Claudia Rankine presents “Triage” in conversation with Kaye Wise Whitehead, Parkway Theatre, 5 W. North Avenue, Saturday, September 12 2026, 6:00 p.m.
Claudia Rankine’s 2014 book “Citizen: An American Lyric” is, in many ways, the defining book of the Black Lives Matter era, which seems now to have roughly extended from 2012-2024. It came out around the same time as Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Case for Reparations” in the year that Ferguson police killed Mike Brown, and Rankine’s book, the first to be nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in both poetry and criticism, captured the mood in cool, crafted lyrics that looked like prose but felt like heartbreaking songs.
That book reminded America that even with a Black president, we were not only “postracial,” but still plainly racist. “Sitting there staring at the closed garage door you are reminded that a friend once told you there exists a medical term — John Henryism — for people exposed to stresses stemming from racism,” the poet wryly notes before going into her house after a car ride in which “he tells you that his dean is making him hire a person of color when there are so many great writers out there.”
Rankine’s almost clinical poetic analysis of racism caught the national mood again in 2020, with “Just Us,” in which she pushes this conversation further in a blend of essays, poetry, and images to look more closely at whiteness and the ways it works. She wanted to have the conversations that allowed us “to stay in the room” together, as she put it.
Her new book, “Triage,” investigates silence, stillness, and collapse, and she will be talking with Kaye Wise Whitehead at the Parkway Theatre in a special Red Emma’s preview to the talk at next week’s book festival.
America is not free; but this event is. Still, you’ve got to RSVP.
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor present “End Times Fascism” in conversation with Lester Spence, Parkway Theatre, 5 W. North Avenue, Sunday, September 13,
6:00 p.m.
In another Book Festival Preview at the Parkway, Naomi Klein (the highly influential author of “No Logo” and “Disaster Capitalism”) and Astra Taylor (the author of “The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart” and a co-founder of the Debt Collective) will be discussing their new co-authored book, “End-Times Fascism,” which examines apocalyptic thinking of a wide range of contemporary right-wingers, from the white nationalist Evangelicals to “The Nerd Reich” tech bros (to reference the book by Gil Durán, who will be talking about it during the Book Festival on September 20 at 2:00 p.m. on the Red Emma’s stage).
Klein’s last book, “Doppelganger,” grew out of the way that people so often confused her and rightward-swerving former sort-of feminist Naomi Wolf (“If the Naomi be Kline / you’re doing just fine / If the Naomi be Wolf / Oh, buddy. Ooooof!” was a viral poem about it). It caused her to examine the way that the contemporary right had created this bizarre mirror world, and the collaboration with Taylor feels like an extension of her deep dive into the right’s ecosystem.
Early in this second Trump regime, Taylor and Klein regularly did online talks through Haymarket Books, and their conversations are quick-witted and fun despite the grimness of the topic, so it will be worthwhile to hear what they have to say to interlocutor Hopkins political scientist Lester Spence.
Reading is freedom/Stories Begin Here: A conversation with Derrick Adams, D. Watkins, Devin Allen, and Lawrence Burney, Baltimore Book Festival, 32nd Street Stage, Saturday, September 19, 11:00 a.m.
What do you get when writers D. Watkins (“The Cook Up,” “Black Boy Smile,” and an occasional Beat contributor) and Lawrence Burney (“No Sense in Wishing”) are talking to artist Derrick Adams and photographer Devin Allen (also a Beat contributor)? Well, yes, a particularly happening night at Mama Koko’s — but also this event, and at the 32nd Street Stage at the Book Festival you won’t have to strain to overhear the conversation. In this panel, sponsored by Adams’ Charm City Cultural Cultivation, they’ll be talking about reading as freedom, with what will surely be a healthy dose of convo about creating work in Baltimore vs. other places. (And since I’m trying to cram as many events on the page as possible, you can check out Watkins in conversation with Ibram X. Kendi about his book “Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age” at 5:00 p.m. the same day and stage, and Burney at 3:00 on Sunday, when Maryland Humanities presents his book, “No Sense in Wishing,” their 2026 pick for One Maryland One Book.) And since the talk is early, you’ll still have plenty of time to hit Mama Koko’s later.
Lenna Jawdat: “70,000: POEMS,” Baltimore Book Festival, CityLit/Ivy Stage, Sunday, September 20, 1:00 p.m.
Lenna Jawdat, whose stunning book, “700,000: POEMS,” is named in reference to the number of books taken from Palestinian homes during and around the Nakba, the violent displacement of Palestinians from their homeland in 1948. The book is full of inventive drawings that, upon closer look, are composed of numbers. “My roots are so far from my fruit, I long / to belong to the homeland we lost,” she writes in “Self Portrait as a Jaffa Orange.”
(And, while we’re talking Palestine, you could also check out Beat contributor Rahne Alexander talking with George Abraham about the book “Homosexual Intifada: A Queer Palestinian Anthology” on Saturday, September 19 at 3:00 p.m. at the Red Emma’s Stage.)