Literary Arts is pleased to announce the lineup of the 42nd season of Portland Arts & Lectures. Join us at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall for an inspiring lineup of authors and commentators who are pushing the boundaries of fiction, drama and non-fiction.
GEORGE SAUNDERS
Thursday, Sep. 24, 2026
George Saunders is the author of several books, including the novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Booker Prize, and the story collections Pastoralia and Tenth of December, the latter of which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2006 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2013 he was awarded the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in short fiction and was included in Time’s list of the one hundred most influential people in the world.
AYAD AKHTAR
Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026
Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright whose work has been published and performed in over thirty languages. He is the author of American Dervish, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, and Homeland Elegies, named one of the 10 Best Books of 2020 by The New York Times. The Radiance, his forthcoming novel, will be published in Fall 2026. Akhtar is the author of several plays including Disgraced, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
ISABEL WILKERSON
Thursday, Jan. 21, 2027
Isabel Wilkerson is the author of The New York Times bestsellers The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. She was the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism and was awarded the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama. Her work blends history, sociology and reportage to explore race in America, how unspoken histories and hierarchies inform our present moment.
BEN RHODES
Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2027
Ben Rhodes is a writer, political commentator, and national security analyst. He is the author of The New York Times bestsellers After the Fall and The World as It Is. From 2009 to 2017, Ben served as a speechwriter and deputy national security advisor to President Obama. He is currently co-host of Pod Save the World, a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, a contributor for MS NOW, a senior advisor to former President Obama, and chair of National Security Action, which he co-founded with Jake Sullivan in 2018.
KIRAN DESAI
Tuesday, April 20, 2027
Kiran Desai was born in New Delhi, India, educated in India, England, and the United States, and now lives in New York. She is the author of Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, which was published to unanimous acclaim in over 22 countries, and The Inheritance of Loss, which won the Booker Prize in 2006, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. Her third novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker. In 2015, The Economic Times listed her as one of the 20 most influential global Indian women.
Current subscribers’ same seats are guaranteed until Friday, May 29, 2026. After that date, seats that have not been renewed will be reassigned, and prices will raise modestly (about 5%) across all subscription levels, so we encourage you to renew as early as you can.
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