with Kat Calvin and David Corn

Saturday, October 14, 2023
Fine Arts Stage, 1:00-1:45pm

In this event, two authors take on some of our nation’s biggest issues—voting rights, poverty, homelessness, racism, marginalization, and troubling political trajectories—and each of their new books considers how things came to be this way and how we might move toward defending dignity for everyone. In American Identity in Crisis: Notes from an Accidental Activist, Kat Calvin offers a passionate and incisive look at why she started a movement to ensure that 26 million Americans have access to the IDs they need to escape poverty and live healthy and productive lives. In American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, veteran Washington, DC journalist and political commentator David Corn tells the harrowing story of the GOP’s decades-long relationship with far-right extremism, bigotry, and paranoia.​ For anyone interested in current events, social justice, or American civic life, this panel is not to be missed.

Kat Calvin is the founder and executive director of Spread The Vote + Project ID and the cofounder and CEO of the Project ID Action Fund. A lawyer, activist, and social entrepreneur, she has built a national organization that helps Americans obtain the IDs they need for jobs, housing, life—and in some states, the voting booth. Kat and her work have been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Essence, Glamour, and Marie Claire, and on NPR, PBS, BET, and many other outlets. She has been a guest commentator on MSNBC, CNN, Headline News, Sirius XM, and more, as well as a frequent keynote speaker and a sought-after voice for her expertise and opinions on politics, voting, ID-related issues, and more.

David Corn is a veteran Washington journalist and political commentator. Also the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine and an analyst for MSNBC, he is the author or co-author of four New York Times bestsellers, including the #1 bestseller Russian Roulette, Showdown, and Hubris, and the author of the novel Deep Background.