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Podcast

Deborah Eisenberg in conversation with David L. Ulin

Join Deborah Eisenberg and David L. Ulin for a conversation on Eisenberg's work and the craft of writing. A short story writer who crafts distinctive portraits of contemporary American life with precision and moral depth, Deborah Eisenberg is the author of Transactions in a Foreign Currency, Under the 82nd Airborne, All around Atlantis, Twilight of the Superheroes, and Your Duck Is My Duck. Writer and editor David L. Ulin is Professor of the Practice of English at the University of Southern California and a former book critic for the Los Angeles Times. Speakers: Deborah Eisenberg is the author of five collections of short stories: Transactions in a Foreign Currency, Under the 82nd Airborne, All around Atlantis, Twilight of the Superheroes, and Your Duck Is My Duck. She is a MacArthur Fellow and the recipient of numerous honors, including the 2011 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. She is a professor emerita in the writing program at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. David L. Ulin is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, which was short-listed for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Lannan Foundation, and Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada–Las Vegas. A former book editor and book critic for the Los Angeles Times, he has written for Harper’s, the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Paris Review, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. His essay “Bed” appeared in The Best American Essays 2020. He is a Professor of the Practice of English at the University of Southern California, where he edits the literary journal Air/Light. Most recently, he edited Joan Didion: The 1960s and 70s and Joan Didion: The 1980s and 90s for Library of America. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This event is a partnership between Lannan Foundation and Haymarket Books. Lannan Foundation's Readings & Conversations series features inspired writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, as well as cultural freedom advocates with a social, political, and environmental justice focus. We are excited to offer these programs online to a global audience. Video and audio recordings of all events are available at lannan.org. Haymarket Books is a radical, independent, nonprofit book publisher based in Chicago. Our mission is to publish books that contribute to struggles for social and economic justice. We strive to make our books a vibrant and organic part of social movements and the education and development of a critical, engaged, international left. Lannan Foundation is a family foundation dedicated to cultural freedom, diversity, and creativity through projects that support exceptional contemporary artists and writers, inspired Native activists in rural communities, and social justice advocates. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/OVPRslmLgLk Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

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Mar 3, 2026

Stanford 11 on Trial: Defending the Student Movement for Palestine

As the new year begins, the student movement for Palestine is facing its first felony trial for a 2024 demonstration at Stanford University. If convicted of the felonies brought against them, the Stanford 11 face the possibility of over three years in prison and over $300,000 in restitution to Stanford University. On January 9, 2026, opening arguments commenced, marking the beginning of a lengthy trial anticipated to last between two to six weeks.

In recent years we have witnessed the criminalization of dissent ramp up nationwide, threatening both students and everyday people with detention, deportation, and political prosecutions. The chilling effect on our movements has been palpable, raising questions about what it means to act and sacrifice for our principles today. Amidst heightened repression, the US government's increasing impunity at home and abroad, and the genocide in Gaza still unabated by a 'ceasefire'—how can we continue to act in solidarity and defend our movement?

Speakers:

Mahmoud Khalil is a Palestinian student organizer and Columbia graduate student who was abducted from his home and from his then 8-month pregnant wife by ICE agents in March 2025. He spent three months in immigration detention, continuing to speak out from behind bars for Palestine as well as others held alongside him in ICE custody. A judge ordered his release in June 2025. However, Mahmoud's case remains pending: the federal government immediately appealed the decision, and is still fighting to deport him. Since his release, Mahmoud has filed a lawsuit demanding the Trump administration release its communications with the Zionist groups that contributed to his arrest, detention, and attempted deportation.

Germán González is an organizer with Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a fourth year student at Stanford University, and a defendant with the Stanford 11. They are completing a degree in Urban Studies, with hopes of working in local government and continuing his revolutionary organizing.

Hatem Bazian is a longtime Palestinian community activist and academic. He is the co-founder and Professor of Islamic Law and Theology at Zaytuna College, the first accredited Muslim Liberal Arts College in the United States. Professor Bazian is a lecturer in the Departments of Near Eastern and Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley. For decades, his leadership and community work have helped nurture and build up the national solidarity movement for Palestine: Professor Bazian was also a founding member of the first Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at UC Berkeley, and he continues to lend his support and guidance as the movement grows.

Loubna Qutami is a Palestinian community organizer and Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian American Studies at UCLA. She is a member of the Palestinian Feminist Collective.

Tori Porell is a senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal. She provides legal advice and advocacy support to activists in the movement for Palestinian liberation on issues ranging from free speech violations, discrimination and disciplinary charges to doxxing, threats, and academic freedom.

This event is organized by Haymarket Books, Stanford 11 Defense Committee, Palestine Legal, Palestinian Youth Movement, Palestinian Feminist Collective, and Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine.


