What just happened? What’s happening now? What must happen next?

Whatever the outcome of the upcoming election, urgent questions of the political and legal moment must be addressed.  Join us for a post-election discussion with Russell Banks, Edwidge Danticat, Richard Blanco, Fernand R. Amandi and Mitchell Kaplan.

RUSSELL BANKS, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, is one of America’s most prestigious fiction writers, a past president of the International Parliament of Writers, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous prizes and awards, including the Common Wealth Award for Literature. He lives in upstate New York and Miami, Florida.

EDWIDGE DANTICAT is the author of numerous books, including Everything Inside: Stories (Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Story Prize and the 2020 Vilcek Prize in Literature), The Art of Death, a National Book Critics Circle finalist; Claire of the Sea Light, a New York Times Notable Book; Brother, I’m Dying, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and National Book Award finalist; The Dew Breaker, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the inaugural Story Prize; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah’s Book Club selection; and Krik? Krak!, also a National Book Award finalist. A 2018 Neustadt International Prize for Literature winner and the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” grant, she has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, and elsewhere.

RICHARD BLANCO is the award-winning author of several books. Blanco's poetry collections include City of a Hundred Fires, Directions to the Beach of the Dead, and How to Love a Country. He currently serves as the first-ever Education Ambassador for the Academy of American Poets and is a member of the Obama Foundation's advisory council.

FERNAND R. AMANDI is the managing partner of Bendixen & Amandi, the nation’s leading multilingual and multiethnic public opinion research and strategic communications consulting firm. Mr. Amandi is also an MSNBC contributor, instructor at the University of Miami, and host of the #StrangeDaysPodcast.

MITCHELL KAPLAN, a Miami Beach native, founded the independent bookstore chain Books & Books in 1982. Books & Books was named "Publishers’ Weekly Bookstore of the Year" in 2015. He is the co-founder of Miami Book Fair, a former president of the American Booksellers Association (ABA), and received the National Book Foundation’s prestigious “Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community” in 2011.  He is the host of the podcast, "The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan” and with his partner Paula Mazur, formed the Mazur/Kaplan film production company to bring books to the screen.

The second part, a national assembly, will bring together writers Paul Auster, Salman Rushdie, Rebecca Solnit, and Natasha Trethewey for a roundtable discussion. This event will take place virtually at 5 pm PST / 6 pm MST / 7 pm CST / 8 pm EST. Register here.

What Just Happened? A Post-Election Panel Discussion with Russell Banks, Edwidge Danticat, Richard Blanco, Fernand R. Amandi and Mitchell Kaplan