Liberties There's nothing Artificial about our Intelligence

Thank you all so much for joining us for January's salon on the topic “Can we learn to be alone?” You can listen to the recording here. This month: We're very excited to continue our wonderful discussions with all of you—February’s salon will be on the topic “Can we change how we love?” As always: We will start our discussion at 7. As always: If you would like to prepare an opening statement, please let Chris and Celeste know ahead of time. As always: We will procure pizza and some salad provisions so that we are all well fed before the hard work of conversation begins in earnest. Like last time: Since February 15 will not be a school night, please come with a drink to share; we’ll see if we can love one another a little differently in the Liberties office after we record. As always: Please take the painful weeks of waiting until we meet to meditate on the topic, prepare your thoughts, form judgments and find sources to enliven our discussion. We look forward to seeing you all soon.

This month: We’re very excited to continue our wonderful discussions with all of you—March’s salon will be on the topic “Is there honor without revenge?” As always: We will start our discussion at 7. As always: If you would like to prepare an opening statement, please let Chris and Celeste know ahead of time. As always: We will procure pizza so that we are all well fed before the hard work of conversation begins in earnest. Like last time: Since March 29 will not be a school night, please come with a drink to share; if anyone offends you during the discussion, you can take it up with them in the Liberties office after we record. As always: Please take the painful weeks of waiting until we meet to meditate on the topic, prepare your thoughts, form judgments and find sources to enliven our discussion. We look forward to seeing you all soon.

The WRB Presents the next in a regular series of readings attracting and spotlighting literary talent in Washington, D.C., hosted by Michael Barron, Lauren Cerand, and Chris McCaffery. On the evening of April 9, these five writers will read from their work: Diana Brown, who grew up in the foothills of Utah’s gorgeous Wasatch Mountains, the seventh of eleven kids, a mash-up of gnocchi-loving Sicilians on one side of the family and Mormon pioneers on the other. She works for a media non-profit called Faith Matters, where she co-hosts The Soloists podcast and directs a depolarization initiative. Owen Paul Edwards, who is from Southern Maryland. His writing has recently appeared in HAD, the Rose Books Reader, and X-R-A-Y Lit Mag. He is an editor for Hominum Journal and BRUISER. Celeste Marcus, the managing editor of Liberties Journal, the WRB’s parent publication. She is the co-host with Chris McCaffery of the D.C. Salon. Her first book, Chaim Soutine, will be released in October of this year. Will Snider, a D.C.-based writer. His play How to Use a Knife won Philadelphia’s Barrymore Award for Outstanding New Play and was a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Drama. He’s working on his first novel and will share an excerpt from it. Kelly Xio, a poet, writer, and editor who likes peonies, jalapeño flavored chips and that wet dirt smell after rain. Described as "Emily Dickinson with WiFi," their work explores themes of memory, loss, digital ephemera, and the intersections of personal and collective histories. Their writing has appeared in Cosmonauts Avenue, Shabby Doll House, Lowly Dirt Children, BRUISER, and other literary spaces. Kelly lives with her cat named Marshall.

This month: We’re very excited to continue our wonderful discussions with all of you—April’s salon will be on the topic “Is curiosity dangerous?” This month: We will start our discussion at 7:30. As always: If you would like to prepare an opening statement, please let Chris and Celeste know ahead of time. As always: We will procure pizza so that we are all well fed before the hard work of conversation begins in earnest. This month: Since April 22 will be a school night, we will retire to a nearby venue to continue indulging our curiosity about one another after we record. As always: Please take the painful weeks of waiting until we meet to meditate on the topic, prepare your thoughts, form judgments and find sources to enliven our discussion. We look forward to seeing you all soon.

The N.Y.C. Salon is a discussion hosted quarterly in New York City by Liberties Journal and the Washington Review of Books. This is part of an ongoing series organized in Washington, D.C. by Celeste Marcus and Chris McCaffery; popular demand has brought us north to Manhattan. In a few weeks, we very much hope you can join us for a wide-ranging discussion on our topic for April: “Is curiosity dangerous?” Please join us in discussion; we would like to know what you think. We’ll be gathering at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, April 25th, graciously hosted by Ami Dar in the Idealist offices: We will procure pizza and provide a variety of beverages so that we are all well-fed before the hard work of conversation begins in earnest. After the discussion, we hope you can stick around and continue arguing and socializing as you see fit.

