We’re thrilled to welcome Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of our country’s best thinkers and writers, for a virtual conversation about the state of our country post-election, truth telling, and the idea that stories and mythology can persuade and change attitudes when facts alone cannot. Coates’ novel, The Water Dancer, will serve as a starting off point for his conversation with Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic.

Hosted by The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz, in partnership with Bookshop Santa Cruz and Marcus Bookstores in Oakland.

We’re excited to offer free event access and copies of Coates’ novel to the first 500 UCSC students who register.

Ticketing Information
All tickets include one paperback copy of THE WATER DANCER plus entry to the event.

• In-store pickup: $22 (plus Eventbrite fees)
• Shipped-to-You: $27 (plus Eventbrite fees)
• Free book and event access available to the first 500 current UCSC students who register. Sponsored by The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz. Student ID required at registration (Thank you, students! Free tickets have now sold out. General admission tickets are still available for purchase).

“What if memory had the power to transport enslaved people to freedom?’ . . . The most moving part of The Water Dancer [is] the possibility it offers of an alternate history. . . . The book’s most poignant and painful gift is the temporary fantasy that all the people who leaped off slave ships and into the Atlantic were not drowning themselves in terror and anguish, but going home.”—NPR

The Humanities Institute is exploring the theme of Memory this year, and this event is sure to provide substantive insight at a moment when we’re interrogating the past and trying to move forward as a country. We encourage everyone—current students, alumni, staff and community members—to join us for what will be an insightful and timely event.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years in Power, and Between the World and Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.

Adam Serwer is a staff writer at The Atlantic and is the author of the forthcoming essay collection, The Cruelty Is the Point: Essays on Trump’s America, which can be pre-ordered through Bookshop Santa Cruz here.