Arts & Letters Live

In conversation with author Ben Fountain

In Sontag: Her Life and Work, Ben Moser delves into the life of one of the most emblematic voices of the 20th century: Susan Sontag—novelist, activist, essayist, playwright, filmmaker, and one of the most influential critics of her generation. Sontag left a legacy of writing—on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, and more. Drawing from the writer’s restricted archives and interviews with those who have remained silent on her until now (including Annie Leibovitz), Sontag crafts a definitive portrait of the writer and explores the insecurity behind her formidable public face. Moser was a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle award and a recipient of the 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Ruta Sepetys is an internationally acclaimed #1 New York Times bestselling author of historical fiction. The New York Times Book Review hailed her as a “champion of the interstitial people so often ignored—whole populations lost in the cracks of history.” Her newest novel, The Fountains of Silence, is an epic, heart-wrenching story about identity, unforgettable love, repercussions of war, and the hidden violence of silence, inspired by the true postwar struggles of Spain. When Dallas high-society teen Daniel Matheson and his family arrive in Madrid, photography—and fate—introduce him to Ana, whose family's obstacles reveal the lingering grasp of the Spanish Civil War. While his father conducts business with Franco, Daniel makes it his mission to bring to light the atrocities the world has ignored.

In conversation with author Sarah Hepola

Psychotherapist, advice columnist, and New York Times bestselling author Lori Gottlieb’s new book Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is a thought-provoking look behind the scenes of her life as a therapist—where her patients are looking for answers, and so is she. Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, offering a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them. Lori Gottlieb appears as a frequent expert on mental health in media such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, CNN, and NPR. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is in development for a television series with Eva Longoria and ABC.

In conversation with author Ben Fountain

After becoming a father at the age of 58, National Book Award–winning novelist Tim O’Brien realized that when his two young sons would begin to know him, they would know an old man. He resolved to give them what he wished his own father had given him—a few scraps of paper signed “Love, Dad.” For the next 15 years, the author talked to his sons on paper, as if they were adults, imagining what they might want to hear from a father who was no longer among the living. The result is Dad’s Maybe Book, in which O’Brien shares wisdom from a life in letters, lessons learned in wartime, and the challenges, humor, and rewards of raising two sons.