PBS Books

Immigrant Heritage Month: Maria Hinojosa
2023-06-07 20:00 - 21:00 (America/Halifax)
In collaboration with Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB), we are honored to host this virtual engagement event with author Maria Hinojosa as part of Immigrant History Month.

Maria Hinojosa’s nearly thirty-year career as a journalist includes reporting for PBS, CBS, WGBH, WNBC, CNN, NPR, and anchoring and executive producing the Peabody Award–winning show Latino USA, distributed by Futuro Media and PRX. She is a frequent guest on MSNBC, and has won several awards, including four Emmys, the Studs Terkel Community Media Award, two Robert F. Kennedy Awards, and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Overseas Press Club. In 2010, she founded Futuro Media, an independent nonprofit organization with the mission of producing multimedia content from a POC perspective. Through the breadth of her work and as the founding co-anchor of the political podcast In The Thick, Hinojosa has informed millions about the changing cultural and political landscape in America and abroad. She lives with her family in Harlem in New York City. Follow Maria on Twitter at @Maria_Hinojosa and Facebook at Maria.Hinojosa.718.

Watch this event on Facebook or Youtube.

MASTERPIECE ENDEAVOUR: Producer Charlotte Webber
2023-05-31 20:00 - 21:00
The Magic of Masterpiece
PBS Books is thrilled to host a conversation about MASTERPEICE’s final season of Endeavour with producer Charlotte Webber. Hear insights into the making of the ninth season and about what you can expect to see as the series comes to an end.
With characters from Colin Dexter’s books, Shaun Evans as Endeavour Morse and Roger Allam as Sam Thursday return for the ninth and final season of the critically acclaimed detective drama Endeavour, premiering Sunday, June 18, 2023, 9/8c on MASTERPIECE Mystery! on PBS. Set in the early 70s in Oxford, the final season finds Endeavour Morse and Fred Thursday entering a new era.
Don’t forget to watch the all-new documentary, Morse and the Last Endeavour, airing June 11, 2023, 9/8c on MASTERPIECE. It will take you back at the nine seasons of the prequel and the history of the Inspector Morse character in this all-new documentary.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER: CHARLOTTE WEBBER
Charlotte Webber joined the Mammoth family as Executive Producer in December 2022, having worked with the team in various guises since 2018. Charlotte’s first role with Mammoth Screen was script editing WORLD ON FIRE, and she has since script edited THE PALE HORSE and produced the last ever series of ENDEAVOUR. Before working for Mammoth, Charlotte worked for BBC Drama London and script edited GOOD OMENS for Amazon Prime. As part of her remit as Executive Producer, Charlotte is keen to develop a diverse slate of bold, distinctive projects with a queer focus.

SUMMER READING: BEACH READS BOOKLIST READER BOOK CHAT
2023-05-24 20:00 - 21:00
PBS Books is pleased to host a conversation about Summer Reading and Beach Reads with Susan Maguire, who is the Senior Editor, Collection Management and Library Outreach at Booklist. Join us to get special insights into great books to read in an array of genres in the following categories: Big Books, Big-sized Tales, Found Families, Frigid Places, Into the Forest, and Underworld Retellings.
PBS Books is excited to announce its partnership with the American Library Association’s Booklist Reader. American Library Association (ALA) is the foremost national organization providing resources to inspire library and information professionals to transform their communities through essential programs and services. For more than 140 years, ALA has been the trusted voice of libraries, advocating for the profession and the library’s role in enhancing learning and ensuring access to information for all. Booklist is the American Library Association’s nationally distributed book and media review publication. Since 1905, Booklist has been proud to publish thousands of book and audiobook reviews each year, helping library and education workers decide what to buy and how to guide patrons and students of all ages in choosing what to read, view, or listen to. Booklist Reader is a publication for the library patron to provide insights and recommendations into reading.
ABOUT THE FEATURED GUEST: SUSAN MAGUIRE
Susan Maguire is the Senior Editor, Collection Management and Library Outreach at Booklist, the book review magazine of the American Library Association. Before coming to Booklist, she worked in public libraries for a dozen years.
ABOUT BOOKLIST
Booklist is the American Library Association’s nationally distributed book and media review publication. Since 1905, Booklist has been proud to publish thousands of book and audiobook reviews each year, helping library and education workers decide what to buy and how to guide patrons and students of all ages in choosing what to read, view, or listen to.
Booklist Publications includes two print magazines, an extensive website and database, e-newsletters, webinars, podcasts, and other literature-based resources that support librarians in collection development and readers’ advisory. For more information on Booklist Publications, including how to become a Booklist reviewer, visit booklistonline.com.

Well Beings Town Hall | LGBTQIA+ Youth: Finding Wellbeing and Community
2023-05-23 20:00 - 21:00
LGBTQIA+ youth make invaluable contributions to our society today. Unfortunately, staggering statistics show that LGBTQIA+ youth are especially vulnerable to mental health struggles. According to The Trevor Project, more than 1.8 million LGBTQIA+ youth seriously consider suicide each year in the U.S.—and at least one attempts suicide every 45 seconds. Recent increases in violence against trans people, especially trans women of color, and heightened politicalization and stigmatization of Queer people in the news cycle can cause significant harm to mental health. Despite this adversity, many LGBTQIA+ youth demonstrate exceptional resilience, finding well being and creating communities of support.

Join Well Beings, PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs, PBS Books, Detroit Public Television and WETA for a Town Hall conversation, led by youth, for youth, that will raise awareness about mental health challenges specific to the LGBTQIA+ community, address stigmatization that can prevent care and support, and create safe space for dialogue and sharing of resources.

Celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
2023-05-17 20:00 - 21:00
In celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, PBS Books is pleased to share an important conversation with award-winning author Paula Yoo, who published “From A Whisper To A Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement”. The book is a groundbreaking portrait of Vincent Chin and the case that took America’s Asian American community to the streets in protest of injustice.
While Paula Yoo’s book was written for a YA audience after significant research, it has captivated audiences of all ages. She has crafted a suspenseful, nuanced, and authoritative portrait of a pivotal moment in Civil Rights history, and a man who became a symbol against hatred and racism. In this current climate of civil unrest and a country confronting a history of deeply rooted systemic racism, the story of Vincent Chin is as important now as ever. Asian American history is often overlooked and undertaught in schools, and Vincent Chin’s name remains relatively unknown despite making national and international headlines at the time. Now, almost 40 years later, it’s time to remember Vincent Chin and the significant role his case played in American history.
Paula Yoo will be interviewed by Zosette Guir, Manager of Detroit Public TV’s One Detroit initiative.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Paula Yoo
Paula Yoo is an award-winning author of children’s books, a former journalist, and current screenwriter who has merged her talents to create a thoroughly researched and reported nonfiction book, but with the intensity of a suspense movie thriller, and the intimate emotional character journey of a novel. As a Korean American who’s specialized in multicultural Asian-American themed children’s books and having lived in Detroit working as a journalist for The Detroit News, Yoo is able to examine the controversial racial issues behind the Vincent Chin story with sensitivity, authority and grace. “From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry” is her debut YA nonfiction book. She lives in Los Angeles.