Mar 4, 2026

War in the Caribbean: US Imperialism and the New Monroe Doctrine

The US military build up in the Caribbean and its aggression towards Venezuela are part of the Trump regime’s strategy of renewed American dominance and interventionism in the Western Hemisphere. Join Center for Political Education, W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction, and Haymarket Books for an important conversation on the new “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine and how US imperialism threatens to bring war and economic instability across the region.

Speakers:

Marisol LeBrón is an Associate Professor in Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research and teaching focus on social inequality, policing, violence, and protest. She is the author of Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico (University of California Press, 2019) and Against Muerto Rico: Lessons from the Verano Boricua (Editora Educación Emergente, 2021).

Jorge E. Cuéllar is an interdisciplinary scholar who focuses on the histories, politics, and daily life of modern Central America. At present, he is finishing his first book titled, Everyday Life and Everyday Death in El Salvador (Duke UP), a grounded study of the Central American nation's postwar to "post-postwar" transition. Cuéllar is appointed Assistant Professor of Central American Studies in the Department of Latin American, Latino & Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College and is a member of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) Editorial Committee.

Alex Aviña is Associate Professor of History in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University (ASU). His research focuses on twentieth-century Mexico, with an emphasis on revolutionary movements, the Mexican Left, state violence and terrorism, immigration, and the history of narcotics production and trafficking.

This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books, W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School, and Center for Political Education.

Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/live/GehPn9o3_cQ

Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org

Mar 5, 2026

What We Saw in Chicago: Lessons from the CBP Surge

Join us for a conversation with local organizers about how our community pushed back against attacks on our neighbors from federal border patrol agents last fall.

Over the course of several months, more than 250 Border Patrol agents were flown into Illinois to assist ICE in carrying out warrantless arrests and racially targeted sweeps. Community organizations documented at least 615 people who were unlawfully detained — a number expected to grow as additional cases are reviewed.

Although this particular surge force has since left Illinois, federal officials have made it clear that similar operations are likely to return. That makes it essential to take stock of what happened here, how our communities responded in real time, and what it means for the months ahead.

Speakers include Rey Wences from Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), Antonio Gutierrez from Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD) and Illinois State Senator Celina Villanueva, with a special poetry reading from Juliet DeJesus Alejandre.

This event is cosponsored by ICIRR, OCAD and Haymarket Books.

Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/live/OJ4Kk4yARb4

Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org

Mar 6, 2026

Engineered Conflict: Structural Violence and the Future of Black Life in Chicago

Join David Omotoso Stovall and Tara Betts as they discuss Stovall's latest book Engineered Conflict: Structural Violence and the Future of Black Life in Chicago. Marginalized communities often become understandably preoccupied with a city’s structured attempt to deem them disposable, making it difficult to see people experiencing the same suffering as potential comrades in struggle. Enemies are manufactured as the result of continued displacement, hyper-segregation, and dispossession. Under these impossible circumstances people are often quicker to punch each other before they identify the enemy as white supremacy and capitalism, creating a society where conflict is engineered.

Examining the long fight of Black people in Chicago to claim their humanity and thrive in a city while facing school closings, the destruction of public housing and oppressive law enforcement, Stovall argues that marginalized communities face unique structural challenges while being blamed for interpersonal conflict and labeled “violent” and deemed disposable. With a novel approach to the question of how state-sanctioned violence and abandonment impacts low-income communities, Engineered Conflict uses examples from Chicago’s recent history to shed light on the politics of disposability through housing instability, criminalization, and school closures. Looking at all three phenomena together allows readers to see how state policies designate some neighborhoods as unviable, where disinvestment furthers a rationale to contain members of these communities.

Looking at the many ways Black communities have resisted state violence and the work of local organizations to address marginalization, Engineered Conflict calls for a powerful movement against the displacement, disinvestment, and disposability of Chicago’s Black population. --------------------------------------------------------------

Speakers:

David Omotoso Stovall is a professor in the Department of Black Studies and Criminology, Law & Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the author of Born Out of Struggle: Critical Race Theory, School Creation and the Politics of Interruption.

Tara Betts is the author of Refuse to Disappear, Break the Habit, and Arc & Hue. She is a professor in the Peace, Conflict Studies, and Social Justice program at DePaul University and part of the faculty at the Solstice MFA program at Lasell University. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including This is the Honey, Choice Words, and The Overturning. Her short stories and essays have also appeared in numerous publications, including Octavia's Brood, Red Line: Chicago Horror Stories, The Whiskey of Our Discontent, and The Breakbeat Poets.

Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/live/ZttfgSzf46I

Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org

Mar 9, 2026

What Justice on a Burning Planet? The Left and the Climate Emergency

It's clear, at this late hour of the climate crisis, that nothing short of revolution in some form can salvage the possibility of global justice. It's equally clear that a mere climate or climate-justice movement can't do this alone. What's required is not simply a more powerful "climate left" but a far more powerful left--a resurgent, revolutionary left--for which the total defeat of fascism and of fossil capital are understood as inseparable. Everything the left has fought for is now at stake.

