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Yiyun Li — Music Against the Night: A Novel (The Nocturne Trilogy) - with Rabih Alameddine — at Conn Ave
Past event
About This Event
This event is in partnership with PEN/Faulkner Foundation.Figures of the past find new life in Yiyun Li’s thrillingly imagined saga following two musicians as they mature, study, travel, love, grieve, and, above all, chase their ambitions.In Dublin, as the eighteenth century nears its end, a young musical virtuoso comes of age. John Field, an awkward and sensitive child, is preternaturally gifted, and his family has visions of him becoming the next Mozart. His talent takes him far—to England, France, and then Russia, where he becomes a famous pianist and composes dreamy, languorous melodies that enchant the night air. John calls them nocturnes, but the prodigy who immortalizes them is Chopin.Oceans away in Pondicherry, in French India, Adelaide Percheron has a startling rise of her own. Orphaned at a young age, she is raised by her imperious, enterprising grandmother. Her cousins give her the name Percherette, an impish reminder that despite their shared relations, Adelaide is not one of the crowd, owing to her parents’ differing ancestry. Without a connection to aristocracy or the luxury of riches, only marriage seems to offer prosperity—until she sets her sights on a pianoforte. Driven by her secret love of music and a desire to see the world, Percherette engineers her exodus, escaping to Paris and later to Moscow, as Napoleon’s army sets out to conquer the continent.Peopled by rival prodigies, irate tutors, begrudging guardians, and the true-to-life masters of the trade, Yiyun Li’s magisterial, polyphonic novel depicts two aspiring musicians—destined to be husband and wife—in pursuit of success. Their struggles unfold amid political and artistic upheaval and pit them against the forces of their time. As John and Adelaide each try to chart a path between talent and genius, success and legacy, profit and passion, they must decide what, and even who, is worth sacrificing along the way. Drawing inspiration from the past but finding entirely new forms, Music Against the Night comes to life with the sweep and dimension of the Romantic era and a deep understanding of the demands of living and of art.Yiyun Li is the author of several works of fiction—Wednesday’s Child; The Book of Goose; Must I Go; Where Reasons End; Kinder Than Solitude; Gold Boy, Emerald Girl; The Vagrants; and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers—and the memoirs Things in Nature Merely Grow and Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. She is the recipient of many awards, including a PEN/Faulkner Award, a PEN/Malamud Award, a PEN/Hemingway Award, a PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Windham–Campbell Prize, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, among other publications. She teaches at Princeton University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.Li will be in conversation with Rabih Alameddine, the author of the novels The Wrong End of the Telescope; The Angel of History; An Unnecessary Woman; The Hakawati; I, the Divine; and Koolaids, as well as the story collection The Perv. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages. His most recent awards include the 2019 Dos Passos Prize, the 2021 Lannan Prize for Fiction, the 2022 Pen/Faulkner award and the Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award in March 2025. He divides his time between his bedroom and his living room. He is co-editing The Penguin Book of the International Short Story, forthcoming from Penguin Press in 2026, and his new novel, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) was published by from Grove in September 2025 and won the National Book Award for Fiction.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.
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Saira Mohamed — What a Country Owes Its Soldiers - with Darin Johnson — at Conn Ave
A clarion call to recognize soldiers' rights, arguing that volunteering to fight and die for one's country does not mean consenting to exploitation in the process.American leaders endlessly profess their admiration for military service members. But these effusive declarations hardly comport with reality. Soldiers receive shoddy equipment and inadequate medical care; they are ordered to commit crimes and deployed to illegal wars. Such treatment is rarely recognized for what it is: a violation of the duty owed to soldiers by their government. When American service members are injured or killed during training, for example, they and their families are barred from suing the military for negligence or malfeasance. And when the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib came to light, the subsequent proceedings focused just on low-ranking perpetrators. The psychological harm done to the soldiers themselves by commanders who ordered them to commit torture in the first place went unacknowledged.Examining statutes, treaties, court cases, and congressional hearings, Saira Mohamed shows how the law encourages the treatment of soldiers as mere instruments, to be used and abused however the government wishes. She also unearths overlooked laws that point in the other direction, suggesting the possibility of robust protections for service members. Paradoxically, these get ignored in part because of the popular adulation of the military--the vision of service members as heroes who selflessly endure unlimited sacrifice. The all-volunteer nature of the force also promotes the misguided notion that soldiers have willingly accepted whatever mistreatment they might endure.What a Country Owes Its Soldiers shows how laws and mindsets can change, enabling genuine respect for soldiers' humanity. Acknowledging their rights can transform our understanding of those who fight America's wars, and of American warmaking itself.Saira Mohamed is Agnes Roddy Robb Chair in Jurisprudence, Ethics, and Social Responsibility and Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.Mohamed will be joined in conversation with Darin Johnson, who has served in the Pentagon, State Department, and White House. He is a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School. A professor of law at Howard University, he is a scholar and commentator on international law, national security, foreign affairs, and human rights. He is the author of Digital Coup: The Conspiracy to Thwart Global Democracy (Broadleaf Books 2026). He lives 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.
