Longlist for the 2026 National Book Award for Nonfiction The ten contenders for the National Book Award for Nonfiction Find the New Yorker announcement here. The National Book Foundation today announced the Longlist for the 2026 National Book Award for Nonfiction with The New Yorker. The Finalists in all five categories will be revealed on Tuesday, October 6 with the New York Times; Winners will be announced live at the 77th National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner on Wednesday, November 18, 2026. For more information and to register to watch the livestream, please visit nationalbook.org/awards. The 2026 Nonfiction Longlist includes emerging and established writers, and features works of criticism, reportage, memoir, science writing, and more. Nine of the authors on the 2026 Nonfiction Longlist are first-time National Book Award honorees, and one has been previously honored: Camonghne Felix, a Longlister for the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry for her collection Build Yourself a Boat. This year’s Longlist includes Fellows from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Mass MoCA, the McKnight Foundation, New America, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, among others. The Longlisted authors have been previously honored by the American Library Association’s [...]

Nora Dunn to headline Victory Gardens return Buy tickets: https://victorygardens.org/new-events/ Nora Dunn performs during “The Paper Machete” at the Horseshoe Tavern in Chicago on March 10, 2012. She stars in an upcoming show by Victory Gardens. (William DeShazer/Chicago Tribune) By Chris Jones | cjones5@chicagotribune.com | Chicago Tribune PUBLISHED: August 4, 2026 at 1:00 PM CDT Victory Gardens Theater will return to producing shows at the Biograph Theatre in September with the world premiere of “The Humanities,” a new play by playwright, screenwriter and Northwestern University professor Zayd Ayers Dohrn. Eddie Torres will direct an all-Chicago cast that includes former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Nora Dunn, as well as Al’Jaleel McGhee, Steve Pickering, Isa Arciniegas, Daniil Krimer, DeVaughn Asante Loman, Piper Murphy, William Anthony Sebastian Rose II and Sabine Wan. The storied Chicago company, which owns the historic Biograph at 2433 N. Lincoln Ave., has mostly been dark since the pandemic, following a dispute with a former artistic director and some of its affiliated artists. But it held a fundraiser this spring and intends to return to regular production. (Porchlight Music Theatre also will be producing at the Biograph this coming season.) Dohrn, the son of the radicals Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, also penned the book for “Revolution(s),” a [...]

My Childhood in the Weather Underground My parents founded the radical revolutionary group, then became fugitives. I was born in hiding, and spent my early years on the run. By Zayd Ayers Dohrn March 28, 2026 https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/my-childhood-in-the-weather-underground

The son of Weather Underground radicals tells the story of a childhood on the run and a half-century of revolutionary struggle in America. From the Norton website: Zayd Ayers Dohrn was born underground. His parents were fugitives after a decade fighting the US government; his mother was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. All his life, Dohrn’s parents said his birth marked a clean break with violent revolutionary struggle, but in this explosive memoir, he discovers that story wasn’t entirely true.This masterpiece of personal and social history brings us inside an infamous family and their lives underground. Drawing on exclusive interviews, declassified FBI files, and long-hidden letters, photos, and diaries, Dohrn tells a new story of radical resistance, including revelations about the Weathermen’s bombing campaign, their secret alliance with the Black Liberation Army, and the dramatic prison break of Assata Shakur. Reckoning with the emotional damage the Weathermen inflicted on their victims, their children, and themselves, Dohrn’s unflinching memoir explores the roots of radicalism and asks how a young person survives when the place they feel safest—with their family—also puts them in danger. Advance praise: Riveting as a thriller, this wise and searching memoir . . . tells [...]

October 4 - November 9, 2025 in Goodman's Owen Theatre Revolution(s) Put your hands on the wheel of history. When soldier and aspiring musician Hampton Weems comes home from Afghanistan, he finds the South Side of Chicago is also occupied territory—and he’s accidentally joined the resistance. Rock and Roll Hall of Famer (Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave and The Nightwatchman) Tom Morello brings a ground-breaking new punk/metal/hip-hop musical to our intimate Owen Theatre about a young artist finding his voice, why violence is as American as cherry pie, and how young radicals—across generations—are still motivated by love. Tickets on sale: https://www.goodmantheatre.org/show/revolutions-2/

https://dupont.org/ This podcast series tells the dramatic story of the 'The Weathermen,' a violent, radical movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s, as told by the aging militants to the podcast producer, Zayd Ayers Dohrn, who himself is the son of the groups’ leaders. CREDITS Host/Writer: Zayd Ayers Dohrn Head of Development: Sarah Geismer Executive Producers: Zayd Ayers Dohrn, Misha Euceph, Sarah Geismer, Jon Favreau, Lyra Smith, Alison Falzetta Senior Producer: Ariana Lee Producer: Stephanie Cohn Executive Editor: Arwen Nicks Historical Consultant: Thai Jones Development and Operations Coordinator: Rachael Garcia Production: Tamika Adams Senior Engineer: Valentino Rivera Composer: Andy Clausen Head of Audio Content: Tim Clarke Head of Platform Marketing: Lindsay Grant Podcast Marketing Lead: Brian Swarth

REVOLUTION(S) BY ZAYD AYERS DOHRN MUSIC AND LYRICS BY TOM MORELLO DIRECTED BY STEVE H. BROADNAX III Soldier and aspiring musician Hampton Weems comes home from Afghanistan to find the South Side of Chicago is also occupied territory – and he’s accidentally joined the resistance. Featuring songs by Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine, Nightwatchman, Street Sweeper Social Club), Revolution(s) is a punk/metal/hip-hop musical about a young artist finding his voice, why violence is as American as cherry pie, and how young radicals, across generations, are still motivated by love. Revolution(s) is a Goodman Theatre commission. https://www.goodmantheatre.org/show/revolutions/

Writers are facing the most comprehensive assault on compensation and working conditions that they have seen in a generation. The studios have taken advantage of the transition to streaming to underpay entertainment industry workers, including writers in every area of work. Like too many working people across our economy, as corporate profits grow, writers are just not keeping up. Read more about the strike here.

As the nation tuned in to the January 6 hearings, my favorite podcast of the year, Mother Country Radicals, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Mother Country Radicals is hosted by Zayd Ayers Dohrn, a playwright and the son of Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers—leaders of the Weather Underground. Over the summer, Zayd told Chicago magazine that one of the reasons he decided to tell the story now “was that it was the Trump administration when [he] started, and [he] was thinking a lot about how young activists tried to resist out-of-control law-and-order authoritarian governments.” This podcast has all the ingredients: a narrator with personal stakes recounting his own childhood on the run from the FBI; unprecedented accounts inside notorious jailbreaks; youth culture against the backdrop of a country in tumult, not too dissimilar from our own.     In the early 1970s, Bernardine Dohrn was on the FBI’s 10-most-wanted list because of her actions as part of the Weather Underground, a radical group that used violent measures to protest the Vietnam War and the country’s treatment of Black people, among other social issues. She and the other “Weathermen,” as they called themselves, believed that as white people, it was their job to stop these injustices, even if it meant resorting to illegal, dangerous [...]