Welcome to the 2020 National Book festival. And our conversation with two distinguished guests who join us in honor of the centennial celebrations of american author and space age visionary rate bradberry a master storyteller whose legacy exemplifies the festivals theme of american ingenuity. I am john, director of the center for bradberry studies at Indiana University school of liberal arts. Red berries encouragement led to the creation of the center will re preserve his entire home office, a lifetime of words and mementos of the papers correspondence and working library that remained in his home at the time of his passing in 2012 part his remarkable career spans seven decades. He grew up in the great depression. His family, his father had to take the family all the way from illinois to los angeles to find work in rate bradberry was never able to go to college. He developed a great style, his own unique lyric, metaphor rich style. In his own kind of subjects writing fantasy, weird tal
Like ours that witnessed the Police Killing of george floyd. The book is challenging and introspective. Its outraged and quiet and devastating. Early in the book ms. Rankin writes i was always aware that my value in our cultures eyes is determined by my skin color first and foremost. Claudia rankin is a poet, and essayist and playwright. She is a professor of poetry at yale, the new book is titled just us, an american conversation. And we find ms. Rankin at her home in connecticut. I really miss talking to you in person in front of a live audience. Im glad we could make this work. But i just have to say im really going to miss that, so welcome. Host thank you so much kerri for having me. Tell me how, in the before times, before the pandemic you imagined you would be traveling in talking about this book, in front of live audiences. You are right. What we are doing is not what i thought i would be doing. I thought that as close as could come to having conversations with different people