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[NOW AT UNION MARKET]Ayad Akhtar — The Radiance - with Jeffrey Goldberg — at Union Market

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THIS EVENT WILL NOW TAKE PLACE AT POLITICS AND PROSE AT UNION MARKET. You can find information on parking at Union Market here: https://unionmarketdc.com/directions/This event will be followed by a signing line with the author. When a hit-and-run shatters more than his body, a writer is caught between revelation and madness as an uncanny pull toward a brilliant campus colleague ensnares him in a scandal that threatens to destroy them both. What begins as a provocative portrait of academic and cultural warfare deepens into erotic entanglement, the exposure of a family secret, and the mystery surrounding the narrator’s accident—both the violence and its aftermath.Moving between rural America and Europe, Islam and Christianity, the intimate and the metaphysical, The Radiance is of our American moment and beyond it—asking not only what has broken, but what radiance remains.Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright. His work has been published and performed in over two dozen languages. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction, and an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among other honors. Akhtar is the author of the novels American Dervish, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, and Homeland Elegies, named one of 10 Best Books of 2020 by The New York Times. He has also authored the plays McNeal, Junk, Disgraced, The Who & The What, and The Invisible Hand. Akhtar was named the New York State Author in 2021.Akhtar will be in conversation with Jeffrey Goldberg. Goldberg is the editor in chief of The Atlantic and the moderator of Washington Week With The Atlantic. He joined The Atlantic in 2007 as a national correspondent and in 2016 was named editor in chief, the 15th person to serve as editor in The Atlantic's 168-year history. During his editorship, The Atlantic has set new audience and subscription records, and won its first-ever Pulitzer Prizes. In 2022, 2023, and 2024, The Atlantic received the National Magazine Award for General Excellence from the American Society of Magazine Editors, the top award in the industry.Before joining The Atlantic, Goldberg served as the Middle East correspondent and then the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker. Earlier in his career, he was a writer for The New York Times Magazine. He began his career as a police reporter for The Washington Post. Goldberg is the author of Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror and On Heroism: McCain, Milley, Mattis, and the Cowardice of Donald Trump. A former fellow of the American Academy in Berlin, he also served as a public-policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and as the distinguished visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Goldberg is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Magazine Award for Reporting; the Daniel Pearl Award for Reporting; the Overseas Press Club’s award for human-rights reporting; the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists Prize for best investigative reporting.

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Nov21
Author EventWashington, DC

Jennifer Anne Moses and Stuart P. Green — The Rebbe of Baton Rouge - With Amy E. Schwartz — at Union Market

6:00 PM • Saturday, November 21, 2026Politics & Prose · Politics and Prose at Union MarketFree

This event is in partnership with Moment Magazine.Anna Zisk is a professor of Yiddish literature who, after being accused of an inappropriate relationship with a grad student, flees her settled life in Boston and seeks refuge at her childhood home in Baton Rouge. There, she's forced to confront her long-ago first boyfriend, who claims he still loves her; a fraught relationship with her sister; and the uneasy feeling of never having quite belonged in the Deep South. To top it all off, she's been relegated to teaching LSU football players basic composition--a skill they do not crave and will not master. Meanwhile, Adam Kluger, the new rabbi in town, is struggling to keep his congregation afloat in a small southern city where there are barely enough Jews to fill a high school gymnasium. It doesn't help that his ex-fiance left him; the cross-town rival synagogue's rabbi is poaching his shul's members; and he's being haunted by a spectral, Yiddish-speaking, elderly Hasid who pops up at the most inopportune moments. Not to mention that he's falling in love with Anna. The Rebbe of Baton Rouge is funny, absorbing, and twisty. A genre-bending, Yiddish-infused, southern lit rom-com that digs deep into the dynamics of this proud but vulnerable community--their rivalries and friendships; pettiness and generosity; faith and skepticism; insecurities and sense of solidarity.Jennifer Anne Moses is the author of nine previous books of fiction and nonfiction, including Bagels and Grits: A Jew on the Bayou, a memoir. Her novels explore family, identity, and the messy beauty of everyday life.Stuart P. Green is a Distinguished Professor of Law at Rutgers University and the author of several books on criminal law and philosophy.Moses and Green will be in conversation with Amy E. Schwartz, the opinion and book editor of Moment Magazine, as well as editor of the magazine's popular "Ask the Rabbis" section. She is editor of the 2020 book Can Robots Be Jewish? And Other Pressing Questions of Modern Life. Before joining Moment in 2011, she spent 17 years as an editorial writer and weekly op-ed columnist at The Washington Post. She has also worked at Harper's, The New Republic and The Wilson Quarterly. Schwartz is president of the non-denominational Jewish Study Center, an independent adult education institution in Washington, DC. This event is free with first come, first serve seating.To request accommodations for this event or to inquire about accessibility please email events@politics-prose.com ideally one week in advance of the event date. We will make an effort to accommodate all requests up until the time of the event.