He was definitely an engaging teacher and as you mentioned his experiments influence a lot of people including including you. [inaudible] this is a bit of a followon and im still trying to formulate what is probably a very elementary question but you talk about all the research you did and obviously he mixes in real historical characters with his primary fictional characte characters. Was he primarily using fiction to illuminate history and historical forces or using history to illuminate human nature . Yes and yes. [laughter] i mean thats a huge question. One of the criticisms that this book has received is that tolstoy intentionally distort historical facts for his own purposes so for instance he creates in the character could to save us a far more salt of the earth kind of character than he actually was. He was apparently much more widely, much more questionable in terms of his morals so historians have accused the full story of using history and distorting it for his own ends. I dont know what i think about that. Because the fact is that ultimately this is a fiction and his goal was not just to write a history but to illuminate life and human nature and so i think he was after something bigger and even mentions it in the introduction to a draft of the novel. Hes after something bigger than writing about history. He wants to write about what he calls the truth and truth the truth requires imagination. It requires a little bit of playing around with the facts of reality and putting them together in a different more imaginative way and apparently he was successful because during world war ii soviet soldiers were given copies of boring piece to read and they claimed, many claim to be more moved, this was during hitlers invasion of russia, they claim to be more moved by tolstoys description a war than the actual war for her taking place before their eyes and they are in quotations to that effect. Theres something about tolstoys ability to take take reality and made it even more real than reality. Will my question is somewhat related to the american civil war. Are you familiar with tolstoys comments about Abraham Lincoln and i was curious what your take is on that . I am familiar. What are some specific ones . A bestselling book about Abraham Lincoln and on the inside cover i am paraphrasing but tolstoy said that something to the effect of the moonlight of alexander, napoleon and caesar pao in the sunshine of lincoln in that lincoln is not a great and universal character who will live forever, and greater than all president s combined and greater than his country and he also told the story i believe to the New York Post one day and i guess meeting with kazakhstan they have asked him to talk about great leaders and he talked for two or three hours in the opposite of this poor peasant stood up and said will you still havent told us about the greatest leader of all time the greatest general of all time in his famous lincoln and he lived in a faraway land called america. At the time people thought he just made that part up. That i had heard that the other thing she said before, never heard that so thank you. I know Teddy Roosevelt had a lot to say about tolstoy and tolstoy had some things to say about Teddy Roosevelt which was a very different era in American History but tolstoy wrote letters to american thinkers and intellectuals at the time urging them to rise up against the imperialist ecosoc Teddy Roosevelt in the late or early late 1800s early 1900s and Teddy Roosevelt for his part had some problems. Teddy roosevelt was very conservative and most of his comments were directed toward on herself not toward tolstoy who is the adults are some novel so thats an interesting dissertation right there. Roosevelt and tolstoy. The legacy goes on. One more question. In the mac. [inaudible] amazing. The perfect book for that trip. I knew Teddy Roosevelt wrote war and peace but i didnt know he specifically took a copy of war and peace with them when he was on one of his cowboy expeditio expeditions. And knott. [inaudible] and knott. Was it Anna Karenina or warren peace . It should have been worn peace. Okay. If knott [inaudible] and knott. I love historians. I didnt know all of these details. But war and peace would be the perfect book to take with you on an expedition like that and i think even more perfect than war and peace because its awfully heavy for your next trip you need to take a copy of give war and peace a chance. [applause] if you would mind folding up your chairs. The books are available at the front. Booktv with live from in 2014 harlem book fair which is held every year the New York Public Librarys Schomburg Center for research in black culture. You can watch them all some multicultural Book Publishing, the black Arts Movement and more. First a discussion on the state of africanamerican literature with mailaika adero. Good morning everyone. Good morning. My name is Max Rodriguez and i am founder of the harlem book fair. I would like to welcome you. [applause] thank you. I would like to welcome you to our exploration, our play, our conversation about books and authors and culture and what is possible for us as a community, as an american community. I would like to thank our host a schomburg and thank our Partner Columbia University school of the arts for engaging, taking on and supporting the harlem book fair and creating an awareness of literature, letters he specifically into the Africanamerican Community but certainly nationwide. This year and every year, forward, we have taken on a theme. There is always a question in these conversations of