Write America: A Reading for Our Country

Byrd's Books is proud to be the home of Write America!

Write America was an author series created by writer Roger Rosenblatt, featuring award-winning, nationally-renowned authors, and new and emerging writers, in readings and conversation each week about how books and art might bridge the deep divisions in our nation. Conversations were streamed Mondays on Byrd's Books' Crowdcast channel, until we moved over to zoom in the later episodes. Writers including Rita Dove, Major Jackson, Alice McDermott, Vijay Seshadri, Garry Trudeau, Francine Prose, Alan Alda, Amy Hempel, Tyehimba Jess, Natalie Diaz, Paul Auster, Juan Felipe Herrera, Billy Collins and many more came together for these virtual events.

Check each listed episode to get the YouTube link to watch. Attendance has always been free.

The series launched February 2021 and wrapped up at the end of January 2023. View the full schedule of conversations below.


Write America Mission Statement: 

We are each other's
harvest:
We are each other's
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.

Write America is an organization of writers concerned about the divisions  in our country that  have evidenced themselves and deepened over the past few years. We see a torn America these days, jeopardizing basic principles of justice, freedom, fair play, and equality.

These principles are important to writers, felt passionately if shown indirectly. They undergird our poems, novels, essays, memoirs, every form by which we attempt to reach out to our human family through grace and precision of language and the quiet power of art. A writer’s words are a tacit call for people to gather round and discover or rediscover their common thoughts and feelings and their connections to one another. Whatever its subject, writing is at heart a moral force, what Stanley Kunitz called “the testing of existence at its highest pitch.” Writing makes justice desirable, evil intelligible, grief endurable, and love possible.

In this project, then, we have  come together to read our work in the interests of life's nobler values. Normally, in the course of our profession, we keep our distance. We create, publish, and say with Chaucer, 'go little book,'  to a remote receiving world. With our readings for Write America we will try to bridge that distance in a gesture of bonding. The nation is injured. We hope to contribute to its healing.

************************************************************************************************************
Episodes of WRITE AMERICA

Past episodes from 2022:

41       1/3/22           Sequoia Nagamatsu, Karla Brundage and Lance Morrow YouTube link

SPECIAL EVENT: Wednesday January 5th: Al Gore in Conversation with Roger Rosenblatt YouTube link

42       1/10/22         Francine Prose, LaTanya McQueen YouTube link

43       1/17 /22        Susan Shreve and Thomas Becker YouTube link

44       SPECIAL EVENT: Monday January 24th: Garry Trudeau and Jules Feiffer- in conversation about the art of cartooning YouTube link

45      1/31/22          Miranda Beeson, Emily Bernard and Kurt Andersen YouTube link

46       2/7/22           Elizabeth Hawes Weinstock, Ursula Hegi and Vijay Seshadri YouTube link

SPECIAL EVENT  Wednesday, February 9th Billy Collins and Robert Reeves honor Frank McCourt YouTube link

47       2/14/22:         Tyehimba Jess, Molly Gaudry and Marie Howe YouTube link

48       2/21/22:         Arthur Sze and Alice McDermott YouTube link

49       2/28/22:         Grace Schulman, Samyak Shertok and Jennifer Haigh    YouTube link

50       3/7/22:           Robert Reeves, Jill McCorkle and Magdalene Brandeis    YouTube link

51       3/14/22:         Jamaal May, Michelle Whittaker and Lindsay Adkins      YouTube link

52       3/21/22:         Ken Auletta, George Colt and Susan Isaacs YouTube link

53       3/28/22:         Jillian LaRussa and Roger Rosenblatt    YouTube link

54       4/4/22:           Carmen Giménez and Dan Halpern- this episode was cancelled.

