Thank you to Montclair State University for hosting the first day of the eighth annual Succeed2gether's Montclair Literary Festival.
See below for the Schedule of Events at Montclair State University on Saturday April 27, 2024.
All events are FREE to the public, except David Baldacci who will be speaking at 10am. Tickets to hear David available here. Registrations not required for the free events although encouraged for the Téa Obreht talk at 5:30pm (RSVP here).
Here is a printable map of the Campus showing all the venues. Or you can search the venues on this interactive Campus Map.
Montclair State University is allowing free parking all day in Red Hawk Parking Deck. Access from Normal Ave, via College Ave.
Food will be available for purchase in the Cafe Kiosk on the ground floor of University Hall. The Red Hawk Diner will also be open for the day.
SATURDAY APRIL 27, 10:00 A.M. – 11:00 A.M.
DAVID BALDACCI
A Calamity of Souls
For the first time in Montclair, join us to welcome New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci in conversation about his new book A Calamity of Souls with Coccia Institute Director, Mark Rotella.
A Calamity of Souls is set in the tumultuous year of 1968 in southern Virginia, a racially-charged murder case sets a duo of white and Black lawyers against a deeply unfair system as they work to defend their wrongfully-accused Black defendants in this courtroom drama.
Venue: Montclair State University, Student Center Ballroom.
SATURDAY APRIL 27, 11:15 A.M. – 12:15 P.M.
FICTION
New Voices, Fresh Connections
Get ready to travel as three electrifying debut authors take us on a journey from the LA music scene of Mariah Stovall’s I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both, to Kingston, Jamaica for Broughtupsy by Christina Cooke and back home to New Jersey for Annell López’s I’ll Give You a Reason, set in Newark’s Ironbound. These stories grapple with themes of grief, sexuality, race, identity and life-changing friendship. Moderated by Maisy Card, award-winning author of These Ghosts Are Family.
Venue: Montclair State University, University Hall, Room #1010.
SATURDAY APRIL 27, 11:15 A.M. – 12:15 P.M.
NON-FICTION
The Road to November
Join Tim O’Brien, award-winning journalist, political analyst and author, as he talks with Carlos Lozada, Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist, and Barbara McQuade, law professor, MSNBC columnist, NBC News and MSNBC legal analyst, and former US Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, about the state of the nation and the road to November’s elections.
In Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America, McQuade shows us how to identify the ways disinformation is seeping into all facets of our society and how we can fight against it. Advances in technology including rapid developments in artificial intelligence threaten to make the problems even worse. Lozada’s The Washington Book is the perfect guide to the state of our politics. It explores the construction of personal identity, the delusions of leadership, and that mix of subservience and ambition that can define a life in politics. The more we read the stories of Washington, the clearer our understanding of the competing visions of our country.
Venue: Montclair State University, University Hall, Room #1030.
SATURDAY APRIL 27, 12:30 P.M. – 1:30 P.M.
FICTION
LGBTQIA+ Stories
In partnership with Out Montclair, this session introduces compelling new books from LGBTQIA+ authors in a discussion with Out Montclair Book Club's moderator Kevin Caufield.
In his first novel, The Redshirt, Corey Sobel challenges tenacious stereotypes, shedding light on the hypermasculine world of American football. Rabbi Dr Jay Michaelson's debut collection of interconnected stories, The Secret That Is Not a Secret: Ten Heretical Tales, invites you into a hidden world of faith, desire, transgression, and revelation.
This event is co-sponsored with Out Montclair.
Venue: Montclair State University, University Hall, Room #1010.
SATURDAY APRIL 27, 12:30 P.M. – 1:30 P.M.
Voices of Tomorrow: Creative Writing Readings from High School students
Students from the Montclair Kimberley Academy, Glen Ridge High School and Montclair High School read short works of creative writing, as chosen by each school's review committee. Open to all.
Venue: Montclair State University, University Hall, Room #1020.
SATURDAY APRIL 27, 12:30 P.M. – 1:30 P.M.
FICTION/NON-FICTION
Herstories: Extraordinary Women
Dana Rubin, founder and curator of the Speaking While Female Speech Bank, discusses three fascinating stories of trailblazing women.
In The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust, Elizabeth B. White tells the astonishing story of Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg—a Jewish mathematician who saved thousands of lives in Nazi-occupied Poland by masquerading as a Polish aristocrat. Anastasia Rubis’s Oriana is the first biographical novel of the brilliant and fearless Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci who catapulted to fame for her bold and provocative interviews with Kissinger, Arafat, Meir, Robert Kennedy and Indira Gandhi. In The First Lady of World War II: Eleanor Roosevelt's Daring Journey to the Frontlines and Back, Shannon McKenna Schmidt’s tells the story of this unprecedented and courageous trip to the Pacific Theater during World War II.
Venue: Montclair State University, University Hall, Room #1030.
SATURDAY APRIL 27, 1:45 P.M. – 2:45 P.M.
