I“Fearless: A Tribute to Irish American Women,” features novelist Alice McDermott in conversation with Pennsylvania Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon and CBS News’ Margaret Brennan.

McDermott’s critically acclaimed eighth novel, “The Ninth Hour,” set in Irish Brooklyn, was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2017 Kirkus Prize for Fiction. Time magazine, The Wall Street Journal, NPR and others named the novel among the top works of fiction in 2017. McDermott is known for her portrayals of Irish American family life.

Scanlon is an education and human rights advocate representing Pennsylvania’s 5th District. She was first sworn in as a member of Congress on Nov. 13, 2018. Brennan is moderator of CBS News’ “Face the Nation” and the network’s senior foreign affairs correspondent based in Washington. All three women will discuss their Irish backgrounds and family stories.

Watch TONIGHT Thursday, Feb. 6 at 7pm ET on the Library's YouTube channel.

Vibrant springtime traditions of cherry blossom viewing in Japan and Washington, D.C., are explored in the new book “Cherry Blossoms: Sakura Collections from the Library of Congress,” published today by Smithsonian Books, in association with the Library of Congress. Events at the Library in April will feature the book and celebrate the annual return of the cherry blossoms to the nation's capital.

Click here for more information.

Country Music Icon Trisha Yearwood and Gershwin Prize Recipient Garth Brooks “In Conversation with Librarian of Congress,” March 2

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden will host a conversation with Grammy Award-winning country music singer and songwriter Garth Brooks and country music artist, actress, author, celebrity chef and wife of Brooks, Trisha Yearwood on Monday, March 2 at 7:00 p.m. in the Library of Congress Coolidge Auditorium in the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C.

Brooks will receive the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song later that week on Wednesday, March 4. The country music titan and multiple hall of famer is the youngest recipient of the prestigious prize. You can follow and join in on the #GershwinPrize conversation via Twitter.

During the conversation, Brooks and Yearwood will discuss their success as a country music power couple, their careers as music industry changemakers and the humanitarian projects they devote their efforts to each year. The conversation is being presented as part of the Library’s initiative to Explore America’s Changemakers.

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

The Library of Congress is extending its public hours on Thursday evenings and will feature regular live programming for visitors as part of a new initiative, Live! At the Library, beginning April 2 to showcase the broad range of literature, poetry, art, music, digital collections and other holdings at the national library.

The Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building and all exhibitions at the Library – currently featuring the long fight for women’s voting rights and Rosa Parks’ groundbreaking role in civil rights – will be open for extended hours on Thursday evenings from 5 to 8 p.m. every week. Exhibitions and programs will remain free and open to everyone. The Main Reading Room will be open for research during this time, and visitors and researchers will have the opportunity to register for reader cards. Other selected reading rooms may also be open on Thursday nights as a part of evening programming.

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress is pleased to announce a packed schedule of public events happening this spring.

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

This month, the Library of Congress will kick off the annual Earth and Space Science lecture series. The series is presented in partnership with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Science, Technology and Business Division at the Library.

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

The Library of Congress announces the following changes in upcoming scheduled events:

• March 12: National Book Festival Presents Margaret Atwood and Nan Talese. Postponed, will be rescheduled for a later date.
• March 12: Bartók Ballet: a New Life Onstage for a Landmark Coolidge Commission. Postponed, will be rescheduled for a later date.
• March 13: Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children's Literature and Symposium. Canceled by the sponsor.
• March 14: Marouan Benabdallah: Arabesque. Postponed, will be rescheduled for a later date.
• March 28: Manuscript Music for Men's Chorus. Postponed, will be rescheduled for a later date.

All other Library events are continuing as scheduled at this time. Click here for a full calendar of Library events.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

Out of an abundance of caution, the Library of Congress announced today that all Library of Congress buildings and facilities will be closed to the public starting at 5 p.m. today until Thursday, April 1, 2020 at 8 a.m. to reduce the risk of transmitting COVID-19 coronavirus.