The WRB Presents the next in a regular series of readings attracting and spotlighting literary talent in Washington, D.C., hosted by Michael Barron, Lauren Cerand, and Chris McCaffery. On the evening of May 7, these four writers will read from their work: Carlo Massimo, a poet, translator from Italian and French, and journalist. He has translated poetry by filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Tunisian poet Mario Scalesi, and his translation of Salvatore Mugno’s “The Columbus of Jazz” comes out this fall from Bordighera Press. He also translates and reviews Italian and German YA fiction for the publishing firm Levine Querido. Molly McCloskey, who was born in Philadelphia and grew up in North Carolina and Oregon. She lived in Ireland for 25 years and now resides in Washington, D.C. She is the author of two short story collections, Solomon’s Seal and The Beautiful Changes, and a novel, Protection. Her first work of nonfiction, Circles Around the Sun: In Search of a Lost Brother, appeared in 2011. Her latest novel, Straying (2018), is published in the US by Scribner and by Penguin in the U.K. and Ireland, where it appeared as When Light is Like Water. Her work has appeared in the The New Yorker, the Irish Times, the Dublin Review, the Guardian, McSweeney’s, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Kelly Sather, whose debut story collection Small in Real Life was selected by Deesha Philyaw for the 2023 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. The book invokes the myth and melancholy of L.A. glamour, of starry-eyed women and men striving for their own Hollywood shimmer no matter the consequences. Sather's stories and interviews have appeared in publications including Santa Monica Review, Pembroke Magazine, J Journal, PANK, and on ZYZZYVA, and she has an MFA from Bennington. Ena Selimović, a Yugoslav-born writer and co-founder of Turkoslavia, a translation collective and journal. Her work has appeared in the Periodical of the Modern Language Association, Words Without Borders, Los Angeles Review of Books, World Literature Today, and the Paris Review, among others, and has received support from the American Literary Translators Association, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Washington University in St. Louis. Her translation of Underground Barbieby Maša Kolanović was published by Sandorf Passage in January.

Read the below passage in advance and come prepared to discuss the question: Are our fights always about an unspoken argument? "Typically, if you didn't think that someone was wrong about something, there would be nothing to be fighting over. If you strike or coerce someone in the absence of such a point of contention, you would not see yourself as fighting them, but instead just as using force on them to achieve a goal. When I fight you, I exercise force on you as though I were exercising force on some idea associated with you — I am not just using force on you, but I am using it agonistically, in the context of a contest that aims to "support" or "stand up for" some principle. The disagreement has been displaced from its original home, which was a disagreement over that principle. Instead of actually settling it by argument, we pretend to settle it by way of a zero-sum contest. In a fight, there is always a conflict of interest. A Socratic definition of fighting would be something like this: fighting is politicized arguing. Whether we politicize the argument by using physical force, or emotional force, or whether we fight more indirectly, by way of proxies — think of how, in an especially acrimonious divorce, the ex-spouses might use their children to get at each other — what unifies all the fighting that we do is that the fight represents an argument we are not having."

This month: We’re very excited to continue our wonderful discussions with all of you—May’s salon will be on the topic “Can lying be moral?” As always: We will start our discussion at 7. As always: If you would like to prepare an opening statement, please let Chris and Celeste know ahead of time. As always: We will procure pizza so that we are all well fed before the hard work of conversation begins in earnest. Like last time: Since May 31 will not be a school night, please come with a drink to share; if anyone offends you during the discussion, you can take it up with them in the Liberties office after we record. As always: Please take the painful weeks of waiting until we meet to meditate on the topic, prepare your thoughts, form judgments and find sources to enliven our discussion. We look forward to seeing you all soon.

This month: We’re very excited to continue our wonderful discussions with all of you—July's salon will be on the topic “Does God make us good?” As always: We will start our discussion at 7. As always: If you would like to prepare an opening statement, please let Chris and Celeste know ahead of time. As always: We will procure pizza so that we are all well fed before the hard work of conversation begins in earnest. Like last time: Since July 26 will not be a school night, please come with a drink to share; if anyone offends you during the discussion, you can take it up with them in Chris' home after we record. As always: Please take the painful weeks of waiting until we meet to meditate on the topic, prepare your thoughts, form judgments and find sources to enliven our discussion. We look forward to seeing you all soon.

This month: We’re very excited to continue our wonderful discussions with all of you—August’s salon will be on the topic “Is sweat virtuous” As always: We will start our discussion at 7. As always: If you would like to prepare an opening statement, please let Chris and Celeste know ahead of time. As always: We will procure pizza so that we are all well fed before the hard work of conversation begins in earnest. Like last time: Since August 8 will not be a school night, please come with a drink to share; if anyone offends you during the discussion, you can take it up with them in the Liberties office after we record. As always: Please take the painful weeks of waiting until we meet to meditate on the topic, prepare your thoughts, form judgments and find sources to enliven our discussion. We look forward to seeing you all soon.

The first installment of our new “Talking Liberties” virtual event series will be based on Ian Buruma's essay in the summer issue of the journal, “Staying Decent in an Indecent Society.” Read the essay ahead of time on the Liberties site by becoming a digital subscriber if you aren’t already, and come prepared to join the discussion!

The N.Y.C. Salon is a discussion hosted quarterly in New York City by Liberties Journal and the Washington Review of Books. This is part of an ongoing series organized in Washington, D.C. by Celeste Marcus and Chris McCaffery; popular demand has brought us north to Manhattan. In a few weeks, we very much hope you can join us for a wide-ranging discussion on our topic for April: “Is sweat virtuous?” Please join us in discussion; we would like to know what you think. We’ll be gathering at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, August 16th, graciously hosted by Ami Dar in the Idealist offices: We will procure pizza and provide a variety of beverages so that we are all well-fed before the hard work of conversation begins in earnest. After the discussion, we hope you can stick around and continue arguing and socializing as you see fit.