who am i, where am i, where my going and how did i get here . Their size that conversation at home for us and we have an answer for palm. The theme of this years book fair is global as we all are. And the book fair from this point forward will reflect that. We started with an event yesterday at Columbia University are first annual fiction festival where we featured caribbean writers. We are going to expand that to include both caribbean writers and writers of the african ds for a threw out so the book fair will look like all of us from wherever we may hail from the global that we are. I would like to introduce our partner, brother Khalil Mohammed director of the Schomburg Center. [applause] thank you very much max and i want to congratulate you on putting together yet another harlem book fair. I know people have come from near and far to have their annual fill of the work of great artists and writers, scholars and leaders in our community and we certainly want to applaud you for continuing to bring them here and to bring literacy to life so lets give Max Rodriguez a round of applause. [applause] i also want to thank cspan, booktv in particular for continuing to support this event as a media sponsor. It certainly helps to share the good news that happens here around the country and in my travels ive meet many people who know about the harlem book fair even though they have never been here because they have seen it on television so we are grateful to cspan for being here and for our cspan audience for tuning in. I also want to before i say a few things about the Schomburg Center in general for those of you who are new to the center for the first time i also want to acknowledge that we have lost some literary greats in the past few weeks. They are dr. Mai angelo. [applause] Walter Dean Myers. [applause] and although she was not known so much for putting pen to paper than bringing words on paper to let the incomparable actress ruby dee. [applause] for dr. Angelo and for ruby dee they hold a special place in the heart of this institution which gives me a chance to tell you a little bit about us. This center is approaching its 90th year. It is deleting repository for the preservation, the interpretation and collection of materials related to the global black experience. It begins with a very headstrong and ambitious afropuerto rican named alfonso schomberg. Arturo alfonso schomberg. Its early for me still on a saturday morning. He arrived here in 1890s committed to documenting the contributions of black people around the world have made to world civilization and it was that collection beginning in the 1890s that arrived here as part of the New York Public Library system a branch at 135th and lenox avenue representing about 5000 items that began the corporate collection later named for Arturo Schomburg and to this day we continue the legacy laid before us by buying books from all over the world. We have Something Like 400,000 volumes. Every book that we have purchased is still here including the ones that he brought with him back in 1925. We also are part of the infrastructure that makes up africanamerican studies and africana studies. There are very few scholars who produce knowledge works in scholarship literary analysis even for artists who were writers and poets do not consult the schomberg collections. It is that important. Davis baldwin once famously wrote that growing up here in harlem he made his way to this library and read every single book for four decades beginning in the 1920s the great poet and writer Langston Hughes was Close Friends at the early traders including Arturo Schomburg. We have many first editions of his find by Langston Hughes as well as the as well as the university. Hughes spent four decades using this library and remains with us in perpetuity and thus again you dont know his cremains are buried in the floor of the hms you walk into this auditorium. For someone like ruby dee who was just not a place of literary engagement but also place them for inspiration for those who might find their voice not in what they wrote but how they communicated. And so back in early 1940s Something Like something called the American Theater was born as a Repertory Company a place that would incubate black theater and in that moment a young ruby dee, a young sidney poitier, a young Harry Belafonte made their way to the hundred and 33rd Street Branch or the Public Library and so began history making. Our connection to her is from the very beginning. Many years later dr. Angelou moved here to harlem in the 1950s before she went off to ghana and at that moment she was part of the Harlem Writers Guild including john killian julia mayfield, so many others who depended upon the library so they could produce works of literature and for that reason our connection to dr. Angelou lasted many decades and she became a National Membership chair in the early 2000 since both your many times, one of the most profound thing she said was that libraries were like rainbows. Rainbows that showed up in a cloud as a sign that whatever storms and troubles one was in the midst of a new that there was a way out, that there was hope and optimism just this symbol as a rainbow in the midst of a storm. She had a very deep connection to this library and for that reason we have her papers. They are in a popup display in the lobby so please do take a moment to see them. So thats just the tip of the iceberg of what the Schomburg Center is represented over many many decades. We continue to be a pillar of the Harlem Community, a Harlem Community for black america, for the global