Celebrating Short Story Month: Zora Neale Hurston with Filmmaker Tracy Heather Strain
2023-05-10 20:00 - 21:00
PBS Books, in collaboration with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), is pleased to host a program with award winning Filmmaker, Tracy Heather Strain, who is the Director of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE’s ZORA NEALE HURSTON: Claiming A Space on PBS. A celebrated novelist, anthropologist, essayist, and central figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, Zora Neale Hurston wrote numerous short stories and novels, which were greatly influenced by her anthropological work. Join us to meet filmmaker Tracy Heather Strain and to learn about AMERICAN EXPERIENCE’s ZORA NEALE HURSTON: Claiming A Space, her process to create the work, and gain insights into Zora Neale Hurston. The film is streamable at pbs.org
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER: TRACY HEATHER STRAIN
Tracy Heather Strain, a two-time Peabody Award-winning, Emmy-nominated director, producer, writer and researcher, is a recipient of the 2022 Chicken & Egg Award. Her film “Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart,” which premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival and broadcast on American Masters, won Strain an NAACP Image Award for Motion Picture Directing and the American Historical Association’s John E. O’Connor Film Award.
Her additional directing credits include; “American Oz” and “Building the Alaska Highway” for American Experience, “The Stories We Tell” for Race: The Power of an Illusion, “When the Bough Breaks” for Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? and “Bright Like a Sun” and “The Dream Keepers” for Blackside’s six-part series I’ll Make Me a World: A Century of African American Arts.
Co-founder and president of The Film Posse, Strain also serves as the Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies at Wesleyan University’s College of Film and the Moving Image.
ABOUT THE SHOW: ZORA NEALE HURSTON: CLAIMING A SPACE
Raised in the small all-Black Florida town of Eatonville, Zora Neale Hurston studied at Howard University before arriving in New York in 1925. She would soon become a key figure of the Harlem Renaissance, best remembered for her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. But even as she gained renown in the Harlem literary circles, Hurston was also discovering anthropology at Barnard College with the renowned Franz Boas. She would make several trips to the American South and the Caribbean, documenting the lives of rural Black people and collecting their stories. She studied her own people, an unusual practice at the time, and during her lifetime became known as the foremost authority on Black folklore.
Directed by Tracy Heather Strain, produced by Randall MacLowry and executive produced by Cameo George, Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space is an in-depth biography of the influential author whose groundbreaking anthropological work would challenge assumptions about race, gender and cultural superiority that had long defined the field in the 19th century.

Celebrating Mental Health Awareness Month: Self-Love with Vashti Harrison
2023-05-03 20:00 - 21:00
PBS Books is pleased to host a conversation with New York Times bestselling author and award-winning creator Vashti Harrison, who recently wrote and illustrated “BIG.” This program is offered to celebrate Mental Health Awareness Month, promoting self-love, self-acceptance, and self-empowerment for the young and the young-at-heart. Join us to learn about the story and Vashti’s creative process, hear Vashti read an excerpt of her book, and learn about the importance of self-love.
AUTHOR: VASHTI HARRISON
Vashti Harrison is the #1 New York Times bestselling creator of Little Leaders, Little Dreamers, and Little Legends and the illustrator of Lupita Nyong’o’s Sulwe, Matthew Cherry’s Hair Love, Andrea Beaty’s I Love You Like Yellow, and Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic’s Hello, Star, among others. She earned her BA in studio art and media studies from the University of Virginia and her MFA in film/video from CalArts, where she rekindled a love for drawing and painting. Vashti lives in Brooklyn, New York, and invites you to visit her at vashtiharrison.com or on Instagram and Twitter @vashtiharrison.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Vashti is the #1 New York Times bestselling creator of Little Leaders, Little Dreamers, and Little Legends and the illustrator of Lupita Nyong’o’s Sulwe, Matthew Cherry’s Hair Love, Andrea Beaty’s I Love You Like Yellow, and Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic’s Hello, Star, among others. BIG was named one of BookPage’s Most Anticipated children’s book of the season and has received three starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and The Horn Book. Vashti recently graced the cover of Publishers Weekly and CBS Saturday Morning profiled Vashti to celebrate her work, Black History Month, and preview BIG.
This is a deeply personal story for Vashti—rooted in her own experiences as a child sitting in the crosshairs of adultification bias and anti-fat bias, struggling to find self-acceptance. She writes in her author note, “In childhood, big is good. Big is impressive, aspirational. But somewhere along the way, the world begins to tell us something different: That big is bad. That being big is undesirable…My size indicated to adults that I was big enough to know better, even though I was still just a kid. I learned that day that my body did not fit. It did not belong. And adults no longer saw me as a little girl who could make innocent mistakes.” There is a dual message within this text: first, this is a story about size, yes, but not just in the body-image context; it also addresses how “big” kids—especially Black children—are often treated as if they are older than they are. And then beyond size, it shows how words affect young children and can shape their image of themselves before they’ve even had a chance to figure out who they are.
Filled with truth, beauty, joy, and acceptance, this is a tour de force. Vashti traces a child’s journey to self-love and shows the power of words to both hurt and heal. With spare text and exquisite illustrations, this emotional exploration of being big in a world that prizes small is a tender portrayal of how you can stand out and feel invisible at the same time. A story whose seeds are from Vashti’s own childhood, this will be an important book for so many—anyone who is misunderstood as well as any adult who wants to understand how to be truly accepting and supportive. While it will resonate with many, young Black girls will especially find a story and character they might see themselves in.

