Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures welcomes celebrated authors to the Steel City
This season, Pittsburghers will have the opportunity to hear directly from an author who is the historic winner – the first woman and the first Black American – of two National Book Awards for Fiction. Jesmyn Ward, the author of Sing, Unburied, Sing and Salvage the Bones, follows a long list of notable authors who Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures is bringing to the Steel City this year as part of the organizations’ Ten Evenings lecture series.
Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures works to inspire members of diverse communities by providing opportunities for literary fans to experience authors who speak on issues such as compassion, acceptance, courage, and more. What else can Pittsburghers expect this coming season? We talked to the nonprofit's Director of Community Engagement Lisa Christopher and Ticketing and Event Production Coordinator Kelsey Swintek.
Ten Evenings, one of the organization’s most popular series, presents celebrated authors who give lectures sharing their books or their creative process. To begin this year's upcoming series, novelist Zadie Smith will come to the Carnegie Library Lecture Hall in the fall to discuss her newest novel, The Fraud, exploring issues of justice, abolitionism, slavery, and class.
“Ten Evenings is our main stage series,” Swintek says. “We fly authors in from all over, and they give a lecture on either their most recent book or on their artistic practice.”
Past seasons have featured poets Joy Harjo and Hanif Abdurraqib, along with New York Times bestseller Clint Smith. This year’s upcoming lineup features a large number of award-winning authors, including not only Ward and Zadie Smith, but Abraham Verghese, Matthew Desmond, Ed Yong, and more.
Even though longtime executive director Stephanie Flom, who helped grow Ten Evenings, is recently retired from Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures, the organization hasn’t slowed its impressive programming, despite still searching for its next leader.
And that programming is also proving to be well received. This year’s in-person subscriptions for the Ten Evenings series are already sold out, but Swintek wants people to know that they are still offering online subscriptions.
“Even as we welcome people back in person in the hall, we’re still live streaming each of our Ten Evenings events so people can still enjoy our lectures even when they’re not physically in the room with us,” Swintek says.
Since their virtual lectures succeeded during the pandemic, they’ve stuck with it and will soon allow viewers to order one event at a time instead of all 10 at once.
“We stopped selling in-person subscriptions when the pandemic started, just like everybody else,” Christopher says. “We offered virtual programming so that we can still have our author series, and that has become really successful and important in terms of accessibility for us.”
Pittsburghers interested in ordering tickets to just one event, rather than a full season package, can do so starting this week.
Check out Pittsburgh Arts & Lecture's full schedule, and sign up for their email list to stay informed about upcoming programs. And, if you missed out on any lectures — or just want to watch again, be sure to visit their Youtube page where you can view past appearances, including an inspiring conversation between Julius Boatwright, founding CEO of Steel Smiling, a Pittsburgh nonprofit aiming to "bridge the gap between Black people and mental health," and An Unspeakable Hope author and activist Leon Ford.