black experience so pleased that this is your first time dealt making her last. Please bring others with you. Make sure that young people have a comingofage experience. This is a place of cultural renaissance in engagement, a place to embrace our collective cultural heritage. There is no america without black people so we are truly for everyone. [applause] and without so im going to move out of the way and bring back Max Rodriguez who will be part of an introducer next panel. Thank you for being with us. Theyre sick terrific motown show in the gallery. Please dont miss it. Thanks for being with us. [applause] so you see we are well steeped in history and that is very important but also at the harlem book fair the project began what is possible. Given that which we have been given what is it that we are charged to do . What is our responsibility so that the harlem book fair our conversation is where books read culture, what does that look like . Yes they are books but what is that nomar looked like an conversation . What does that book on hiphop culture look like . What does that book on fashion look like on a runway outside with the other exhibitors at the book fair . We not only want to talk about books, we know that where we live is really our experience. We live and we survived because we know who we are. This is the conversation that i call an outdoor book party. So thank you so much for coming. I have the honor and privilege of introducing a dear friend, a colleague, a professional, someone who has through intellect and intuition and sheer willpower has worked and made her mark through publishing. Her name is mailaika adero. She is the Vice President and Senior Editor of a tree of books and shes a renaissance woman. A dancer. She is an artist and in her current, and her current effort she has a new magazine. So she knows to play in the space affords. Shes going to talk to us today about the state of lack publishing. Not an easy conversation to have. We are both challenged and presented with the opportunity of Digital Publishing amber needs all of that is telling the right stories to the unique market. What is in all of that . Malaika will tell us. Malaika, please. [applause] good morning, good morning, good morning. Its great to see everybody he here. The harlem book fair is one of my Favorite Book events one because its in than ever that i live and so its easy for me to get here. The other as you heard from dr. Mohammed and as you heard from Max Rodriguez is the setting here. Dr. Mohammed talked about Arturo Schomburg who laid the foundation here as a black bibliophile for this collection, for the center, this depository that is so important not just for us in this community but in the world to be built. Dr. Mohammeds leadership in the family of the schomberg are the beacon for the legacy that our tarot schomburg, James Baldwin are recent literary giants who you named the recently passed on, maya angelou and also mary brockett, jayne cortez. There have been too many who have passed on recently but they left us a legacy and they left us in charge and they left us a body in the lessons and instructions are just for us to Pay Attention to that now. And carry on. I was flattered by maxs invitation to make this talk and he calls me up and just says so casually i would like for you to talk about the state of black literature in 15 minutes. Unlike why . First of all the one state, what are we talking about . Black literature and of course language is important to me and before i could even, first of all i asked him for a couple of days to think about it and how was i going to talk about this thing we call black literature, this thing we call publishing particularly at this time when its so complicated and there are so many issues. There are so many breakthroughs. There is so much extraordinary work. There are so many problems. So what exactly will i be talking about . Well, i will be talking about black people meaning people of african descent here, writing and publishing primarily in america and the rest of the world. He and i are in the same page to think of global i am. It is how i think and i think most of the people around me and that is how we need to be thinking more in a systematic fashion in order to reach more people and touch more people and advance our culture and heal the world really. So i cant think of it as a single state. Its more like the world of storytelling because that is what its about. I want to try to do a few things in this introductory talk. Thank goodness there will be more people speaking after me who can continue the conversation but i want to talk about, a bit about the conditions in which storytellers work. I want to raise questions and issues concerning readers and reading in general. I would like to point out some important things to know about how books and even products are now published and distributed and how you can learn more and keep up with this all too often they Hidden Treasures right in our midst midst. He now but will new work that is available that we often dont know anything about. At least someone who has worked in publishing for decades. I will forgive him for reminding me of how old i am in this business. For the last dozen years i have signed up authors and edited in managed book products for a chat books at simon schuster. Thats my wage earning job. I also work in community producing programs that brings storytellers to audiences and to readers. I write and publish independent of my corporate ties. I have done this all of my working life. I have done this because i love it. You know, i love