BAM Presents Influential Writers Isabel Wilkerson and Lynn Nottage In Conversation

Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) presents Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson in conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage on Tuesday, November 10 at 10am (EST). In this free, livestream event, the influential writers take as their starting point Wilkerson's recently released, acclaimed book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent.

The immersive narrative draws parallels between the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany and outlines a revolutionary framework for understanding how caste plays out across civilizations, both historically and today. Using riveting stories from the lives of Martin Luther King Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, an ordinary single father and his toddler son, and many others, Wilkerson shows how the insidious undertow of caste is experienced by each of us every day. Beautifully written and wholly original, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a re-examination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives in America today.

Tue, Nov 10 at 10am EST. LIvestream on YouTube. Visit bam.org to RSVP and for more information.

Isabel Wilkerson's first book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Lynton History Prize, the Heartland Award, and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. It was named one of the 10 best books of the year by The New York Times, USA Today, O: The Oprah Magazine, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and many others. In 2019, Time Magazine named The Warmth of Other Suns to its list of the 10 best nonfiction books of the decade. Wilkerson is the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism and the first African-American to win for individual reporting. In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded her the National Humanities Medal for "her masterful combination of intimate human narratives with broader societal trends" and for "championing an unsung history."

Lynn Nottage is a playwright and a screenwriter, and the first woman in history to win two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Her plays have been produced widely in the United States and throughout the world. Her plays include Floyd's, Sweat, Mlima's Tale, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Ruined, Intimate Apparel, Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine, Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Las Meninas, Mud, River, Stone, Por'knockers and POOF!. Musical librettos include The Secret Life of Bees and MJ (upcoming). She has also developed This is Reading, a performance installation in Reading, Pennsylvania. Ms. Nottage is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship, among other awards, and is an Associate Professor at Columbia University School of the Arts.

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