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Encore: Richard Powers

Sunday, January 1, 2023
1:00pm Pacific Time
KQED Broadcast: 01/01/2023

We've made a recording of this event free to all. Please support our institution and these productions by making a tax-deductible contribution.

This program was recorded live at the Sydney Goldstein Theater on April 25, 2022, and originally aired on KQED on May 22, 2022.


Richard Powers is the author of thirteen novels, including the 2019 novel The Overstory, which won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. The book is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of the natural world. His new novel, Bewilderment, brings Powers’ astute and compassionate eye for nature to the cosmos. His most intimate book yet, it is the account of a father and son’s ferocious love, and contains soaring descriptions of the natural world and its tantalizing vision of life beyond. Powers is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award.

Indre Viskontas is a cognitive neuroscientist with the University of San Francisco and a faculty member at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She has published groundbreaking work on the neural basis of memory and creativity, and co-hosts the popular science podcast Inquiring Minds. Her past City Arts & Lectures interviews include Atul Gawande and Temple Grandin.

Photo Credit: Dean D. Dixon