Author Talk: Heather Raffo with Special Guest Laith Nakli
2023-04-27 20:00 - 21:00
PBS Books celebrates Arab-American Heritage Month in conversation with award-winning actor and playwright Heather Raffo, author of “Iraq Plays: The Things That Can’t Be Said: 9 Parts of Desire; Fallujah; Noura” and British-Syrian actor and producer Laith Nakli. Join us to learn about Heather Raffo’s important work about the lives of Iraqi women as she returns to the subject on film and through a distinctly American lens, setting a new version in Michigan after the U.S. invaded Iraq 20 years ago.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Heather Raffo
Heather Raffo is a singular and outstanding voice in the American theater whose work has been championed by the New Yorker as “an example of how art can remake the world”. Having helped forge a new genre of Middle Eastern American theater, she’s spent her career writing and embodying stories of Iraq: from the lives and dreams of Iraqi women in her seminal work 9 Parts of Desire (2003), to the suicidal ideation of an Iraq war veteran in the opera Fallujah (2012), to the restless longings of an Iraqi refugee architect, in Noura (2018).
A multi award-winning writer and actor, she’s toured nationally and internationally: from The Kennedy Center to The Aspen Ideas Festival and from London’s House of Commons to the U.S. Islamic World Forum. Her newly released anthology, HeatherRaffo’s Iraq Plays: The Things That Can’t Be Said, brings together two decades of her most groundbreaking contributions to the American theater and speaks to the bravery required to be at the forefront of a movement. Her latest Migration Play Cycle: A New Theatrical Platform, of which the play Tomorrow Will Be Sunday is a part (Kennedy Center River Run festival, Creative Capital Grant, UN Sustainable Development Goal) is her most ambitious theatrical imagining in scale and scope, and situates themes around migration and the global economy. Being raised in the Midwest and the daughter of an Iraqi immigrant, Raffo has committed her artistic practice to working across all kinds of borders: on mainstages and in rural communities; with the military and in the Middle East; in swing states and in refugee facilities. She is uniquely positioned to explore what migration means for an ever-evolving American and global identity.
ABOUT THE BOOK/PLAY
The Things That Can’t Be Said: Three Plays About Iraq is a trilogy of plays by renowned Iraqi American playwright/performer Heather Raffo including 9 Parts of Desire, Fallujah: The First Opera about the Iraq War, and Noura.
In these three works Raffo explores the indelible effects of war on Iraqis, Americans, and the refugees caught between the two cultures. When considered together, these three works give voice to nearly two decades of rarely examined traumas that have reshaped cultural and national identity for both Americans and Iraqis since the events of 9/11.
Heather Raffo is a renowned playwright and performer whose work has been described by The New Yorker as an example of “how art can remake the world.” An American with Iraqi heritage, her work is seen as a rare bridge between western and eastern cultures.
With ongoing debates about the legacy of America’s foreign wars and future role in the Middle East, this volume offers a uniquely historical and deeply human perspective on the political issues of our time. Spanning a decade and a half, together these works form a mosaic of untold stories that were ground breaking in their time and continue to profoundly impact communities and classrooms internationally.
9 Parts of Desire (2003): “First Choice/The Best Shows in London” by The Times, and as one of the “Five Best Plays” in London by The Independent. Its award winning, Off-Broadway premiere ran for nine sold out months and was a critics pick of the The New York Times, Time Out, and Village Voice. The play then received productions in nearly every major regional theatre market in American before being translated for international productions in Brazil, Greece, Sweden, Hungary, India, Turkey, Malta, France, Iraq, Egypt, and Israel. It was the first commercial hit on a national and international stage by an Arab American playwright helping to birth a new genre of Middle Eastern American Theatre.
Fallujah (2016) received its world premiere at Long Beach Opera before transferring to NYC Opera. The first ever opera about the Iraq War it tells a U.S. Marine’s account of the battle of Fallujah it focuses on moral injury and veteran suicide.
Noura (2018) won the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award and was hailed “The Most Ambitious Premiere” of the Women’s Voices Theatre Festival by The Washington Post and “stirringly powerful” by The New York Times. Told from inside the marriage of an Iraqi family, the play explores the lingering cost of exile for both recent refugees and more established American immigrants. Drawing inspiration from Ibsen’s A Doll’s Hous and championed as a first of its kind feminist refugee narrative, it is already being included in university curriculum both in America and abroad.

Celebrating Earth Month with Author Victoria Kann
2023-04-26 20:00 - 21:00
PBS Books, in collaboration with GBH, is pleased to present a conversation to celebrate Earth Month with New York Times Best-Selling author and illustrator Victoria Kann, who is also the Co-Executive and Co-Executive Producer of the hit PBS Kids series, “Pinkalicious & Peterrific.” Join us as Victoria Kann reads “Emeraldalicious” and discusses the importance of Pinkalicious and Peter taking care of their park. Our program will be fun for all as we explore the power of rhyming, kindness, and imagination. Plus we’ll discuss ways to get started recycling…Because together we can make a difference for our environment for the earth. Don’t miss this special program!
ABOUT THE BOOK: “EMERALDALICIOUS”
“Emeraldalicious: A Springtime Book For Kids” follows Pinkalicious and Peter on their visit to their favorite park, but on the way Pinkalicious’s wand breaks. She isn’t worried at all, because she knows just what to do. She takes a stick, some vines, and a very special flower to make a magical wand. When Pinkalicious and Peter finally arrive at the park it’s covered in stinky trash! But never fear, Pinkalicious is here with her magical wand, lots of love, and pinktastic rhymes to turn the trash into an Emeraldalicious paradise. Pinkalicious combines magic, love, and imagination to turn an ordinary place into an Emeraldalicious world.
ABOUT THE SHOW: “PINKALICIOUS & PETERRIFIC”
Launched February 2018, “Pinkalicious & Peterrific” has five seasons and seventy episodes. It is the go-to children’s series for creativity and arts. Pinkalicious Pinkerton is unique, one of a kind, and pinkatastic (an original word by an original kid)! Together with their friends and neighbors in Pinkville, Pinkalicious and her younger brother Peter get into all kinds of artful adventures. Based on Victoria Kann’s best-selling picture book series, “Pinkalicious and Peterrific,” for kids ages 3 to 6, models the power of teamwork and creative thinking to solve problems — and very cool, often unexpected things occur when these colorful characters join forces.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: VICTORIA KANN
Victoria Kann is the award-winning illustrator and author of the picture book series featuring the whimsical and effervescent “Pinkalicious,” and the Co-Executive Producer of the hit PBS Kids series, “Pinkalicious & Peterrific. “She wrote and illustrated The New York Times number-one bestsellers “Goldilicious,” “Silverlicious” and “Emeraldalicious;” she also co authored and illustrated the first two books in the series, “Pinkalicious” and “Purplicious,” as well as “Pinkalicious: the Musical,” which premiered in New York to sold-out audiences and continues to be performed across the country. Before that, Victoria was commissioned to illustrate for magazines and newspapers including “Time,” “Business Week,” “Harper’s Magazine,” “The Washington Post” and “The New York Times.” She is a graduate of The Rhode Island School of Design and has taught at RISD, Parson’s and The School of Visual Arts.

MASTERPIECE: TOM JONES featuring Gwyneth Hughes
2023-04-19 20:00 - 21:00
The Magic of Masterpiece
PBS Books, in collaboration with GBH, is pleased to host a conversation with Executive Producer and Writer of “Tom Jones” Gwyneth Hughes. “Tom Jones” will premiere on MASTERPIECE on PBS stations across the country on Sunday, April 30 at 9pm. Join us and learn about this eighteenth century classic story still resonate today with humorous elements through an interview with Gwyneth Hughes. We’ll hear her about her work and her favorite elements.
ABOUT THE MASTERPIECE SHOW: “TOM JONES”
This four-part television miniseries reimagines “The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling”, Henry Fielding’s classic novel. A picaresque story of the title character’s complicated journey to find real love, “Tom Jones” has delighted and scandalized readers since it was originally published in 1749. Solly McLeod (“The Rising”) stars as the hero Tom, alongside Sophie Wilde (“You Don’t Know Me”) as the heroine Sophia Western. Written by Gwyneth Hughes (“Vanity Fair,” “Miss Austen Regrets”), “Tom Jones” is directed by Georgia Parris (“Mari”) and produced by Benjamin Greenacre. For more information visit: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/shows/tom-jones/
ABOUT THE WRITER & EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Gwyneth Hughes was born in London. She studied Russian at Sussex University, becoming a newspaper reporter on the Sheffield Morning Telegraph. Gwyn’s first job in television was on the Yorkshire Television regional newsdesk.
From there she became a Bafta-nominated documentary director specializing in history and true crime, and began her move from factual into drama on episodes. Her original thriller mini-series “Five Days,” and her Tippi Hedren biopic “The Girl,” were both nominated for the Baftas and the Golden Globes. Her classic dramatizations include “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” “Vanity Fair,” and “Miss Austen Regrets.” Gwyn is currently writing about the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history, affecting the lives of hundreds of village postmasters. She lives with her husband in North Yorkshire.

