― Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, a 2021 CLSC Selection

Thursday, July 22nd @ 10:30 am - 11:45 am | Amphitheater & CHQ Assembly
CLSC Special Presentation: Begin Again and Shakespeare in a Divided America Thursday, July 22 4:00 pm | CHQ Assembly

-- James Shapiro, Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us about Our Past and Future

Join the CLSC discussion today (Wednesday July 21st) on the Virtual Porch at 12:15.

“...The risks of not flossing are real, but not inordinate. The risks of not acting on the scientific evidence of climate change are inordinate.”
― Naomi Oreskes, Why Trust Science?

CLSC Presentation premiering at 3:30 p.m. ET Thursday, July 15, 2021 on CHQ Assembly.

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert
Tuesday, July 06, 2021 10:30am EDT | Amphitheater & CHQ Assembly

A limited number of signed bookplates are available.  Let us know in your order comments if you'd like one in your book!

Chautauqua Institution has announced Having and Being Had (Riverhead Books) by Eula Biss as the 2021 winner of The Chautauqua Prize.

As author of the winning book, Biss receives $7,500, and will be presented with the Prize — and give a public reading — during a celebratory event set for 1 p.m. EDT Thursday, Aug. 5, 2021, on the digital CHQ Assembly platform.

Having just purchased her first home, in Having and Being Had the poet and essayist Eula Biss embarks on a provocative and delightful exploration of the value system she has bought into. Examining our assumptions about class and property and the lure of capitalism, Biss offers an uncommonly immersive and deeply revealing new portrait of work and luxury, of accumulation and consumption, of the value of time and how we spend it. Chautauqua Prize readers described Biss as “a provocative thinker who has constructed a book about possessions, economic systems, work, class, money that is lyrical in tone,” and whose writing “encourages us to sit and think in uncomfortable psychic spaces.” “The writing,” another reader wrote, “is simply terrific.”

“I’m tremendously grateful for this recognition of the thought and work that went into Having and Being Had,” Biss said. “This prize comes at a moment when I’m reimagining my work life, and it is particularly meaningful coming from an institution with such a long history of supporting artists who are pursuing their craft.”

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
3:30 p.m. Thursday, July 29, 2021 | CHQ Assembly

A desperate man attempts and fails to rob a bank. After the police arrive, he flees and enters an apartment open house where he takes a diverse group of strangers hostage.

Each of the characters carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises, these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next.

The author of A Man Called Ove and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Fredrik Backman’s new novel, Anxious People, is a confirmation of the storytelling prowess that made USA Today call him “a master of writing delightful, insightful, soulful, character-driven narratives.”

Fredrik Backman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, and Us Against You, as well as two novellas and one work of nonfiction. His books are published in more than forty countries. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with his wife and two children.

Be prepared with reusable travel cups and water bottles.