Library employees, contractors, authorized visitors and other credentialed Capitol Hill staff will continue to have access to the buildings. During the closure, all Library-sponsored public programs are postponed or cancelled through the end of March.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress announced today that all public events at the Library are canceled until May 11 to reduce the risk of transmitting COVID-19 coronavirus. Whenever possible, the Library will reschedule the public programs that have been canceled. We will also provide regular public updates on the operating status of Library facilities. Library of Congress buildings and facilities remain closed to the public until Wednesday, April 1, 2020 at 8 a.m.

Click here for more information.

Out of an abundance of caution, all Library of Congress buildings and facilities will be closed to the public, including researchers and others with reader identification cards, until further notice to reduce the risk of transmitting COVID-19 coronavirus. The Library has reduced the number of people in Library buildings to a very small number of necessary individuals.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress announced today that it will cancel all scheduled public events at the Library until July 1 as part of its ongoing efforts to reduce the risk of transmitting COVID-19 coronavirus. Whenever possible, the Library will reschedule the public programs that have been canceled. We will also provide regular public updates on the operating status of Library facilities.

Click here for more information.

In a recent article for Rain Taxi, Graziano Krätli reviews Fabiano Alborghetti’s Directory of the Vulnerable, translated by Marco Sonzogni. He begins by stating, “Fabiano Alborghetti’s two fine collections to date, L’opposta riva (The Opposite Shore, 2006 and 2013) and Registro dei fragile. 43 canti (2009; Directory of the Vulnerable) represent almost an anomaly, if […]

Guernica author Marina Sonkina was recently featured on the cover of BC BookLook! In an article entitled “’Face’ mystery unveils ugly poperty values”, Marina Sonkina’s newest collection, Expulsion & Other Stories, is described as “nothing short of brilliant”. The article begins by explaining, “two thirds of Expulsion consists of Chekovian tales of survival set in […]

We’re excited to announce the trailer for Steve Meagher’s Navy Blue! Broken hymns. Desperate prayers. Tales of first heroes. Stories of the street. The poems in Navy Blue walk the middle ground between sorrow and salvation, tackling themes of devotion, regret, innocence lost and mortality through an array of dark landscapes and narratives of the dispossessed. Written in […]

We recently sat down with Pratap Reddy to chat about his new collection of short stories, Weather Permitting & Other Stories, which will be released by Guernica this spring. GE: Pratap Reddy, please tell us about your new book. PR: Weather Permitting & Other Stories is my first book. It’s a collection of short stories. […]

All you poetry lovers, check out this wonderful documentary that will be airing on the CBC website March 25th! In this CBC Radio One Special Program, Where Have All the Poets Gone? Sook-Yin Lee gives “a surprising look at the conditions that inspire Canadians to express themselves through poetry.” Here’s a blurb about the documentary: […]

We recently sat down with F. G. Paci to chat about his new collection of short stories, Talk About God and Other Stories, which will be released by Guernica this spring. GE: Could you tell us about your new book, and about some of the stories in the collection? FGP: TALK ABOUT GOD and Other […]

Guernica author Elana Wolff recently gave an interview with The New Quarterly about the inspiration behind her essay, “Paging Kafka’s Elegist”, which is this year’s winner of the Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest. Susan Scott introduces the interview by stating “I describe the first-place essays as a gift. I say this less because our eclectic […]

Congratulations to David Huebert, the winner of this year’s CBC Short Story Prize! David won this year’s short story competition with a story entitled “Enigma”, which is about a woman who must end the life of her beloved horse. As he explains in a recent article by David Burke, the idea for the story came […]

Dr. Norman Cornett was recently interviewed by RadioVM about his experience translating Farida by Naïm Kattan. In the interview, Norman discusses the significance of Naïm Kattan in general, and his work Farida in particular. Farida tells the story of a Jewish woman and cabaret singer struggling for survival in pre-World War II Iraq. It is […]

