different approach by structuring it like a fictional narrative. I think this structure really helps the reader get into the character's heads. Was this your intention during the outlining stages of your book? Saidiya Hartman [SH]: I write nonfiction. As I started to write ...

Challenging the Perception of the Wayward Girl

Interviews

Elegies for Lost Children

An Interview With Valeria Luiselli

April 20, 2020 • by Valeria Luiselli and Vanessa Chan

Eventually, the narrator’s own children go missing, culminating in a 20-page single sentence climax that breaks every convention, and that the reader is unable to look away from. On top of this wide range of themes, Luiselli also creates a novel-within-a-novel – a book called “Elegies for Lost Children” that ...

From the Editors

Essential Services

When people risk their lives to care for us, they deserve our care too

April 15, 2020 • by Claire Potter

Although I was in a stage of disbelief about the crisis to come that now seems darkly comical, and I had only come along for the ride, I understood the purpose of everything but the water. We buy water in anticipation of a significant weather event, I said: but under ...