2016 Festival

Set in 1961 in Goa near the end of Portuguese rule, Trikal follows the lives of the fictional Souza Soares family. Starring Leela Naidu, this film will form part of...

From the theater of ancient Greece to the present day, war has been a persistent and important theme for playwrights. Professor Tavia Nyong'o leads a discussion on the various ways...

Novelist Tessa Hadley discusses the work of Gwen John, a Welsh artist best known for her single-figure studies of women and children. With several of John’s paintings on display, Hadley...

Stanley Crouch 's four-decade career as a jazz critic, biographer, poet, and iconoclastic political commentator is the stuff of legend. Head of Davenport College Richard Schottenfeld talks to Crouch about...

Economy, concision, and restraint are often highly valued in the literary world. But what happens when a writer values excess over economy, expansiveness over concision, extravagance over restraint? Professor Kathryn...

Prize director Michael Kelleher talks with Hilton Als , Tessa Hadley , and Helen Garner about how and when and why they started writing, and the greatest challenges they faced...

Following a screening of Merchant-Ivory's short film Helen: Queen of the Nautch Girls , Jerry Pinto talks with Inderpal Grewal, Tejaswini Ganti, and Lawrence Liang about writing Helen's biography as...

Professor Daphne Brooks and nonfiction winner Stanley Crouch listen to and discuss Duke Ellington's “Come Sunday” (featuring Mahalia Jackson, with Ray Nance on violin) and its place in the history...

Drama winner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins takes a look at the work of New Haven-based artist Titus Kaphar, discussing the ideas he sees in the work and the ways Kaphar's concerns dovetail...

Nonfiction winner Hilton Als has written extensively on and collaborated with British portraitist Celia Paul. The YCBA owns a number of works by Paul, several of which will be put...

Canadian playwright Hannah Moscovitch has made Jewish experience a major theme in her work. Raised by atheist parents, she grew up attending Hebrew school and temple, and her first full-length...

The United States and Ireland have historically been divided into Northern and Southern regions, with long-term, often violent consequences. In conversation with Professor Caleb Smith, three writers explore how these...