Finding Your Roots Family Album: Series Highlights with Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
2023-04-12 20:00 - 21:00
Behind-the-scenes stories from Season Nine and the series archive.
Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. joins CeCe Moore – Genetic Genealogist and Finding Your Roots Producer Natalia Warchol as they share behind-the-scenes stories about the show with Family Pictures USA Creator Thomas Allen Harris!
Catch up with the last few episodes of Season 9 here or watch ALL episodes on-demand with DPTV Passport!

Sustainability Strategy: A Conversation with University of Michigan President Santa Ono
2023-04-06 20:00 - 21:00
Join PBS Books Thursday, Apr. 6 at 8 p.m. for a conversation on sustainability and fighting climate change with University of Michigan President Santa Ono.
Ono has put sustainability and fighting climate change among the top priorities for his administration. In addition to several programs and initiatives that are being expanded or developed, the university is serving as the lead institution for the University Climate Change Coaltion that convenes 23 leading North American universities to work toward climate action on campus, in communities, and at a global scale.
Inforum and The Sustainable Business Network Detroit is proud to host Dr. Ono as keynote speaker at an April 5 luncheon where he will expand on his sustainability agenda for the university. After his speech, Q&A will be moderated by Telva McGruder, chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer for General Motors Co. Telva also is a member of the advisory board for the UM School for Environment and Sustainability.
PBS Books will stream this event Thursday, April 6 at 8 p.m.
About Santa Ono
Santa J. Ono, Ph.D., is the 15th president of the University of Michigan. He began a five-year term on Oct. 14, 2022. A recognized leader in higher education in the United States and Canada, President Ono is an experienced vision researcher whose pioneering work in experimental medicine focuses on the immune system and eye disease. At U-M he is also a professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences in the Medical School. He joined U-M from the University of British Columbia, where he served as president and vice chancellor since 2016. While at UBC, he chaired the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities and the Research Universities of British Columbia, and served on the board of Universities Canada. He also served on the steering committee of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities; Government of Canada’s Industry Advisory Ad Hoc Roundtable on COVID-19 Testing; and the boards of Fulbright Canada and Mitacs. Prior to his appointment at UBC, he was president of the University of Cincinnati, where he also served as professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. While at the University of Cincinnati, he was appointed by Ohio Gov. John Kasich to lead the state’s Biopharmaceutical Task Force and to the Board of the Ohio Third Frontier, the state’s technology-based economic development program.
About the Moderator, Telva McGruder
Telva McGruder is the Chief of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for General Motors. She was named to this position in August 2016. Telva previously led facility engineering for the GM global footprint as well as facility management strategy for North American manufacturing facilities. Responsibilities included the procurement of energy, energy efficiency initiatives, coordination of contractual agreements, and material handling strategy for facility services in North America.
Previously, Telva was Die Program Manager for Global Body Manufacturing Engineering. In that role, she led the team responsible for tool and die strategy, planning, quality and launch for global vehicle programs. Prior to this role, she held positions of increasing responsibility and influence within manufacturing engineering and at several manufacturing locations where she motivated teams to rethink the possible in project execution, maintenance, quality, operations and labor negotiations. Telva earned her BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University.

Celebrating Poetry Month with Clint Smith
2023-04-05 20:00 - 21:00
PBS Books, in collaboration with the Association of the Study of African American Life and History, is pleased to host a program in celebration of Poetry Month with best-selling and award-winning writer Clint Smith, author of his newly released book of poetry “Above Ground.” Join us and learn about Clint’s new collection of poetry, his inspiration, his creative process, and more.
ABOUT THE BOOK: “ABOVE GROUND”
Clint Smith’s vibrant and compelling new collection “Above Ground” traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are poems that meditate on what it means to raise a family in a world filled with constant social and political tumult. “Above Ground” wrestles with how we hold wonder and despair in the same hands, how we carry intimate moments of joy and a collective sense of mourning in the same body. Smith’s lyrical, narrative poems bring the reader on a journey not only through the early years of his children’s lives, but through the changing world in which they are growing up—through the changing world of which we are all a part. “Above Ground” is a breathtaking collection that follows Smith’s first award-winning book of poetry, “Counting Descent.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the narrative nonfiction book,“How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America,” which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, and selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2021. He is also the author of the poetry collection “Counting Descent,” which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Clint received his B.A. in English from Davidson College and a Ph.D. in Education from Harvard University.

"Building Our Communities’ Freedom Dreams" with Amanda Alexander | Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series
2023-03-31 20:00 - 21:00
Amanda Alexander, founding executive director of the Detroit Justice Center, is a racial justice lawyer and historian who works alongside community-based movements to end mass incarceration and build thriving and inclusive cities. She is co-host of Freedom Dreams, an interview podcast that amplifies movement voices and explores the many paths to building a truly just future. Originally from Michigan, Amanda has worked at the intersection of racial justice and community development in Detroit, New York, and South Africa for more than two decades.
Learn More>>

The Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series 2023 Season
This season, the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series brings respected leaders and innovators from a broad spectrum of creative fields to Ann Arbor’s historic Michigan Theater for weekly in-person events.
Detroit Public Television and PBS Books, in partnership with the Stamps School, will stream each week’s event Fridays at 8pm.
See the full schedule of events livestreamed by PBS Books here.
Some programs may not be available online, depending on artist requests. Interested in receiving notifications before online videos go live? Sign up to receive a reminder before each event begins streaming.
Watch Past Penny Stamps Episodes

Author Talk: 'Woman Without Shame' with Sandra Cisneros
2023-03-29 20:00 - 21:00
PBS Books is pleased to celebrate Women’s History Month by hosting a conversation with writer and activist Sandra Cisneros, who is the author of “Woman Without Shame.” Join us to learn about Cisneros and her phenomenal new collections of poems, hear the poet read two of her poems (English and Spanish), and more. Plus, this is a great program to attend right before Poetry Month begins in April.
ABOUT THE BOOK: “Woman Without Shame”
It has been 28 years since Sandra Cisneros published a book of poetry. With dozens of never-before-seen poems, “Woman Without Shame” is a moving collection of songs, elegies, and declarations that chronicle her pilgrimage toward rebirth and the recognition of her prerogative as a woman artist. These bluntly honest and often humorous meditations on memory, desire, and the essential nature of love blaze a path toward self-awareness. For Cisneros, “Woman Without Shame” is the culmination of her search for home—in the Mexico of her ancestors and in her own heart.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sandra Cisneros
SANDRA CISNEROS is a poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, performer and artist. Her numerous awards include NEA fellowships in both poetry and fiction, a MacArthur Fellowship, national and international book awards, including the PEN America Literary Award, and the National Medal of Arts. More recently, she received the Ford Foundation’s Art of Change Fellowship, was recognized with the Fuller Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature and won the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. In addition to her writing, Cisneros has fostered the careers of many aspiring and emerging writers through two nonprofits she founded: the Macondo Foundation and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation. As a single woman she made the choice to have books instead of children. A citizen of both the United States and Mexico, Cisneros currently lives in San Miguel de Allende and makes her living by her pen.

