a weekend-long literary celebration, a combination of lectures, readings, panel discussions, --versations, and it began the first years looking at the work of ernest deming way and it grew -- ernest hemingway and it grew. there was a seminar devoted to tennessee williams and a collection of writers. they look to people like james -- james merrill. since that time, over the 30 plus years, the seminar has stuck to that same four-day format. it is an investigation of a particular literary theme. anyway you can divide contemporary american literature, we have had seminars devoted by biography an autobiography, seminars devoted to poetry as well as in a particular sense the poetry of elizabeth bishop. we have looked at the popular crime fiction genre. we did a seminar called the dark side. a lot of really wonderful big-name crime writers. we delve into nonfiction through a variety of topics. one of the things we like to do is explore how nonfiction writing and fiction talk to one another and how a biographer or historian can learn something from an all of us -- from a novelist. >> the idea tha

please feel free to join the ve,versation at atlantic_li and we have built in time for q&a throughout the day, and my colleagues will be circulating in the hall with microphones. i want to thank the underwriters that made this possible. we are very grateful for the rockefeller foundation and the kellogg foundation and jones walker and also our collaborators at the urban institute. would like to remind you to please silence your cell phones, because if it rings while the next speaker is on stage, that would be a grave sin indeed. she is a very great journalist gwen eiffel of the pbs news hour, and she will introduce her -- gwen ifill of the pbs "newshour," and she will introduce her panelists. ♪ gwen: thank you, everybody, and we hope you are well caffeinated, because we are for this for an conversation to start our day about change and about survival and about knowledge, what it takes to know new orleans. it is going to start our entire conversation for the rest of the day, and i want you to know that we are going to come out. i am going to come out and hang out with you as we get que