please welcome hanif abdurraqib! [cheers and applause] ♪ ♪ unbelievable!life," but you have written a book about basketball, poetry, meditation, music, lebron. was your intention to do ball is life right here, everything? >> yes, in some ways i think i failed, in other ways i succeeded. my hope was to write a book where anyone could see their own interest in it like bucking, to walk into a body of water and seeing what you most wanted reflected back to you so if you are in this book saying i want to find a basketball book, you will. if you are saying i want to find a place for or home, you will. if you want to see a complicated relationship with lineage, parentage, reflected back to, you will. >> michael: you know, you tell the story of seeing your dad shoot the basketball once. >> one time. >> michael: and this book reminded me of how much i love basketball and also how much i watched with my dad. and i wonder, it's not often described this way, is ask a ball family sport? >> it feels like it. at least -- i grew up in a house of knicks fans largely and i

oh, there's always this year by hanif abdurraqib that comes out later in the month. terrific writer from columbus, ohio, macarthur fellow recently has also been a national book critics circle finalist for his book called go out in the rain. go ahead in the rain by throw throughout a tribe called quest. it's been a finalist for the national book award and along with the national book award. i don't want to predict the future, but i feel like that might be another one of those. it's a really fantastic book about basketball. but that's like saying the odyssey is about ships. it's basketball. it reflects it of life class and racial divides into individual struggles, familial politics. all these books are really unique, structurally. this one counts down and segments the way a basketball game clock would. and then it features these elegiac timeout sections that resurrect famous ohioans both popular and forgotten. and then there's these really startling interludes that are critical appraisals of famous basketball films. so that was kind of a tour de force. i strongly recom

oh, there's always this year by hanif abdurraqib that comes out later in the month. terrific writer from columbus, ohio, macarthur fellow recently has also been a national book critics circle finalist for his book called go out in the rain. go ahead in the rain by throw throughout a tribe called quest. it's been a finalist for the national book award and along with the national book award. i don't want to predict the future, but i feel like that might be another one of those. it's a really fantastic book about basketball. but that's like saying the odyssey is about ships. it's basketball. it reflects it of life class and racial divides into individual struggles, familial politics. all these books are really unique, structurally. this one counts down and segments the way a basketball game clock would. and then it features these elegiac timeout sections that resurrect famous ohioans both popular and forgotten. and then there's these really startling interludes that are critical appraisals of famous basketball films. so that was kind of a tour de force. i strongly recom

poet, essayist and cultural critic hanif abdurraqib is here for our keynote conversation tonight.w must-read book called "there is always this year on a basketball and ascension." i'm so honored you are here. this book is about basketball. it's about ohio's most famous basketball player, lebron james, but it is not a sports book. >> i think so. it's also a book about the passage of time. it's also a book about what it is to love a place and what it a place. e it or make it out of it is trying to juggle a lot of different themes about life, lensed through basketball, which helped me make sense of the bigger questions. >> you talk about what it means to make it, and more importantly, who deserves to make it. can you explain that? >> sure. i like to think of it probably not just to to makes it in the sense of who deserves to make it to the nba or deserves to make it to some larger platform, but who deserves a life that is sustainable? who deserves a life they can survive well in? i am someone who is lived many different lives to get to in this life i have right now and i did not beli