NATO Ambassador Julianne Smith | Ford School Events
2023-03-28 12:00 - 13:00
PBS Books, in partnership with The Ford School is pleased to present Ambassador Julianne Smith for the 5th annual Arthur Vandenberg Lecture.
Ambassador Smith has served as the U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO since November 2021. Prior to her current position, she served as a Senior Advisor to Secretary Antony Blinken at the Department of State, and previously served as the Director of the Asia and Geopolitics Programs at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Ambassador Smith will give brief remarks, followed by a conversation with Weiser Diplomacy Center director John Ciorciari.

About Julianne Smith
Ambassador Julianne Smith assumed her position as the U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO in November 2021. Prior to her current position, she served as a senior advisor to Secretary Blinken at the Department of State. Previously, she served as the director of the Asia and Geopolitics Programs at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. From 2014-2018, she served as the director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.
From 2012-2013, she served as the Acting National Security Advisor and Deputy National Security Advisor to the Vice President of the United States. Before her post at the White House, she served for three years as the principal director for European and NATO Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon. In January 2012, she was awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service.
Prior to her government service, Ambassador Smith held a variety of positions at research institutions including the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the German Marshall Fund, the American Academy in Berlin, and the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin. She has written extensively on transatlantic relations and European security.
Ambassador Smith is a recipient of the Richard von Weizsäcker Fellowship at the Bosch Academy in Berlin and the Fredin Memorial Scholarship for study at the Sorbonne in Paris. A native of Michigan, she received her BA from Xavier University and her M.A from American University. She spent a year learning German at the University of Munich. In 2017, she received the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Family Sagas of Pride and Perseverance | 'Finding Your Roots'
2023-03-22 20:00 - 21:00
Join Detroit Public TV and PBS Books on Wednesday, March 22, at 8 p.m. ET, for a fascinating look at new techniques for unravelling the mysteries of African American genealogy
Now in its ninth season, “Finding Your Roots” stands as one of PBS and America’s most enduring and popular programs. It’s enjoyed by people from all backgrounds and ways of life. We celebrate each other’s stories, because every family’s history has much to tell us about the history of our country.
On Wednesday, March 22, Detroit Public TV and PBS Books present a special digital event, inspired by the work of “Finding Your Roots” host and creator, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who has made genealogy a national pastime.
We will present a dynamic discussion of the issues and opportunities that African Americans face as they trace their histories. There is never a straight path in genealogy, always twists and turns. But we will consider the unique challenges of these families, as they hunt through the wreckage of slavery for records that are lost or incomplete, searching for ancestors whose names and locations often have been changed or falsified.
Thankfully, there are new tools, historical and scientific, to unlock family histories. We will present a panel of avid and talented genealogists, who have mastered tricks and tips that will help others exploring their family’s origins. At the same time, they relate the surprising facts and inspiring stories they discovered about their own histories.
We even learn something about Dr. Gates himself!
Please join us on Wednesday, March 22, at 8 p.m. ET, at DPTV.org, PBSBooks.org, or Facebook Live.
It will be an evening of tears and triumph, DNA and dogged research perseverance, as we do our best to let the genealogy out of the bottle.
Panelists

Leslie C. Strong Williams: Immediate Past President, Fred Hart Williams Genealogical Society, Detroit, Michigan; member, Detroit Historical Society Black Historic Sites Committee; former trustee Historical Society of Michigan. A sixth generation Michiganian, born in Detroit, her interest in genealogy and the preservation of African American history harkens back to her ancestor, abolitionist and Underground Railroad Station Master William Webb. Retired museum curator and exhibitions designer.
Jazmyn Davison: Currently a stay-at-home mother who enjoys spending time with family and friends, Jazmyn was born and raised in Mansfield, OH, and went on to work and serve in leadership development, banking and in service to God. She finds joy in learning about her ancestors and believes it’s an important component in the journey of discovering who you are.
Cheryl Garnett: President and co- founder of the Washtenaw County African American Genealogical Society, board member of Fred Hart Williams Genealogical Society, and board member of the Genealogical Society of Washtenaw County. To Cheryl, family is everything. She is the mother of five adult children, 17 grandchildren and three great grandchildren. Fulfilling a promise to her grandmother, she has been researching and reconstructing her family history and genealogy since 1996. She retired from the Ann Arbor VA Hospital in 2015, after serving 32 years as the director of Occupational Therapy.
LaJoy Y. Mosby: LaJoy begin researching her family history in the late ‘70s after viewing the TV miniseries “Roots.” She currently serves as the National President of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, Inc. (AAHGS). She serves as the president of the Central Maryland Chapter of AAHGS. She is also a member of several other genealogy societies, including the National Genealogical Society, Kentucky Genealogy Society, Alabama Genealogy Society, African American Genealogy Group of Kentucky and the Woodford County (KY) Historical Society.
Omer Jean Winborn: Retired educator, co-founder of the Washtenaw County African American Genealogy Society; vice president of Fred Hart Williams Genealogical Society, Detroit, Michigan; and board member, of the Washtenaw Genealogical Society of Washtenaw County.

Partners

Washtenaw County African American Genealogy Society
Ypsilanti District Library
Fred Hart Williams Genealogical Society (Detroit)
Afro American Historical and Genealogical Society
Lansing Area African American Genealogical Society

Michigan Genealogical Council

Michigan genealogical societies
Michigan genealogical research tools

Detroit Society for Geological Research

Resources:
Detroit Society for Genealogical Research
Michigan eLibrary: Genealogy eResources for Kids

25 Fun Things to Do with Your Friends and Family is an eBook in EBSCO’s Public Library eBook collection. One of the activities involves interviewing grandparents to learn more about their lives.
Families Through Time Ebook is a book within the EBSCO K-8 eBook collection and is designed to introduce kids to the concept of family history and traditions. There are prompts within the book to help them capture some of their own family traditions.
My Heritage Library Edition accesses various records throughout the world to provide more information about ancestors. This is not designed for use by younger children; however, middle and high school students could possibly use it to learn more about grandparents and great grandparents.
PebbleGo offers 10 different articles on families within its Social Studies module. This eResource is designed especially for children in grades K-2.