In a recent interview with Jeffrey Mackie, translator and scholar Norman Cornett discusses various aspects of translating Naïm Kattan’s Farida. The interview can be listened to below. Norman Cornett begins by briefly describing the basis of the novel, which is “set on the cusp of World War II” and focuses on a Jewish songstress in […]

Américas Award Events in the Hispanic Reading Room

Join us for these two Hispanic Heritage Month events this Friday, September 27, 2019, in the Hispanic Reading Room

AUTHOR READING WITH FRANCIE LATOUR, 11:00 am
Author Francie Latour will read from Auntie Luce’s Talking Paintings (2019 Américas Award Honor Book),  a story about a young American girl who visits family in Haiti and finds herself through her Haitian auntie’s paintbrush. Book sale will follow. The Américas Award encourages and commends authors, illustrators and publishers who produce quality and classroom-ready children’s and young adult books portraying Latin America, the Caribbean, or Latinos in the United States.

Free tickets available via Evenbrite

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AMÉRICAS AWARD CEREMONY AND WORKSHOP, 5:00 pm-7:30 pm
Each year the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs (CLASP) and the Hispanic Division celebrates winning titles by holding an award ceremony at the Library of Congress during Hispanic Heritage Month. All are welcome to attend the ceremony and workshop following.

2019 Award Winners
Islandborn by Junot Díaz and illustrated by Leo Espinosa (Dial Books, 2018)
Undocumented: A Worker’s Fight by Duncan Tonatiuh (Abrams Books, 2018)
2019 Honor Books
Auntie Luce’s Talking Paintings by Francie Latour and illustrated by Ken Daley (Groundwood Books, 2018)
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (HarperCollins, 2018)

Following the awards ceremony, author/artist Duncan Tonatiuh, CLASP, the Learning and Innovation Office, and the Hispanic Division at the Library of Congress offer a hands-on workshop inspired by Tonatiuh’s award winning codex Undocumented: A Worker's Fight.

Participants will create visual reflections on their own life experiences and combine them in an accordion folded book displayed in the Hispanic Reading Room through Hispanic Heritage Month. This maker opportunity enables participants to experience hybrid reading and writing traditions through Mesoamerican codices and Tonatiuh’s book. A reception as well as a book sale and signing will follow.

Free tickets available via Evenbrite

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Click here for more information on these and other related events.

Friday, November 8 - 12:00pm

Location:  Mumford Room, James Madison Memorial Building (6th floor Rm 649) 101 Independence Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20540

Sarah Aroeste, Shai Bachar, and Ellie Falaris Ganelin perform Ladino music and offer educational commentary about this language. Ladino is the language of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain during the Inquisition, and spoken in Mediterranean and Balkan regions before the Holocaust. It is an endangered language because numerous speakers were killed during the Holocaust. Aroeste describes Ladino as a pan-Mediterranean language crossing linguistic and cultural boundaries. A display of rare Ladino books curated by the Hebraic Section in the African and Middle Eastern Division at the Library of Congress accompanies this performance.

Free tickets available via Eventbrite

Brought to you by the General and International Collections and Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorates in cooperation with

Please request ADA accommodations at least five business days in advance by contacting (202) 707-6362 or ada@loc.gov.

The annual online release of material from the Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape has gone live! These year's release includes recordings with Jorge Luis Borges, Vinicius de Moraes, and renowned Latinx poets such as Carmen Giménez Smith, Valerie Martínez, and Rigoberto González. Curated here in the Library of Congress since 1943, the AHLOT is a collection of audio recordings of poets and prose writers from Latin America, the Iberian Peninsula, the Caribbean, and the Latinx community in the United States reading from their works. Every year we make 50 new recordings from this collection available for online streaming.

Click here to see the complete list of authors recorded for this project.

