Recording available through February 2
Promotional partners Break Bread, Break Borders and Cafe Momentum
Virtual live event

Black, White, and The Grey is a story about the trials and triumphs of a Black chef from Queens, New York, and a White media entrepreneur from Staten Island who built a relationship and a restaurant in the Deep South, hoping to bridge biases and get people talking about race, gender, class, and culture. In this dual memoir, Mashama Bailey and John O. Morisano describe how they went from tentative business partners to dear friends while turning a dilapidated, formerly segregated Greyhound bus station in Savannah, Georgia, into The Grey, now one of the most celebrated restaurants in the country.  

In addition to a conversation with the authors, this event includes a cooking demonstration with Mashama Bailey (Chef's Table Season 6, Episode 1; Top Chef) and insights from DMA staff about thematically related works of art in the DMA’s collection. 

In partnership with the Center for Asian Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas and the annual Anlin Ku Lecture

In conversation with Dr. Dennis Kratz

Recording available through February 10 

Winner of the 2020 National Book Award for fiction and soon to be a Hulu series, Interior Chinatown is an inventive and personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play. The author of four novels, Charles Yu also writes for HBO's Westworld.

"One of the funniest books of the year. . . . A delicious, ambitious Hollywood satire."—The Washington Post

In conversation with Katie Couric
Recording available through February 22

Organizational psychologist, TED speaker, and podcast host Adam Grant is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take. He is an expert at opening other people's minds–and our own. In our daily lives, we listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard. Think Again examines the critical art of rethinking. With bold ideas and rigorous evidence, Grant investigates how we can embrace the joy of being wrong, bring nuance to charged conversations, and build communities of lifelong learners. 

"In an increasingly divided world, the lessons in this book are more important than ever."—Bill and Melinda Gates 

In conversation with Kathleen Kent
Promotional Partner: Wordspace  
Recording available through February 22
Live virtual event

Walter Mosley's infamous detective Easy Rawlins is back, with a new mystery to solve on the sun-soaked streets of Southern California. Ezekiel "Easy" Porterhouse Rawlins is an unlicensed private investigator turned hard-boiled detective who is always willing to do what it takes to get things done in the racially charged, dark underbelly of Los Angeles. Set against the social and political upheaval of the late 1960s, Blood Grove is ultimately a story about survival, not only of the body but also of the soul.  

One of America's most celebrated and beloved writers, Walter Mosley received the 2020 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation. 

“A new Easy Rawlins novel is always big news in crime-fiction circles, and this fifteenth entry in the series does not disappoint.”—Booklist  

Recording available through February 24
Promotional partner Heritage Farmstead Museum                     In conversation with Sarah Bird

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes an epic novel of love, heroism, and hope amidst the Great Depression. Set in Texas during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, The Four Winds depicts an indomitable woman who must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life. It is an indelible portrait of America and the American Dream. 

Kristin Hannah is the author of more than 20 novels, including the international blockbuster The Nightingale, which sold more than 2 million copies and was voted a best book of the year by Amazon, Buzzfeed, and the Wall Street Journal.   

In partnership with KERA 

Recording available through March 6

Selected Shorts returns to Arts & Letters Live with a tribute to Toni Morrison, whose fierce, poetic visions articulate deep truths about the nature of racial injustice in America. Hosted by award-winning author Yaa Gyasi (Homegoing, Transcendent Kingdom), actors will include Emmy Award winner Joe Morton (Rowan/Eli Pope in Scandal), Tony Award winner Anika Noni Rose (Hulu's Little Fires Everywhere), and Atandwa Kani (Black Panther), who will come together to honor the extraordinary life and legacy of this Nobel Prize winner with performances from her novels, essays, and short stories. 

In conversation with Lois Kim, Executive Director of Texas Book Festival
Recording available through March 10

Lily King’s Writers & Lovers follows Casey—a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist—in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Casey’s fight to fulfill her creative ambitions is challenged in ways that push her to the brink. Chang-rae Lee’s My Year Abroad tells an exuberant and entertaining story about a young American life transformed by an unusual Asian adventure—and about the human capacities for pleasure, pain, and connection.    

“Who is a greater novelist than Chang-rae Lee today?” —The Los Angeles Times 

“Writers & Lovers is exactly the book we need now. Witty and heartfelt. . . . I could not stop reading.” —Judy Blume 

Recording available through March 17  

From bestselling author Anne Lamott comes Dusk, Night, Dawn, an inspiring guide to restoring hope and joy while grappling with the thorny issues of life. How can we cope as bad news piles up and we stumble through dark times that seem increasingly bleak? We begin, she says, by accepting our flaws and embracing our humanity. Drawing from her own experiences, Lamott shows us the intimate and human ways we can adopt to move through life’s dark places and toward the light of hope that still burns ahead for all of us. Full of the honesty, humor, and humanity that have made Lamott beloved by millions of readers, Dusk, Night, Dawn is thoughtful and comic, warm and wise.  

In conversation with Jim Shepard
Recording available through March 21

In partnership with Inprint Literary Series of Houston 

Hailed by the New York Times as “an original and remarkable genius” and by the Independent as “a master storyteller,” Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Booker Prize. His novels The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, both made into acclaimed films, have each sold more than two million copies. At this event, he will discuss his new novel Klara and the Sun, about an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational skills, who closely watches the behavior of the humans she can see from her place in a department store, hoping one day to be chosen by one. Ultimately, this novel explores one of life’s fundamental questions: what does it mean to love?