Finding Your Roots: The Seedlings
Inspired by the popular PBS series “Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.” and shot on the campus of Penn State University, “Finding Your Roots: The Seedlings” follows 13 young people in a genetics and genealogy camp as they explore their family history and DNA ancestry with techniques never before used in an educational setting.
Teachers, we encourage you to download and customize the curriculum used in our Finding Your Roots: The Seedlings Genetics & Genealogy Camp! Simply fill out the form at fyrclassroom.org/curriculum/ and you will be forwarded to a Box folder where you can download the full curriculum.
Other PBS Learning Media Resources

Family History and Genealogical Research | History Detectives This History Detectives collection of resources illustrates the research methodology for investigating genealogy and family history.
Lives of Hispanic Peoples along the Mexican Border | Teaching with Primary Sources This inquiry kit features Library of Congress sources and focuses upon the lives of Tejanos and Hispanics during the Westward expansion.
Faces of America What made America? What makes us? These two questions are at the heart of the PBS series Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The lesson plans and media resources based on the series address a wide range of topics including historic waves of immigration, anti-immigrant sentiment, family genealogy, and state-of-the-art genetic research.
Using Genetic Genealogy to Solve Crimes | Secrets in Our DNA Learn how genetic testing along with traditional genealogy methods can help identify criminal suspects in this video clip from NOVA.
Genetic Counselor Meet a genetic counselor and envision the possibilities around this in-demand science career that works to improve people’s health.

Funding Credits
Corporate support for FINDING YOUR ROOTS WITH HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR., Season Nine is provided by Ancestry and Johnson & Johnson. Major support is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Support is also provided by Ford Foundation; Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; Candace King Weir; and by The Inkwell Society and its members Jim and Susan Swartz; Hayward and Kathy Draper; Mitch Kapor and Freada Kapor Klein; Nicole Commissiong and Darnell Armstrong; and Anne Wojcicki.

The Eisendrath Symposium with Fred de Sam Lazaro | Wallace House
2023-03-16 16:30 - 18:00
Wallace House Presents Fred de Sam Lazaro, executive director of the Under-Told Stories and correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, as he takes a critical look at the world’s underreported events and awakens us to understand the daily concerns of far away people who increasingly affect our lives. A 1989 Michigan Journalism Fellow (later named the Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship), de Sam Lazaro founded Under-Told Stories in 2006, a journalism project focused on the consequences of poverty and stories about the world’s biggest challenges, including climate, food and water, and human rights. In addition to producing content for news organizations, Under-Told Stories collaborates with educators to engage students on the pressing issues of our time.

Author Talk: 'The Sentence' with Louise Erdrich
2023-03-15 20:00 - 21:00
PBS Books, in collaboration with the American Indian Library Association, is pleased to celebrate Women’s History Month by hosting a program with award-winning writer Louise Erdrich, author of “The Sentence,” in conversation with Allison Waukau, vice president of the American Indian Library Association. Join us for a thought-provoking conversation and learn about Erdrich, her new book and her creative process.

ABOUT THE BOOK: “The Sentence”
Louise Erdrich’s latest novel, “The Sentence,” asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store’s most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls’ Day, but she simply won’t leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading “with murderous attention,” must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.
“The Sentence” begins on All Souls’ Day 2019 and ends on All Souls’ Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional and profound as anything Erdrich has written.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Louise Erdrich
LOUISE ERDRICH, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, is the author of many novels as well as volumes of poetry, children’s books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel “The Round House” won the National Book Award for Fiction. “Love Medicine”, and “LaRose” received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Erdrich lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore. Her book, “The Night Watchman,” won the Pulitzer Prize. A ghost lives in her creaky old house.

Chris Wallace in conversation with Governor Gretchen Whitmer | Wallace House
2023-03-10 20:00 - 21:30
Wallace House Presents CNN Anchor Chris Wallace and Governor Gretchen Whitmer as part of the continuing series “Democracy in Crisis: Views from the Press.” Join this hour-long special event with Mr. Wallace and Governor Whitmer as they discuss politics, public service, the media, and the state of our democracy, with opening remarks by the University of Michigan President Santa Ono.
PBS will stream this event Friday, March 10 at 8 p.m., 2 days after the live recording. Learn more on OneDetroit and Wallace House.
About Gov. Whitmer
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is a lifelong Michigander who is focused on getting things done that will make a real difference in people’s lives. As governor, she has signed over 900 bipartisan bills and four balanced, bipartisan budgets to deliver on the kitchen-table issues, grow the economy, and create good-paying jobs in every region of the state.

About Chris Wallace
Chris Wallace is an anchor for CNN and host of “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?: with new episodes available weekly on HBO Max, and featured interviews from the show airing on CNN at 7 PM ET every Sunday. Praised as an “equal opportunity inquisitor” by The Boston Globe and “an aggressive journalist,” “sharp-edged” and “solid” by The Washington Post, Wallace interviews CEOs and media moguls, Hollywood legends and newsmakers across politics, business, world affairs, sports and culture.

Finding Your Roots: The Science of Genealogy
2023-03-08 20:00 - 21:00
WETA’s third national conversation of this free four-part series explores how advancements in science have impacted genealogy research. Critically acclaimed, interdisciplinary artist Thomas Allen Harris moderates this conversation with panelists including Finding Your Roots Lead Genetic Genealogist CeCe Moore, Dr. Carla Easter from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and Athina Ramphal, a participant in the 2017 Finding Your Roots: The Seedlings genetics and genealogy camp.

Celebrating National Reading Month: Grace Lin and Kate Messner
2023-03-01 20:00 - 21:00
PBS Books celebrates National Reading Month with Caldecott and Newbery honoree Grace Lin and bestselling author Kate Messner as they discuss their new book: “Once Upon A Book.” This story is a modern folktale about the joy of reading. Inspired by “Alice in Wonderland,” this book helps young readers explore their creativity on a fun adventure. Paired with vibrant illustrations, this lyrical story invites the reader to savor each page and indulge in the power of imagination. Join us to learn insights about the book and the significance of Alice’s white rabbit. Plus, you will learn about how Chinese symbols and traditions are woven into the story.
ABOUT THE BOOK: Once Upon A Book
Once upon a time, there was a girl. She went to a place alive with colors, where even the morning dew was warm. Alice loves to imagine herself in the magical pages of her favorite book. So when it flaps its pages and invites her in, she is swept away to a world of wonder and adventure, riding camels in the desert, swimming under the sea with colorful fish, floating in outer space and more! But when her imaginative journey comes to an end, she yearns for the place she loves best of all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Grace Lin
Grace Lin is the recipient of the Children’s Literature Legacy Award and is the bestselling author and illustrator of over 30 books, including “A Big Mooncake for Little Star” (a Caldecott Honor), “A Big Bed for Little Snow, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon” (a Newbery Honor), “The Year of the Dog,” and the “Ling & Ting” series. She is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and lives in Massachusetts. She invites you to visit her online at www.gracelin.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kate Messner
Kate Messner is a New York Times bestselling author of more than 50 books for young readers. Her award-winning titles include picture books like “Over and Under the Snow” and “The Brilliant Deep;” novels like “Breakout and Chirp;” engaging nonfiction like “The Next “ and the “History Smashers” series; the “Ranger in Time” adventures; and the “Fergus and Zeke” easy readers. She lives on Lake Champlain and invites you to visit her at www.katemessner.com.