POETRY
Becoming a Poet
Join three acclaimed poets in discussion with author and professor, Willard Spiegelman, on their recent work with themes of sex, mortality, violence and social critique. Initiated during Brooklyn's early lockdown, Deborah Landau’s Skeletons reflects the discontents of our virtual lives amidst the threats of a pandemic and corrosive politics and celebrates the love and connection that persist despite our fraught present moment.
Richie Hofmann’s A Hundred Lovers is an erotic journal in poems, a lyrical, intimate world with everyday scenes imbued with sex, exploring promiscuity and violence, monogamy and desire. In Pacific Power & Light, award-winning poet Michael Dickman returns to his homeplace in the Pacific Northwest, where the neighborhood simmers with the chemical presence of human trouble and sparks of beauty coexist with danger.
Venue: Montclair State University, University Hall, Room #1010.
SATURDAY APRIL 27, 1:45 P.M. – 2:45 P.M.
Literature's Rising Stars: Montclair State University's Creative Writing Award Readings
Student recipients of the English Department's Creative Writing Awards at Montclair State University will read their poems, short stories, or works of creative nonfiction. Open to all.
Venue: Montclair State University, University Hall, Room #1020.
SATURDAY APRIL 27, 3:00 P.M. – 4:00 P.M.
NON-FICTION
What Happened to the American Dream?
Moderator Christine Romans, NBC Senior Business Correspondent and former CNN morning anchor, will lead a lively discussion with two eminent and plain-speaking economists, Nobel Prize winner Professor Angus Deaton and national retirement expert Professor Teresa Ghilarducci about the impact on you and America's future of economic and policy decisions. In fact, economic issues are central in the upcoming presidential election, especially the future of Social Security and retirement.
Deaton, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, will discuss his recent book Economics in America, about what’s gone wrong with economics and how it can better address real-world problems. Ghilarducci, frequently heard on National Public Radio and often asked to testify in Congress, will discuss her new book, Work, Retire, Repeat, about the uncertain future of retirement, the failure of our current system and how we can fix it.
Venue: Montclair State University, University Hall, Room #1010.
SATURDAY APRIL 27, 3:00 P.M. – 4:00 P.M.
FICTION/NON-FICTION
The Truth Ate My Fiction
Longtime editor of fiction, poetry, and biography Deb Garrison leads a conversation about truth in fiction and the relationship between real events and imaginary narratives. In her Pulitzer-Prize finalist biography, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, Heather Clark brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women poets the world over. Former White House staffer, Vinson Cunningham’s debut novel, Great Expectations, follows a young Black man working on a historic presidential campaign, providing an emotionally resonant coming-of-age story and a rich novel of ideas. The Daughter Ship, a debut novel by Boo Trundle, delivers a human comedy of trauma and triumph, narrated by the concealed inner selves of Katherine, woman on the brink who has struggled into her forties with the urge to self-harm.
Venue: Montclair State University, University Hall, Room #1030.
SATURDAY APRIL 27, 4:15 P.M. – 5:15 P.M.
FICTION
Colliding Lives in the Pandemic
Hot off the presses! Nell Freudenberger, best-selling author of The Newlyweds and Lost and Wanted, discusses The Limits – her stunning new novel about nation, race, class and family, against the backdrop of climate change and the pandemic – in conversation with author of The Flight Portfolio, Julie Orringer.
From Mo’orea, a French biologist obsessed with saving Polynesia’s imperiled coral reefs sends her teenage daughter to live with her ex-husband in Manhattan. Precocious Pia arrives in New York, poised for a rebellion, just as COVID sends her and her stepmother together into near total isolation.
Venue: Montclair State University, University Hall, Room #1030.
SATURDAY APRIL 27, 4:15 P.M. – 5:15 P.M.
FICTION/NON-FICTION
Bilingual Lives, American Stories
Cleyvis Natera, author of Neruda on the Park, which was awarded a Silver Medal by the International Latino Book Awards for Best First Book of Fiction in 2023, will lead a discussion with Deborah Paredez, chair of the creative writing program at Columbia University and author of American Diva, and Angie Cruz, award-winning author of How Not To Drown in A Glass of Water, which was a New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2022, about how their multicultural and bilingual backgrounds have aided in crafting powerful and moving narratives.
Venue: Montclair State University, Alumni Green Overlook (2nd floor) in Sprague Library.
SATURDAY APRIL 27, 5:30 P.M. – 6:30 P.M.
FICTION
Téa Obreht's The Morningside
New York Times and internationally bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife and Inland, Téa Obreht returns with a new novel about belonging and loss, The Morningside.
Startling, inventive, and profoundly moving, The Morningside is a novel about the stories we tell—and the stories we refuse to tell—to make sense of where we came from and who we hope we might become.
Téa will be in conversation with friend and acclaimed author of The Tenth Muse, Catherine Chung. Téa will be signing books after the event.
Venue: Montclair State University, Center for Environmental and Life Sciences (CELS) 120.
