Today is National Read a Book Day! Have you been wanting to join a book club or wishing someone would curate a list of “must reads” for you? This month the DMA’s acclaimed literary series, Arts & Letters Live, kicks off a new initiative intended to build community through conversation, offering you another opportunity to take a deeper dive into books featured in the series. A Moveable Feast Book Club will feature four books over the next three months, allowing you to select any (or all) you would like to attend. We hope that by reading and sharing insights together a week or so before hearing the author speak, your experience will be richer and even more meaningful. Book Club events will take place in the DMA’s Founders Room, where participants can enjoy lunch while engaging in conversation with fellow bibliophiles.
The series kicks off on September 13 with Dr. Jaina Sanga, author and fellow of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, leading a conversation about Texas Literary Hall of Fame author Sarah Bird’s tenth novel. Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen is a historical novel depicting the story of slave-turned-soldier Cathy Williams, who disguised herself as a man and fought in the Civil War with the legendary Buffalo Soldiers.
Photo credit: Sarah Wilson
On October 9, Dr. Jaina Sanga will lead a discussion of MacArthur “Genius” grant winner Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing,a road novel through Mississippi’s past and present that explores the bonds of a family tested by racism and poverty. Ward became the first woman and the first person of color to win two National Book Awards for Fiction, joining the ranks of William Faulkner, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Philip Roth, and John Updike.
Photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan
Debut novelist Fatima Farheen Mirza’s A Place for Us will be the topic of discussion on October 23, again led by Dr. Jaina Sanga. The first novel from Sarah Jessica Parker’s new imprint, SJP for Hogarth, A Place for Us is a deeply moving and resonant story of love, identity, and belonging, and a powerful portrait of what it means to be a Muslim American family today. Reviewers have described it as “absolutely gorgeous” and “stunning.”
Photo credit: Gregg Richards
The final gathering, on November 20, will feature a discussion of Jill Lepore’s These Truths: A History of the United States, moderated by Dr. Andrew R. Graybill, professor and chair in the department of history at Southern Methodist University, and co-director of the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies. History buffs will have an opportunity to dissect award-winning historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore’s magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation, and the beauty and tragedy of American history.
Photo credit: Dari Pillsbury
Michelle Witcher is the Program Manager for Arts & Letters Live at the DMA.