55       4/11/22:         Anne Fadiman and Lou Ann Walker  YouTube link

56       4/18/22          Meg Wolitzer and Delia Ephron   YouTube link

57       4/25/22:         Jim and Deb Fallows YouTube link

58       5/2/22:           Rose Styron, Philip Schultz and Marilyn Nelson YouTube link

59       5/9/22 :          Susan Minot, Kirstin Valdez Quade, and David Remnick YouTube link

60       5/11/22::        Special Event: Roger Rosenblatt in conversation with Derek and Sissela Bok (this episode is cancelled)

61       5/16/22:         Helen Vendler and Lloyd Schwartz YouTube link

62       5/23/22:         Edward Zwick and Patricia McCormick YouTube link

       5/30/22:        MEMORIAL DAY- NO READING

63      6/6/22:           Susan Cole, Wyatt Prunty and Alia Trabucco Zerán YouTube link

64      6/13/22:         Major Jackson and Genevieve Sly Crane YouTube link

65      6/20/22:        Gail Mazur, Lloyd Schwartz, and Nicole Terez Dutton YouTube link

66      6/27/22:        Rachel Pastan, Alison Fairbrother, and Tyehimba Jess YouTube link

67       7/11/22:        Vanessa Cuti, Elizabeth Nunez, and LaTanya McQueen YouTube link

68       7/18/22:        Maureen Murphy and  Joyce Maynard YouTube link

69       7/25/22:        Carlos Fonseca, Priya Jain, and Rita Dove YouTube link

     8/1/22:      NO READING

70       8/8/22:         Frank Bidart and Robert Lopez YouTube link

71       8/15/22:       Dinitia Smith and David Nasaw YouTube link

72       8/22/22:       Nicole Hebdon, and Dan Barry YouTube link

73       8/29/22:       Gregory Pardlo and Nick Flynn YouTube link

  9/5/22:         LABOR DAY- NO READING

74       9/12/22:       Fred Newman and Tony Earley    YouTube link

75        9/19/22        Edvige Giunta and Richard Rabinowitz- You Tube Link

 76        SPECIAL EPISODE: 9/28/22      Rose Styron, Edward Hirsch and Elizabeth Hawes Weinstock- YouTube link

 77       10/3/22      Bill Nericcio and Roger Rosenblatt  YouTube link

78       10/10/22    NEW LINE-UP: Jillian LaRussa and Claudia Acevedo-Quiñones  YouTube link

 79       10/17/22    Edward Zwick, Paul Harding, and Hilma Wolitzer  YouTube link

 80       10/24/22    Lindsay Adkins and Wally Marzano-Lesnevich   YouTube Link

 81       10/31/22    Patricia McCormick and Genevieve Sly Crane  YouTube Link

11/7/22     NO READING

82       11/14/22    Emily Bernard and Robert Lopez YouTube link

83   SPECIAL EVENT: Wednesday 11/16/22: Roger Rosenblatt and Grace Schulman YouTube link

84       11/21/22    Linda Pastan and Miranda Beeson YouTube link

85      11/28/22    Frank Bidart and Richard Tillinghast YouTube link

86       12/5/22      Alice McDermott and Jill McCorkle You Tube link

87       12/12/22    Francine Prose and Billy Collins  YouTube link

Episodes from 2023

88         1/9/23       Paisley Rekdal and Carlos Fonseca   YouTube LINK

89         1/17/23      Priya Jane and Anne Peretz YouTube link

90         1/24/23      Carl Phillips, Gail Mazur and Adam Gopnik YouTube link

91         1/31/23      Roger Rosenblatt and Lora Tucker  The final episode on YouTube

***********************************************************

Past Episodes PAGE FROM 2021

Early 2021 episodes from the Book Revue   

***********************************************************  

Staff Pick Badge
Cold Moon: On Life, Love, and Responsibility By Roger Rosenblatt Cover Image
$15.95
ISBN: 9781885983886
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Turtle Point Press - October 27th, 2020

SIGNED copies


The Story I Am: Mad about the Writing Life By Roger Rosenblatt Cover Image
$18.00
ISBN: 9781885983787
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Turtle Point Press - April 7th, 2020