Author Talk: 'Freewater' with Amina Luqman-Dawson
2023-02-22 20:00 - 21:00
PBS Books, in collaboration with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), is pleased to host a conversation with the 2023 Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Author Award winner Amina Luqman-Dawson, author of “Freewater.” This is Luqman-Dawson’s debut novel for middle-grade students in which she creates an imaginary world in the Great Dismal Swamp’s Freewater, pulling in and captivating the reader. She shares her research, provides insights into her characters, and her thought-provoking story, and takes readers on a fantastic adventure. Don’t miss this incredible conversation.
ABOUT THE BOOK: “Freewater”
Winner of the John Newbery Medal
Winner of the Coretta Scott King Author Award
An Indiebound Bestseller
Award-winning author Amina Luqman-Dawson pens a lyrical, accessible historical middle-grade novel about two enslaved children’s escape from a plantation and the many ways they find freedom.
Under the cover of night, 12-year-old Homer flees Southerland Plantation with his little sister Ada, unwillingly leaving their beloved mother behind. Much as he adores her and fears for her life, Homer knows there’s no turning back, not with the overseer on their trail. Through tangled vines, secret doorways, and over a sky bridge, the two find a secret community called Freewater, deep in the swamp. In this society created by formerly enslaved people and some freeborn children, Homer finds new friends, almost forgetting where he came from. But when he learns of a threat that could destroy Freewater, he crafts a plan to find his mother and help his new home. Deeply inspiring and loosely based on the history of maroon communities in the South, this is a striking tale of survival, adventure, friendship, and courage.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Amina Luqman-Dawson
Amina Luqman-Dawson is the author of the pictorial history book “Images of America: African Americans of Petersburg” (Arcadia Publishing) and “Freewater.” Her op-eds on race and popular culture have appeared in The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicleand more. A proud mother of a 13-year-old son, she and her family reside in Arlington, VA.

"With Care" with Nicole Marroquin | Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series
2023-02-17 20:00 - 21:00
Nicole Marroquin is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and teacher educator whose work explores spatial justice and Latinx history. Marroquin works with youth and communities to decenter dominant narratives and to address displacement and erasure. Her current work explores belonging through histories of student rebellions in Chicago Public Schools from 1968 to 1980. Through research and creative practice, she aims to recover and re-present histories of Black and brown youth and women’s leadership in the struggle for justice in Chicago.
Learn More>>

The Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series 2023 Season
This season, the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series brings respected leaders and innovators from a broad spectrum of creative fields to Ann Arbor’s historic Michigan Theater for weekly in-person events.
Detroit Public Television and PBS Books, in partnership with the Stamps School, will stream each week’s event Fridays at 8pm.
See the full schedule of events livestreamed by PBS Books here.
Some programs may not be available online, depending on artist requests. Interested in receiving notifications before online videos go live? Sign up to receive a reminder before each event begins streaming.
Watch Past Penny Stamps Episodes

Author Talk | Music as Resistance with Jonathan Abrams
2023-02-15 20:00 - 21:00
CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY: MUSIC AS RESISTANCE
AUTHOR TALK: JONATHAN ABRAMS
PBS Books, in collaboration with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) and WTTW/Chicago PBS, is pleased to host a program with award-winning New York Times staff writer Jonathan Abrams, who is the author of The Come Up: An Oral History of the Rise of Hip-Hop. This program is offered in connection with Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World, which just premiered on PBS earlier this year and can be streamed at PBS.org (check your local listing). Join us to learn more about the birth of Hip Hop culture and its impact on society.

This program is also being offered in collaboration with ASALH’s Black History Month Festival, which is focusing on Black Resistance. The program will explore Hip Hop as music as resistance.
ABOUT THE BOOK: THE COME UP: AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE RISE OF HIP HOP
The music that would come to be known as hip-hop was born at a party in the Bronx in the summer of 1973. Now, fifty years later, it’s the most popular music genre in America. Just as jazz did in the first half of the twentieth century, hip-hop and its groundbreaking DJs and artists—nearly all of them people of color from some of America’s most overlooked communities—pushed the boundaries of music to new frontiers, while transfixing the country’s youth and reshaping fashion, art, and even language.
And yet, the stories of many hip-hop pioneers and their individual contributions in the pre-Internet days of mixtapes and word of mouth are rarely heard—and some are at risk of being lost forever. Now, in The Come Up, the New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Abrams offers the most comprehensive account so far of hip-hop’s rise, a multi-decade chronicle told in the voices of the people who made it happen. In more than three hundred interviews conducted over three years, Abrams has captured the stories of the DJs, executives, producers, and artists who both witnessed and themselves forged the history of hip-hop. Masterfully combining these voices into a seamless symphonic narrative, Abrams traces how the genre grew out of the resourcefulness of a neglected population in the South Bronx, and from there how it flowed into New York City’s other boroughs, and beyond—from electrifying live gatherings, then on to radio and vinyl, below to the Mason-Dixon Line, west to Los Angeles through gangster rap and G-funk, and then across generations.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: JONATHAN ABRAMS
Jonathan Abrams is an award-winning staff reporter for The New York Times. He is the bestselling author of two previous books, Boys Among Men and All the Pieces Matter. A graduate of the University of Southern California, Abrams was formerly a staff writer at Bleacher Report, Grantland, and the Los Angeles Times.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR: ANGEL IDOWU
Angel Idowu currently serves as the JCS Fund of the DuPage Foundation Arts Correspondent for WTTW’s Chicago Tonight, Black Voices and Latino Voices. A Chicago native, she is also VP of Archives for the National Association of Black Journalists Chicago Chapter, a mentor with LINK Unlimited, a developing screenwriter, runs her own production company, FoomiLOLA Media, and heads a nonprofit geared toward art education resources. . She received her Master’s in Journalism from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.
ABOUT THE SHOW: FIGHT THE POWER
“Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World” is an incredible narrative of struggle, triumph and resistance that will be brought to life through the lens of an art form that has chronicled the emotions, experiences and expressions of Black and Brown communities: Hip Hop. In the aftermath of America’s racial and political reckoning in 2020, the perspectives and stories shared in Hip Hop are key to understanding injustice in the U.S. over the last half-century.

Finding Your Roots: Genealogy & The Next Generation
2023-02-08 20:00 - 21:30
Wondering what’s on the minds of youth when it comes to genealogy? Join the virtual conversation with Student Reporting Labs on Wed. Feb. 8 at 8/7c.
This event, Genealogy & The Next Generation, is the second of a 4-part National Conversation Series in connection with Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and presents an intergenerational conversation about family trees. The conversation will be moderated by PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Lab alumna Sonal Prakash and feature Finding Your Roots lead genealogist Akosua E. Moore, filmmaker and scholar Thomas Allen Harris, and college sophomore Naima Blanco-Norberg who is delving into genealogy research.
Season Nine of Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., will air on PBS stations nationwide on Tuesdays at 8pm ET beginning on January 3, 2023. Tune-in as Dr. Gates and his team uncover the long-buried secrets, hidden identities, and lost ancestors of today’s most compelling personalities.
To learn more visit pbs.org/finding-your-roots
About the “Finding Your Roots” National Conversation Series
Now in its ninth season, Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., continues to be one of the most popular series in public media. The program expertly uncovers the long-buried secrets, hidden identities, and lost ancestors of today’s most compelling personalities, and explores the connections that bind us together.
Join us in the first few months of 2023 for a compelling series of 4 virtual conversations on topics related to genealogy – one event each month Finding Your Roots is on the air (January-April).
Learn more about the conversation series, and see the full schedule.
Funding Credits:
Corporate support for Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Season Nine is provided by Ancestry and Johnson & Johnson. Major support is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Support is also provided by Ford Foundation; Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; Candace King Weir; and by The Inkwell Society and its members Jim and Susan Swartz; Hayward and Kathy Draper; Mitch Kapor and Freada Kapor Klein; Nicole Commissiong and Darnell Armstrong; and Anne Wojcicki.

