Cotton Capital is an investigative journalism series, published by The Guardian newspaper in the UK, that explores the revelation that the paper’s founders had links to slavery through the cotton and textile industry.
No one chronicles the most important events in Black life across the globe more incisively and vibrantly than Gary Younge. His current Orwell Award-winning book, Dispatches from the Diaspora, records world-shaking events.
Dominic Dromgoole, former Artistic Director of the Globe Theater in London joins the Festival to share his insights into the sometimes comical and often inspiring efforts which went into the creation of one of the great wonders of the literary world, the first printed edition of Shakespeare’s collected plays.
Unscripted, an account of the media titan Sumner Redstone’s final years, “-is a chronicle of corporate greed, manipulation, misogyny and sexual impropriety on a spectacular scale” (The New York Times).
All the Beauty in the World documents former New Yorker staffer Patrick Bringley's ten years working as a guard at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bringley offers an insider take on one of the most remarkable art collections in the world.
In common with vast areas of global coastlines, could Charleston be especially vulnerable to the consequences of climate change? Our panel discusses how we can devise a thriving future for humankind and the natural world.
Paul Muldoon, a leading member of the great generation of Northern Irish poets, reads from his work and discusses the relationship between poetry and song, including the impact of one genre on the other in his and other writers’ creativity.
Paul Harding’s This Other Eden is based on a relatively unknown true story about a tiny community descended from trafficked Africans, immigrant Irish and indigenous Penobscot, scrabbling a living on an Island off the coast of Maine.
Eminent British playwright David Hare, dramatist of Straight Line Crazy, engages in conversation with Roberta Brandes Gratz, urbanist and friend of Jane Jacobs, who was a symbol of opposition to urban planner Robert Moses after the publication of her classic book The Death and Life of American Cities in 1961.
The artificial intelligence revolution is progressing at lightning speed. Could AI result in the next recipient of the Nobel Prize turning out to be a robot, or will it usher in a new era of creativity?
At a time when the study of the arts and humanities is under threat, Martin Puchner makes a forceful case for creativity.
British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore’s monumental book,The World: A Family History of Humanity, is a sweeping survey, chronicling powerful dynasties and their dysfunction across the globe.
Internationally celebrated visual artist Jonathan Green and Greenville’s first poet laureate Glenis Redmond reveal how their creativity has been inspired by David Drake.
Harlan Greene’s The Real Rainbow Row and Jamie Kirchick’s Secret City excavate hidden LGBTQ+ histories in Charleston and Washington respectively.
WINNER OF 2024 PULITZER PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY
The first extensive biography of Martin Luther King to be published in three decades, Jonathan Eig draws on recently released White House transcripts, F.B.I. documents, letters, and other materials that shed a whole new light on the civil rights leader.
How To Say Babylon is the stunning story of Safiya Sinclair’s struggle to break free of a rigid Rastafarian upbringing to find her voice as a woman and poet.
Joseph McGill Jr., founder of the Slave Dwelling Project, has spent countless nights in former slave quarters constructed and occupied by Black people in the antebellum period. Together with Herb Frazier, journalist and co-author, they discuss the revealing light this unique project has shed on race in America.
Margaret Atwood joins us to discuss her latest book,Old Babes In The Wood. This dazzling collection of 15 stories contain reflections on marriage, mortality, and human foibles.
With access to personal letters and papers, Lucy Worsley’s biography of Agatha Christie is authoritative and entertaining, making a convincing case that she was a true pioneer.
Peter Crane, President of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Virginia which includes a renowned garden and unique library founded by Rachel Lambert Mellon, takes us on a behind the scenes tour of the estate.
Oakwood University's multi-award-winning choir close out the first weekend of Charleston Literary Festival with a rousing performance.
Elizabeth Dowling Taylor's remarkable book,The Original Black Elite: Daniel Murray and the Story of a Forgotten Era documents the life of Daniel Murray, a successful black civic leader and assistant librarian at the Library of Congress.
Tracy Kidder’s Rough Sleepers is an eye-opening and inspiring narrative chronicling the dedicated efforts of Dr. Jim O’Connell working over several decades to provide medical attention for the unhoused.
The Sewing Girl’s Tale, a vividly described, page-turning story, set in Revolutionary America, revolves around the assault of a 17 year-old seamstress, the trial of the perpetrator, the riots that followed and the consequences for all the individuals involved.
Simon Schama’s Foreign Bodies, a dramatic account of heroes, heroines and villains instrumental in the development of vaccines that saved millions.
Celebrated for her originality and distinctive voice, Lorrie Moore describes her novel, I Am Homeless If This is Not My Home, as “a political and a personal ghost story.”
Everyone loves reading, right? So, why does it increasingly feel like people are afraid of it? This is the question that former New York Times film critic A.O. Scott asks in his recently published essay on the importance of reading, its impending crisis, and the multifarious forces at play.
Rebecca Makkai’s New York Times bestseller, I Have Some Questions For You, is an engrossing suspense novel she describes as a “literary feminist boarding school murder mystery.”
“Wise, companionable, and often extremely funny” (Atlantic), Adam Gopnik’s The Real Work examines what is involved in learning a new skill—from life drawing to baking, boxing to dancing, performing magic tricks to driving.
Richard Ford discusses his distinguished literary career and the last book in his celebrated Frank Bascombe series.
