-- Dahr Jamail, The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption

The first CLSC presentation of the season goes live later today, Thursday 7/2, on CHQ Assembly.

EDIT 7.3.2020: We do not yet have the signed bookplates mentioned during the presentation onhand; if you would like your book to wait to ship until we can include one, please let us know in your order notes.  Thank you!

Available editions:

How we talk about climate change is rapidly shifting. But amid the ongoing political debates, how are we — and should we be — responding?

Browse titles by this week's assembly contributors here

More suggested reading:

Here in the After: Writing Toward (More) Uncertain Futures
Wednesday, June 24 / 1 p.m. EDT-- Chautauqua Literary Arts

Join the 2020 (now the 2021) Chautauqua Writers’ Festival faculty for this webinar and Q-and-A about the role of writing about the pandemic, writing out the pandemic, and writing past the pandemic. How has our writing changed? Must it change, in light of recent events? In lieu of the festival, canceled due to the pandemic, the festival director and faculty will convene to talk about what it means to write toward an even (more) uncertain future and what this has meant for their own writing practices, lives, and communities. Featuring Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Martha Collins, Porochista Khakpour, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, and Jess Row.

Register on Zoom

Selection of Faculty Titles:

The Bookstore is very pleased to announce that it is reopening under a phased schedule. The store will be open for curbside pickup starting Saturday June 13th thru Monday the 15th. We will be open for regular in-store shopping starting on Tuesday the 16th between 9am and 5pm. It is expected that those will be the regular hours of operation (9-5) throughout the summer, but they are subject to change.

For curbside pickup, guests may call the Bookstore number at 716.357.2151 or email us at bookstore@chq.org. For the present, this service will be limited to book shopping. You can call between 9 and 5 to speak with someone, or leave a message for us to call you back at any time. Leave your name and number, and the title of the book if you know it. We will call you back to confirm we have what you want, take your charge card number and process the transaction inside the store. We will then meet you outside the Bookstore between 4 and 5 pm that day and give you a bag with your order in it. As we gauge the success of this process, we will expand the service to include other products. (Online orders including non-book items may use curbside pickup, as the desired items can be identified easily and accurately).

Once we bring guests inside the store we ask that they follow established procedures for keeping health risks for the community to a minimum. The Institution has been painstaking in its commitment to developing plans and procedures whose primary purpose is to maintain the health of staff, visitors, and community residents. Each part of the Institution has developed procedures particular to its role as a supporter of the community.

Inside the Bookstore those things will include:

• Asking all staff, visitors, and guests to wear face masks while inside the store
• Asking that everyone who enters the store sanitize their hands - sanitizing station located to left as you enter the store
• Asking everyone to maintain the accepted social distancing space of 6 ft.
• Asking that parents or guardians accompany all children under the age of 12
• Asking that dogs be left outside of the store
• Asking guests to pay with forms other than cash at this time. We will accept credit cards, gift cards and checks
• Asking that guests pay attention to the markings on the floor that indicate which way traffic in an aisle should flow
• Asking that guests be cognizant of the fact that only a limited number of people will be allowed into the store at a time; currently that number is projected to be 40

An important thing to let people know is that, at least for the time being, the Bookstore will not be carrying newspapers. In an effort to keep the number of guests in the store at a manageable level, and because the number of people coming in for only the newspaper can make that number swell significantly - especially on Sundays - this question has been carefully considered. It is certainly possible that as we gather more information about how the entire process is moving along, the decision will be reconsidered. In the meantime, we apologize for this very significant inconvenience.

This has certainly been a very challenging time for everyone. The Bookstore has, for many Chautauquans over the years, been a sanctuary.... even amongst the tranquil grounds of the Institution. Our hope is that we will be able to work out a way to make this continue to be true. Blessings to all of you, and wishes for a safe and health 2020 Season.

Earl Rothfus
Bookstore Manager

― Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

The books on this list offer a starting place for exploring racism, prejudice, discrimination, and inequity.

Thursday, June 4th's #CHQWatchParty revisits James and Deborah Fallows' 2018 lecture from the week on American Identity.

Chautauqua Institution is proud to announce Petina Gappah’s Out of Darkness, Shining Light (Scribner) as the 2020 winner of The Chautauqua Prize.

A powerful novel of exploration and adventure in 19th-century Africa, Out of Darkness, Shining Light is a captivating story of those who carried explorer and missionary Dr. David Livingstone’s body across the continent of Africa, so his remains could be returned home to England. “Rather than repeating the usual legend of the Livingstone expedition, Gappah reinvents the story to reveal the tyranny and complexity of colonial power,” one reader wrote, and the author’s “inspired treatment and graceful prose breathes life into her riveting account.” Another called the work a “Homer-esque, cross-cultural mini-epic; … the odyssey itself is a pleasure in prose.”

Gappah said she was “delighted” to accept the 2020 Chautauqua Prize:

“My primary identity is that of a reader, so it is wonderful to receive an award that is given to books that offer a ‘richly rewarding reading experience,’” Gappah said. “I am grateful that through the power of this award, Livingstone’s companions will now travel to readers who might otherwise not have heard of them. Thank you so much to Chautauqua Institution for this honor, but most of all, thank you for your abiding belief in the power of literature.”

The Chautauqua Prize, this year awarded for the ninth time, is an annual prize that celebrates a book of fiction or literary/narrative nonfiction that provides a richly rewarding reading experience and honors the author for a significant contribution to the literary arts.

Read the full announcement and learn more about the Chautauqua Prize

Out of Darkness, Shining Light will count toward CLSC graduation requirements.  Registered CLSC members, remember to use the code THISLAND at checkout for 20% off this title!

Available Formats:

Wednesday, May 27th's #CHQWatchParty revisits Bill McKibben's 2019 Lecture from the week on Shifting Global Power.

Check out these related titles:

Chautauqua Institution has announced “Reality Marble” by Joseph Earl Thomas as the 2020 winner of the Chautauqua Janus Prize.  

As the author selected from 16 finalists by judge Hilary Plum, Thomas receives $5,000 and will present a public lecture and reading at a celebratory event at a date to be determined as part of Chautauqua Institution’s online assembly season this summer. His writing will also appear in a future issue of the literary journal Chautauqua.   

Hailing from Philadelphia, Thomas is a doctoral student in English at the University of Pennsylvania whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Offing, Gulf Coast and The Kenyon Review. Being an emerging writer, Thomas said, means “applying and submitting to hundreds of places where you feel the work might fit or be in conversation with other art you love and admire,” and he was surprised and honored for his work to be selected for the Janus Prize, “which thinks so deliberately about aesthetics and the social world simultaneously.”  

Exploring loneliness, race, masculinity, violence and a search for happiness, “Reality Marble” is a memoir, drawing themes and its title from the natural world, and from the genres of fantasy and science fiction. 

First awarded in 2018, the Chautauqua Janus Prize celebrates one emerging writer’s single work of short fiction or nonfiction for daring formal and aesthetic innovations that upset and reorder literary conventions, historical narratives and readers’ imaginations. Named for Janus, the Roman god who looks to both the past and the future, the prize honors writing with a command of craft that renovates our understandings of both. The prize is funded by a generous donation from Barbara and Twig Branch.  

Read the full announcement and learn more about the Chautauqua Janus Prize

Past winners:

Wednesday's #CHQWatchParty revisits Risa Goluboff's 2019 Lecture during the week exploring the theme “Uncommon Ground: Communities Working Toward Solutions.”

Currently, her books are not available to order, but if you're looking to add them to your "To-Be-Read" list, here's a list of her publications: