Emily Wells and Hanif Abdurraqib in Conversation

Composer, producer, and video artist Emily Wells’s evocative music (described as “visionary” by NPR) and performances (called “quietly transfixing” by the New York Times) impel listeners to be attuned. Her latest release, Regards to the End, which explores environmental collapse, the AIDS crisis, and her lived experience as a queer musician, is a work of radical empathy that foregrounds the power of art, critique, and care to connect and perhaps redeem us. Read more on the artist’s website.

A poet, essayist, cultural critic, and recent MacArthur Fellow from Columbus, Ohio, Hanif Abdurraqib has been published in the New York Times, New Yorker, FADER, and Pitchfork, among other publications. His first full-length poetry collection, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much (Button Poetry, 2016), was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award and nominated for a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and his second collection, A Fortune for Your Disaster (Tin House, 2019), won the 2020 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Abdurraqib’s first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us (Two Dollar Radio, 2017), was named a book of the year by NPR, Oprah Magazine, Los Angeles Review, and Chicago Tribune, among others. His critically acclaimed Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest (University of Texas, 2019) quickly became a New York Times bestseller and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. In 2021, he released the book A Little Devil in America with Random House. Read more on the author’s website.