Join Haymarket Books and Verso Books for an urgent conversation about climate catastrophe and the left, featuring:

Andreas Malm and Wim Carton, co-authors of The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It's Too Late

Thea Riofrancos, author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism

Host: Wen Stephenson, climate-justice correspondent for The Nation and author of Learning to Live in the Dark: Essays in a Time of Catastrophe

Speakers:

Wim Carton is Associate Professor of Sustainability Science at Lund University, Sweden. He's the author of over 20 academic articles and book chapters on climate politics. His work has appeared in top journals such as Nature Climate Change, WIRES Climate Change and Antipode. His latest book, with Andreas Malm, is The Long Heat.

Andreas Malm is Associate Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University, Sweden. He is the author of several acclaimed books, such as, with the Zetkin Collective, White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism. His book How to Blow Up a Pipeline is an international bestseller and has been turned into a feature film. His latest book, with Wim Carton, is The Long Heat.

Thea Riofrancos is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College, a Strategic Co-Director of the Climate and Community Institute, and a fellow at the Transnational Institute. Her research focuses on resource extraction, renewable energy, climate change, the global lithium sector, green technologies, social movements, and the Latin American left. She is the author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (W.W. Norton, 2025) and Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020), and the coauthor of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso Books, 2019). Her publications have appeared in scholarly journals such as Global Environmental Politics, World Politics, and Perspectives on Politics, as well as in media outlets including The New York Times, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, n+1, Dissent, and more.

Wen Stephenson is the climate-justice correspondent for The Nation and a frequent contributor to The Baffler.. An independent journalist, essayist, and activist, he is the author of, most recently, Learning to Live in the Dark: Essays in a Time of Catastrophe (Haymarket, 2025). His previous book, What We're Fighting for Now Is Each Other (Beacon, 2015), is a personal account of the pivotal early years of the US climate-justice movement. He has written for many publications, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. In 2010, he left his career in mainstream media and has since covered, engaged in, and helped organize nonviolent resistance to fossil capital.

This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books and Verso Books.

Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/live/ppW3UEaFGA0

Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org

Mar 10, 2026

Harry Haywood's Negro Liberation

Join Dr. Rebecca Hall and Kyle T. Mays as they discuss and celebrate the new edition of Negro Liberation, a major work in the Black Communist tradition by worker-intellectual Harry Haywood.

In 1948, Harry Haywood, a leading member of the Communist Party USA, published Negro Liberation, a pathbreaking book that lays out his argument that the Black Belt South constitutes a distinct nation and an internal colony of U.S. imperialism. Applying a Marxist-Leninist lens to questions of nationalism, colonialism, and land distribution, Haywood lays out the dire stakes of Jim Crow violence and oppression and critiques the emptiness and insufficiency of liberal solutions. Along the way, he makes a powerful case for Black self-determination.

Framed by Rebecca Hall’s moving meditation on her father’s legacy and Charisse Burden-Stelly’s clear-eyed case for how Haywood reveals the contradiction between ruling-class politics and Black liberation today, this new edition of Negro Liberation is a must-read for anyone fighting against oppression.

Order the book here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2616-negro-liberation

More on Wake Productions: https://www.rebhallphd.org/

Speakers:

Rebecca Hall, JD PhD is an independent scholar, activist, and educator. Her paternal grandparents were born enslaved and she is the daughter of Harry Haywood. Dr. Hall writes and publishes on the history of race, gender, law, and resistance as well as articles on climate justice and intersectional feminist theory. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College, Berkeley Law, and University of Santa Cruz. Her most recent book, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts (Simon & Schuster, 2021) has won multiple awards, and was a finalist for the N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards and the Pen America Open Book Award. Wake has been listed as a Best Book of 2021 by NPR and The Washington Post, Forbes, Ms. Magazine, and has been released in eight languages. She has been a fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute (2022-23) The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and The Stanford Humanities Center 2023-24). Her work has been supported by numerous grants and fellowships.

Kyle T. Mays (he/him) is an Afro-Indigenous (Saginaw Chippewa) writer and scholar. He is a Professor of African American Studies, American Indian Studies, and History and the Associate Vice Provost of Inclusive Excellence at UCLA. In 2024 he was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of five books, including When We Are Kin: The History and Future of Afro-Indigenous Solidarity (Haymarket, 2026), Rethinking the Red Power Movement with Sam Hitchmough (Routledge, 2024), City of Dispossessions: Indigenous Peoples, African Americans, and the Creation of Modern Detroit (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022), An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2021), and Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes: Modernity and Hip Hop in Indigenous North America (SUNY Press, 2018).

Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/live/pNL0AZDbuBE

Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org