Happy New Year/ feliz año/ feliz ano novo from the Library of Congress’ Hispanic Division! We feel privileged for the opportunities 2019 offered to continue our mission of sharing the Library’s wonderfully rich Luso-Hispanic collections. We are thrilled to welcome 2020 and look forward to its surprises. 

In case you missed it, here are some highlights from this past year:

Jaime Conlan and Sam Awad, an intern and Librarian in Residence, shared accounts of their work in the “Library of Congress, 4 Corners of the World” blog. We are grateful to learn with these budding professionals. 

We inaugurated a new series of events in our Reading Room’s vestibule to connect the public with distinctive collections and services against the backdrop of the impressive Portinari Murals. With nearly 30 partners, we welcomed 765 participants to combined collections displays, presentations or readings, and maker workshops.  Some highlights included a reading with Portuguese award-winning poet Ana Luisa Amaral; an homage to the late Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik; a Wikipedia edit-a-thon and a workshop with Chicano muralist Mario Torero.

We continue to create more online accessibility to recordings from the Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape and to recent acquisitions on and from Latin America through the Handbook of Latin American Studies, with volume 73 published and 74 on the way.

In 2019, the Hispanic Division also celebrated the impressive career and retirement of Juan Manuel Peréz (July), while welcoming Liliana Lopez (September) Dani Thurber (January).

We look forward to expanding our efforts and continue connecting users, creators, and learners with our treasures and resources. Please let us know if there is something you would like to see us prioritize in 2020 and stay tuned!

Many of our effort are possible thanks to generous support of the Huntington Endowment, for which we remain grateful, now 80 years after the establishment of the Hispanic Reading Room.

Anyone can participate in writing word for word transcriptions that will ultimately enrich our catalog records and make the historical content in this collection of Spanish documents more accessible.

To participate, please register via Eventbrite

About the virtual transcribe-a-thon

You can join in as an individual or organize a transcribe-a-thon event wherever you are.

1. Register through Eventbrite so we can get a full count of contributing volunteers!
2. Follow the day's progress via hourly updates here in History Huband shared on our twitter (@Crowd_LOC)
   • We’ll share live updates on campaign activity so be sure to let us know how it’s going wherever you are! We hope you’ll share your event details and let us know what you’re finding in this rich collection.
3. Let us know what you’re up to!We’re always here to answer your questions, but we’ll have some extra opportunities for you to connect with Community Managers and collection experts.
   • Twitter chats:  11am and 2pm EST
     • Follow the conversation for tips and tricks!  Community managers and collection experts will also share more about this amazing collection and answer your questions!
   • Office Hours (via WebEx!):  noon and 3pm EST
     • Talk directly with community managers and collection experts to share what you're finding and get answers to your questions! Join using the links below.
       • 12pm EST office hour
       • 3pm EST office hour
   • Other ways to reach us:
     • Tweet at us anytime!
     • Send us an email at crowd@loc.gov.
4. Have fun! Connect to history and your fellow volunteers through transcription. 

When the news of the day seems overwhelming, nothing can soothe frayed nerves more than an interlude, however brief, with poetry or with nature. Continue reading

April is National Poetry Month!

Celebrate by listening to some of the poets recorded for our Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape (AHLOT), and learn about noteworthy Latin American poetry publications by consulting the Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS).

We also invite you to listen to our La Biblioteca podcast. Here are some episodes focused on poetry:

• Listening to Pablo Neruda
  (With poet and literary critic, Marjorie Agosín)
• Listening to Octavio Paz
  (With U.S. Poet Laureate Emeritus, Juan Felipe Herrera)
• Listening to Álvaro Mutis
  (With literary scholar, Charlotte Rogers)
• Listening to Raúl Zurita
  (With translator and literary critic, Anna Deeny Morales)
• Listening to Carlos Drummond de Andrade
  (With literary critic, Vivaldo Andrade dos Santos)

Click here for more information.