Getting by is never easy, especially when the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against you. Join Publishers Weekly’s “Writer to Watch” Dantiel Moniz, whose Florida-based story collection Milk Blood Heat explores lives interrupted by violence; award-winning novelist Francisco Goldman, who illuminates the profound challenges of living between worlds in his new novel Monkey Boy; and New York Times bestselling author Morgan Jerkins, whose novel Caul Baby depicts women who don’t give up the fight. These three authors explore what it means to survive and the pursuit of perseverance in their novels. Moderated by Natalie Green, National Book Foundation.

Each season BKBF presents debut authors, who we want to shine the light on for our audience. This year we introduce novelists Elizabeth Gonzalez James (Mona at Sea), Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu (The Theory of Flight), and Colleen Van Niekerk (A Conspiracy of Mothers). Acclaimed author, Jonathan Lethem, will introduce the debut authors and talk about his own debut experience some 40 books ago.

A dystopian London, a child caught in the midst of a deadly epidemic, and a grieving taxi driver in a ghostly Washington, D.C. Join the authors of A River Called Time (Courttia Newland), Phase Six (Jim Shepard), and Creatures of Passage (Morowa Yejidé) for a conversation on what draws them to speculative fiction, from world-building to the mechanics that make a story tick. Moderated by Carolyn Kellogg.

Join award-winning mystery authors Naomi Hirahara and Walter Mosley for a discussion about their prolific and versatile writing livest. Hirahara’s latest mystery, Clark and Division, revolves around a Japanese American family building a new life in 1940s Chicago after their release from mass incarceration during World War II. Mosley’s indefatigable detective, Easy Rawlins, returns in Blood Grove, solving a new mystery on the streets of Southern California in 1969. Moderated by Dwyer Murphy, editor in chief of CrimeReads.

Join two of today’s most celebrated writers, Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen and National Book Award finalist Lauren Groff, for a wide-ranging  conversation about their craft. Nguyen’s latest novel, The Committed, follows “the man of two minds” as he takes refuge in 1980s Paris, only to find himself immersed in the city’s criminal underworld. In Groff’s Matrix, a young woman in early medieval Europe is sent to oversee an impoverished order of nuns, finding an unexpected sense of purpose in the sisterhood. Exploring eternal questions of power, morality, friendship, and faith, these surprising and often subversive works reveal writers at the peak of their talents. Moderated by Leigh Haber, books director for Oprah Daily and O Quarterly.

What forces—both internal and external—cause a mind to dangerously fray and unravel? For the groundbreaking scientists in Chilean author Benjamin Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World, knowledge comes at a high cost. In Brazilian writer Beatriz Bracher’s Antonio, meanwhile, social constraints and family secrets combine to doom an idealistic, wayward son to madness; and in Catalan poet Eva Baltasar’s debut novel, Permafrost, a fiercely independent woman’s search for personal freedom nearly drives her over the edge. Moderated by author and translator Adrian Nathan West.

Authors Vanessa Riley (Island Queen), Piper Huguley (Sweet Tea), and Marcella Bell (The Wildest Ride) discuss the sustained importance of the contemporary and historical romance novel in their books set in the 1800s Caribbean, the American South and Texas. In Island Queen, a freed slave rises to entrepreneurial heights and power, while juggling the competing attentions of men in her life.  A high-powered attorney returns to her southern small town and meets and meets an unexpected love interest in Sweet Tea.  And in The Wildest Ride , an undefeated rodeo champ is challenged by a worthy opponent, but their relationship might end up being an even wilder ride than the rodeo itself. Moderated by Sarah MacLean (Bombshell).

A family wrestles with the decision of whether or not to have a child in Peter Ho Davies’s A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself. In Brandon Hobson’s The Removed, a fractured family mourns the killing of their teenage son as their annual family bonfire approaches. Two mothers reckon with their marriage and their relationship with their troubled son in With Teeth by Kristen Arnett. These authors discuss how threads of joy, tragedy, and family conflict are woven into their latest novels. Moderated by Kendall Storey, senior editor at Catapult and Soft Skull Press.

The long arm of history reverberates through the fiction of three international stars—from internationally acclaimed Icelandic novelist, Sjón, who imagines how a young man turns to Nazi-inspired fascism in the 60s in his forthcoming novel, Red Milk; to Sheng Keyi, whose parable of Tienanmen Square’s official erasure, Death Fugue, is, ironically, banned in China; to Havana’s crime master, Leonardo Padura, whose new novel, The Transparency of Time, travels through time to solve the mystery of a missing Black Madonna statue. Moderated by Eric Banks, Director of the New York Institute for the Humanities.

Three writers whose acute sense of place is often sharpened by reflections about home—whether one they’ve left, one they’ve found (sometimes on the way to somewhere else), or ones their writing has brought to life for themselves. A conversation with Rachel Kushner (The Hard Crowd), Jerald Walker (How to Make a Slave and Other Essays), and Aminatta Forna (The Window Seat). Moderated by Merve Emre, Professor of English at the University of Oxford, critic, and editor of The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway.

Contemporary Latin American authors frequently explore the tension between horror and humanity, unearthing personal and historical trauma while examining the dark side of our interconnected world. From those intimately affected by violence in Colombian Juan Gabriel Vásquez‘s Songs for the Flames to the sociopolitical horror of Argentine Mariana Enríquez‘s The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, these two leading authors of their generation illuminate the daily realities of the macabre. Moderated by Idra Novey.

Scientists and science writers discuss what it means to be alive in a world where life can be created, is under threat, and is still being discovered. Neil Shubin (Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA), Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred) and Carl Zimmer (Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive) on the science, philosophy, and practice of drawing the line between life and everything else. An apple tree is alive—is an apple? Do extinct animals forecast the future of the Anthropocene? In an era when the definitions of life are being reconsidered, it is critically important that science education become more inclusive for all to be part of that discussion. Moderated by Bina Venkataraman, The Optimist’s Telescope.

In three astonishing new novels, the past hovers over the present like a ghost. In Italian writer Andrea Bajani’s If You Kept a Record of Sins, a mother’s abandonment lingers on in the memory of her grown son. Meanwhile, the protagonist of Sri Lankan author Anuk Arudpragasam’s A Passage North, contends with the echoes of the country’s thirty-year civil war. And in Haitian writer Myriam J.A. Chancy’s What Storm, What Thunder, the island’s devastating 2010 earthquake is recalled with an eerie relevance.