Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures’ 2024/25 roster of acclaimed authors for our Ten Evenings mainstage series will be announced Monday, May 13th at 7:30 pm, live from the Carnegie Music Hall by Executive Director Sony Ton-Aime, who is curating his first season for the organization.
Ton-Aime says, “For my first curation of the Ten Evenings series, my goal was to touch on every aspect of the organization’s mission to connect celebrated authors with the community, elevate civic discourse, and inspire creativity and a passion for the literary arts. Every selection was made with our patrons, our city, and our current moment in mind.
It goes without saying that I felt great trepidation during the curation process, but the long history of Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures and the commitment of its audience made it an easy and fulfilling experience. It gives me great joy to know that our audience’s enthusiasm will match the speakers’ and that Pittsburgh will host these brilliant minds.”
Colm Tóibín/Long Island/September 16, 2024
From the beloved, critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author comes a moving novel of secrecy, misunderstanding, and love. Long Island is the story of Eilis Lacey, the enigmatic heroine of Brooklyn, Tóibín’s most popular work, twenty years later.
Pico Iyer/The Half Known Life/September 30, 2024
From “one of the most soulful and perceptive writers of our time” (Brain Pickings), Pico Iyer’s The Half Known Life is a journey through competing ideas of paradise to see how we can live more peacefully in an ever more divided and distracted world.
Heather Cox Richardson/Democracy Awakening/October 28, 2024
Democracy Awakening is a vital and urgent call to action about the precarious state of American democracy, charting its historical challenges and current threats, from one of our era’s most important and insightful historians.
Billy Collins/Water, Water/November 18, 2024
In Water, Water, former United States Poet Laureate and New York Times bestselling author Billy Collins mixes the straightforward and the elusive to write about the beauties and ironies of everyday experience in this wondrous new collection of poems.
Leif Enger/I Cheerfully Refuse/December 9, 2024
A career-defining tour-de-force from New York Times bestselling and “formidably gifted” (Chicago Tribune) novelist Leif Enger. A rollicking narrative in the most evocative of settings, this latest novel is a symphony against despair and a rallying cry for the future.
Antonia Hylton/Madness/February 10, 2025
In Madness, Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist Antonia Hylton chronicles the 93-year history of Crownsville Hospital and the stories of Black families whose mental health suffered as they tried, and sometimes failed, to find safety and dignity.
Cat Bohannon/Eve/March 3, 2025
A myth-busting, eye-opening landmark account of how humans evolved, offering a paradigm shift in our thinking about what the female body is, how it came to be, and how this evolution still shapes all our lives today.
Percival Everett/James/March 24, 2025
From the author of Erasure, a brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view. James is destined to be a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.
R.F. Kuang/Yellowface/April 28, 2025
White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences… Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from R.F. Kuang.
Elizabeth Kolbert and Terry Tempest Williams/H is for Hope/May 12, 2025
In twentysix essays — one for each letter of the alphabet — the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction takes us on an illustrated journey through the history of climate change and the uncertainties of our future. Kolbert is presented in conversation with author and activist Terry Tempest Williams.
Programs are presented at 7:30 pm in Oakland’s historic Carnegie Music Hall. Subscribers will have access to the recorded livestreamed lecture for one week following the event.
For ticket information, visit pittsburghlectures.org
The mission of Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures is to connect celebrated authors with the community, elevate civic discourse, and inspire creativity and a passion for the literary arts. Our commitment to knowledge, learning, integrity, and artistic excellence guides and informs our work. We endeavor to inspire members of diverse communities by providing opportunities to experience authors who speak on issues that reflect our values such as justice, compassion, civic responsibility, acceptance, courage, and equity
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