Former Georgia House Democratic Leader Stacey Abrams discusses voter suppression and politics.
Stacey Abrams is a New York Times bestselling author, serial entrepreneur, nonprofit CEO and political leader. After serving for eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives, and seven as Minority Leader, Abrams became the 2018 Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia. She won more votes than any other Democrat in the state’s history and was the first black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in the United States. After the 2018 election, Abrams launched Fair Fight to promote fair elections across the country, encourage voter participation and educate voters about elections and their voting rights.
Abrams is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the 2012 recipient of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award. She has also written many romantic suspense novels under the pen name Salena Montgomery, in addition to “Lead from the Outside,” a guidebook on making real change.
Terrence McNally was an award-winning playwright and LGBT(Q) activist whose far-ranging career spanned six decades. He won four Tony Awards for his plays “Love! Valour! Compassion!” and “Master Class” and his musical books for “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and “Ragtime.”
He was a recipient of the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award, and he was a 2018 inductee of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He wrote a number of TV scripts, including “Andre’s Mother,” for which he won an Emmy Award. He received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, four Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Obie Awards and three Hull-Warriner Awards. In 1996, he was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. He was recognized with a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre at the 2019 Tony Awards and was the 2019 recipient of the Broadway League’s Distinguished Lifetime Service Award.
McNally passed away in March of 2020.
Grammy winner Ani DiFranco discusses her memoir “No Walls and the Recurring Dream” and the independent spirit that infuses her music.
Singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco has been known as the “Little Folksinger” but her music has embraced punk, funk, hip hop, jazz, soul, electronica and even more distant sounds. Rejecting the major label system, she became one of the first artists to create her own record label, Righteous Babe Records, in 1990. Her collaborators have included everyone from Utah Phillips to legendary R&B saxophonist Maceo Parker to Prince. She has shared stages with Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, Kris Kristofferson, Greg Brown, Billy Bragg, Michael Franti, Chuck D. and many more. Her album “Binary” was released in June 2017 and her memoir “No Walls and the Recurring Dream” was released in 2019 by Viking Books.
Journalist Jose Antonio Vargas discusses immigration and his memoir, “Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen.”
Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker and a leading voice for the human rights of immigrants. He is the founder of Define American, the nation’s leading non-profit media and culture organization that fights injustice and anti-immigrant hate through the power of storytelling. His memoir, “Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen,” was published by HarperCollins in 2018.
Activist and author Cecile Richards talks about her time at Planned Parenthood, activism in the 21st century and her 2018 memoir, “Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead.”
Cecile Richards is a national leader for women’s rights and social and economic justice. As President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund for more than a decade, Richards worked to increase affordable access to reproductive health care. After starting her career as a labor organizer, working with women earning minimum wage, she went on to start her own grassroots organizations and later served as Deputy Chief of Staff to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. In 2011 and 2012, Richards was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.
Poet and activist Nikki Giovanni talks about her long career, writing process and reflects on the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007.
Nikki Giovanni is a poet, writer, activist and educator. Her works cover everything from race and social issues to children’s literature. She has received the Langston Hughes Medal, the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award, the NAACP Image Award, more than 20 honorary degrees from national colleges and universities and a Grammy nomination. In 2005, Oprah Winfrey named her one of the top 25 Living Legends. Her 2017 collection of poems is titled “A Good Cry.”