D.C. Frost — A Shadow of Jaguars (Detective DJ Arias Mystery #2) / Melanie S. Hatter — All the Pain We Endure - with Saul Gonzalez — at Conn Ave
A Shadow of JaguarsA Shadow of Jaguars by D.C. Frost is a gripping cross-border noir thriller that follows Detective DJ Arias as he navigates murder, Hollywood intrigue, and immigrant struggles across Mexico City and Los Angeles, blending fast-paced suspense and richly drawn characters.In Mexico City for a family funeral, Detective DJ Arias encounters a group of Robin Hood-style thieves who call themselves the Jaguars. Their activities reach across the border into Los Angeles with a Hollywood murder that entangles LA's elite and the nannies, housekeepers, and gardeners who serve them, and threatens DJ's own loved ones. A sequel to the mystery A Punishing Breed, A Shadow of Jaguars finds DJ and partner Bobby Talbot struggling to untangle a murder where Hollywood, wealthy powerbrokers, and an immigrant population struggle to coexist and survive. Throughout it all, his faithful dog Evidence is by his side.-All the Pain We EndureSet in Washington, D.C., All the Pain We Endure follows Raebelle “Rae” Johnson, a biracial massage therapist with an extraordinary ability to glimpse the pain carried by others—but who struggles to confront her own. Haunted by a volatile relationship with her father, Rae finds herself drawn to Kai, a martial artist with his own troubled past. As family tensions and buried wounds resurface, Rae must confront the ways trauma travels across generations and decide whether the pain she has inherited will define her future. Blending psychological realism with an imaginative exploration of empathy, Hatter's novel asks how we break cycles of suffering without losing our capacity for love and connection.-D.C. Frost is a second-generation Angeleno whose debut novel, A Punishing Breed (2024), was reviewed by The New York Times. She has also published several literary short stories in journals including Westwind, UCLA's literary magazine. Before turning to writing full-time, DC had a long career in nonprofit fundraising. She draws inspiration from Southern California's rich blend of class, culture, and natural beauty. Frost lives in Los Angeles with her husband and a pack of rescue dogs.Melanie S. Hatter is the author of Malawi’s Sisters, which was selected by Edwidge Danticat as the winner of the inaugural Kimbilio National Fiction Prize and published by Four Way Books in 2019. Her debut novel, The Color of My Soul, won the 2011 Washington Writers’ Publishing House Fiction Prize, and Let No One Weep for Me, Stories of Love and Loss was released in 2015. Melanie was a licensed massage therapist for fourteen years and currently serves on the Development team at My Sister’s Place, the first domestic violence shelter in Washington, D.C. She is a member of the writing faculty of New Directions in Writing training program and serves on the board of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. When she’s not working, she enjoys spending time in nature with her dog, Roo.Frost and Hatter will be in conversation with Saul Gonzalez, a veteran television, radio, podcast host, reporter and producer covering local, national and international topics. Winner of multiple Emmy awards, RTNA Golden Mikes, and other journalism honors. Saul was the Los Angeles Radio Reporter of the Year two years in a row by the Los Angeles Press Club.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.
Judith Bowles — They Spoke of the River - with David Keplinger — at Conn Ave
Drawing from narrative traditions and influences such as Mary Oliver and James Wright—two beloved poets of Ohio—as well as the ghazals of Rumi and the plain-spoken wisdom of Robert Frost and William Stafford, poet Judith Bowles traces back the voices and oral histories of her Ohio roots, following the river of their words. Her third collection of poetry, They Spoke of the River is less memoir-in-verse than reliquary of the American experience, one which uses history, childhood, marriage, and elegy as rite and container. In the manner of Thornton Wilder’s stage manager in Our Town, here the past, present, and future fold over each other, as Bowles offers tough attention, all culminating in a volume that feels a bit like myth, a bit like news, and a bit like the dream of a life, experienced by one Ohioan, whose whole vocation has been this act of listening.Judith Bowles is the author of two earlier collections of poetry, The Gatherer (2014) and Unlocatable Source (2019). She has been a resident at Bloedel Reserve, Breadloaf, and the Kenyon Summer Writers Retreat, and she earned her MFA in Creative Writing from American University in 1986, studying under poet Myra Sklarew and novelist Kermit Moyer, later teaching creative writing in the department of English. From 1978 until 1985 Bowles was the poetry program director of the then Iona House, producing three anthologies featuring the work of participants. Her poetry has appeared in Gargoyle, Innisfree Journal of Poetry, Ekphrastic Review, Delmarva Review, and other journals.Bowles will be in conversation with David Keplinger, poet, translator, professor, and certified teacher of mindfulness.David is the author of Ice (Milkweed Editions, 2023) and seven other collections of poetry, including The World to Come (Conduit Books, 2021), winner of the 2020 Minds on Fire Prize and Another City (Milkweed Editions, 2018), which was awarded the 2019 UNT Rilke Prize. He has taught at American University in Washington, D.C. since 2007.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.