The 24th Arts & Letters Live season promises to be varied and exciting, with a celebrated lineup of award-winning authors, artists, and performers. When we were creating this season, several themes kept rising to the surface:
- ART – Peter Mendelsund on the art of book jacket design and on what we see when we read; illustrator and New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss; Sue Roe on Matisse, Picasso, and other artists working in the Montmartre area of Paris in the early 1900s—a group portrait of men and women on the cusp of fame who profoundly changed the arts of painting, sculpture, dance, music, literature, and fashion.
- MEMOIR – Candice Bergen, Roz Chast, Gail Sheehy, Rebecca Alexander, Lynsey Addario, and Huan Hsu will all share their recent memoirs this season.
- MULTICULTURALISM AND GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES – MacArthur Genius Grant–winner and photojournalist Lynsey Addario, who has captured war and human crises around the globe; Oral Fixation, back by popular demand with “Destination America,” featuring seven new personal stories told by immigrants to North Texas.
- FOOD AND COCKTAILS – Emmy Award–winning host of the Barefoot Contessa television show Ina Garten, James Beard Award–winning chef Marcus Samuelsson, and Tim Federle, author of the whimsical and witty Tequila Mockingbird and Hickory, Daiquiri, Dock, which serve up a blend of literary commentary, puns, and drink recipes.
- IDENTITY – editors of the Women in Clothes anthology (Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, and Leanne Shapton) as well as fashion designer Lela Rose; Rabih Alameddine exploring identity both in writing and painting; Jacqueline Woodson, award-winning young adult author on Brown Girl Dreaming, a collection of poems depicting her childhood, which won the 2014 National Book Award for young adult literature; rising literary novelists Jacob Rubin and Rebecca Scherm
- TEXAS – Philipp Meyer and Grace Pettis (“Texas Tales in Story, Song, and Art”—involves commissioning Pettis to write a new song inspired by a work of art of her choice in the DMA’s collection); Texas Bound this year features star actors Doris Roberts (Everybody Loves Raymond), Glenn Morshower (24), and G. W. Bailey (Major Crimes) as well as many members of the Dallas Theater Center’s Brierley Resident Acting Company.
- LOVE – Selected Shorts presents “Surprised by Love,” featuring award-winning actors Jane Kaczmarek, Mary Kay Place, and James Naughton; Graeme Simsion, bestselling author of The Rosie Project and The Rosie Effect, about a brilliant but socially inept scientist who crafts a scientific survey to find a wife.
- WAR IN FICTION AND NONFICTION – a look back at the meaning of the Vietnam War with Pulitzer Prize-winner Fredrik Logevall; Anthony Doerr and Jim Shepard on their novels, both featuring teenage protagonists in World War II; and Elliot Ackerman, a decorated veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars whose debut novel, Green on Blue, told from the perspective of an Afghan orphan recruited by a US-funded militia, is garnering high praise.
- CREATIVE COLLABORATION – Award-winning poet Billy Collins and Oscar- and Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Aimee Mann team up for a rare evening of poetry, acoustic music, collaboration, and conversation; Joshua Wolf Shenk‘s book Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs examines the creative collaboration found in iconic pairs such as Matisse and Picasso, the Beatles, and many more.
Don’t miss out on your favorite authors this year. Tickets, and the entire season schedule, are available online starting today!
Carolyn Bess is the Director of Programming and Arts & Letters Live at the DMA.