“Climate Change and the Importance of the Urban Landscape” with Martha Schwartz | Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series
2023-02-03 20:00 - 21:00
As Founding Partner of Martha Schwartz Partners, Landscape Architects, Martha Schwartz is a world-renowned designer. She has over 40 years of experience designing and implementing large scale masterplans, mixed-use developments, urban regeneration projects, as well as civic plazas, parks, institutional landscapes, corporate headquarters, installations, and gardens. Martha Schwartz Partners works with city leaders, planners and builders at a strategic level so as to advocate for the inclusion of the public landscape as a means to achieve environmental, economic and social sustainability.
Learn More>>

The Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series 2023 Season
This season, the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series brings respected leaders and innovators from a broad spectrum of creative fields to Ann Arbor’s historic Michigan Theater for weekly in-person events.
Detroit Public Television and PBS Books, in partnership with the Stamps School, will stream each week’s event Fridays at 8pm.
See the full schedule of events livestreamed by PBS Books here.
Some programs may not be available online, depending on artist requests. Interested in receiving notifications before online videos go live? Sign up to receive a reminder before each event begins streaming.
Watch Past Penny Stamps Episodes

Author Talk | Zora Neale Hurston and Black History Month with Ibram X. Kendi, Ph.D.
2023-02-02 20:00 - 21:00
CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY: ZORA NEALE HURSTON
AUTHOR TALK: IBRAM X. KENDI, PH.D.
PBS Books, in collaboration with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), is pleased to host a program with Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, who recently adapted Zora Neale Hurston’s Magnolia Flower and soon-to-be-released The Making of Butterflies. The program is offered in connection with the AMERICAN EXPERIENCE’s Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming A Space on PBS. Join us to gain insights into these wonderful children’s books that introduce Zora Neale Hurston folk tales to audiences of all ages.
This program is also being offered in collaboration with ASALH’s Black History Month Festival.
ABOUT THE BOOK: MAGNOLIA FLOWER
Born to parents who fled slavery and the Trail of Tears, Magnolia Flower is a girl with a vibrant spirit. Not to be deterred by rigid ways of the world, she longs to connect with others, who too long for freedom. She finds this in a young man of letters who her father disapproves of. In her quest to be free, Magnolia must make a choice and set off on a journey that will prove just how brave one can be when leading with one’s heart. The acclaimed writer of several American classics, Zora Neale Hurston wrote this stirring folktale brimming with poetic prose, culture, and history. It was first published as a short story in The Spokesman in 1925 and later in her collection Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick (2020).
Tenderly retold by #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Award-winning author Ibram X. Kendi, Magnolia Flower is a story of a transformative and radical devotion between generations of Indigenous and Black people in America. With breathtaking illustrations by Loveis Wise, this picture book reminds us that there is no force strong enough to stop love.

ABOUT THE BOOK: THE MAKING OF BUTTERFLIES
First Folktale from the creators of Magnolia Flower, Zora Neale Hurston and Ibram X. Kendi, about the origin of butterflies. The Creator wuz all finished and thru makin’ de world.
But soon, the Creator finds themselves flying through the sky, making gorgeous butterflies of every color, shape, and size. Find out why butterflies were made in Zora Neale Hurston’s stunning and layered African American folktale retold by #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Award–winning author Ibram X. Kendi and illustrated by Kah Yangni. This accessible and sizable board book is perfect for introducing the youngest of readers to the beauty of Hurston’s storytelling and will spark curiosity in children about how things in our world came to be.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ibram X. Kendi, Ph.D.
Ibram X. Kendi is a National Book Award–winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author. His books include Antiracist Baby; Goodnight Racism; How to Be an Antiracist; and How to Raise an Antiracist. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University and the director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. In 2020, Time magazine named Kendi one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He has also been awarded a 2021 MacArthur Fellowship.
ABOUT THE SHOW: ZORA NEALE HURSTON: CLAIMING A SPACE
Raised in the small all-Black Florida town of Eatonville, Zora Neale Hurston studied at Howard University before arriving in New York in 1925. She would soon become a key figure of the Harlem Renaissance, best remembered for her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. But even as she gained renown in the Harlem literary circles, Hurston was also discovering anthropology at Barnard College with the renowned Franz Boas. She would make several trips to the American South and the Caribbean, documenting the lives of rural Black people and collecting their stories. She studied her own people, an unusual practice at the time, and during her lifetime became known as the foremost authority on Black folklore.
Directed by Tracy Heather Strain, produced by Randall MacLowry and executive produced by Cameo George, Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space is an in-depth biography of the influential author whose groundbreaking anthropological work would challenge assumptions about race, gender and cultural superiority that had long defined the field in the 19th century.

Charles M. Blow | Wright Museum Speakers
2023-01-31 20:00 - 21:00
Watch the livestream presentation of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History’s inaugural President Lecture Series featuring Charles Blow, columnist for The New York Times, political analyst and author of “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” and “The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto.” Blow brings insight and a robust discussion on Martin Luther King Jr., race and culture.

"Cultural Exchange Rate - A Case Study" with Tania El Khoury | Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series
2023-01-27 20:00 - 21:00
Lebanese artist Tania El Khoury examines the universal, never-ending story of migration through a family diary of the borders, and the recognition that the cruelest of borders are invisible to the eye and present in everyday life.
“Cultural Exchange Rate” is an interactive live art project in which El Khoury shares her family memoirs of life in border villages between Lebanon and Syria. El Khoury collects recorded interviews with her late grandmother, the discovery of lost relatives in México City, and the family’s attempt to secure dual citizenship through war survival, valueless currency collection, and a river that disregards both colonial and national borders. The audience is invited to immerse their heads into one family’s secret boxes to explore sounds, images, and textures that trace more than a century of border crossings.
Learn More>>

The Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series 2023 Season
This season, the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series brings respected leaders and innovators from a broad spectrum of creative fields to Ann Arbor’s historic Michigan Theater for weekly in-person events.
Detroit Public Television and PBS Books, in partnership with the Stamps School, will stream each week’s event Fridays at 8pm.
See the full schedule of events livestreamed by PBS Books here.
Some programs may not be available online, depending on artist requests. Interested in receiving notifications before online videos go live? Sign up to receive a reminder before each event begins streaming.
Watch Past Penny Stamps Episodes
