Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Robinson joins us at Town Hall to train her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. With perspectives from her new essay collection What Are We Doing Here? she investigates how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness, and discusses the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life. With peerless insight and boundless humanity, Robinson calls for us to continue the tradition of those great thinkers. Join Robinson for a treatise on remaking American political and cultural life as “deeply impressed by obligation [and as] a great theater of heroic generosity, which, despite all, is sometimes palpable still.”

Marilynne Robinson is the author of the novels Lila, Home, Gilead (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and Housekeeping, and the nonfiction books The Givenness of Things, When I Was a Child I Read Books, Mother Country, The Death of Adam, and Absence of Mind.

Presented by Town Hall Seattle.