Ada Calhoun and Kwame Alexander: Chautauqua Institution Lecture Series

Ada Calhoun’s career, the Village Voice noted in 2015, “can seem as though it were cobbled together from the resumés of three ambitious journalists.” Calhoun is a reporter, essayist, memoirist, ghostwriter and — as of this year — novelist; now, she will make her Chautauqua Lecture Series debut in conversation with Kwame Alexander, discussing the passions and opportunities that have shaped her life.

Ada Cal­houn is the author of, most recently, Crush — her debut novel released in 2025. Other works include Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me, which was longlist­ed for an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Non­fic­tion; Why We Can’t Sleep: Wom­en’s New Midlife Cri­sis; St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of Amer­i­ca’s Hippest Street; and the mem­oir Wed­ding Toasts I’ll Nev­er Give.

Throughout her career, Calhoun has been a crime reporter for the New York Post, fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to The New York Times Book Review, and the­ater list­ings edi­tor for New York mag­a­zine. She is an A‑list ghost­writer, hav­ing anony­mous­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed on 30 major non­fic­tion books in the past dozen years, includ­ing sev­er­al No. 1 New York Times bestsellers. She has writ­ten for Time, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Trav­el­er, the Times Lit­er­ary Sup­ple­ment, the New Repub­lic, Bill­board, Cos­mopoli­tan, The Wash­ing­ton Post and Red­book.

Calhoun’s nation­al news report­ing has won sev­er­al awards, includ­ing a USC-Annen­berg Nation­al Health Jour­nal­ism Fel­low­ship, a Kiplinger fel­low­ship, a CCF Media Award (for her New York Times Mag­a­zine work on a legal chal­lenge in Alaba­ma), a Croly Award, and an Ali­cia Pat­ter­son Foun­da­tion fel­low­ship. She received a Mac­Dow­ell colony stay in 2013 for St. Marks Is Dead and has been grant­ed sev­er­al res­i­den­cies in the New York Pub­lic Library’s schol­ars’ rooms, includ­ing in 2023–24. In 2023 she was a fel­low at the Hawthorn­den Cas­tle in Scotland.

Kwame Alexander is a poet, educator, producer and No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of 40 books, including Why Fathers Cry at Night, An American Story, The Door of No Return, Becoming Muhammad Ali (co-authored with James Patterson), Rebound, which was shortlisted for the prestigious UK Carnegie Medal, and The Undefeated — the National Book Award nominee, Newbery Honor, and Caldecott Medal-winning picture book illustrated by Kadir Nelson.

The Michael I. Rudell Artistic Director of Literary Arts and Inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Chautauqua Institution, Alexander is the recipient of numerous awards, including The Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, The Coretta Scott King Author Honor, three NAACP Image Award nominations and the 2017 Inaugural Pat Conroy Legacy Award. In 2018, he opened the Barbara E. Alexander Memorial Library and Health Clinic in Ghana, as a part of LEAP for Ghana, an international literacy program he co-founded. Alexander is executive producer, showrunner, and Emmy-winning writer of “The Crossover” TV series, which premiered on Disney+ in April 2023. “The Crossover” was produced in partnership with LeBron James’ SpringHill Company and Big Sea Entertainment, Alexander’s production company where he serves as CEO and co-founder, dedicated to creating innovative, highly original children’s and family entertainment.

His mission is to change the world, one word at a time.

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