Trinity Talks
Throughout the year, Trinity Church hosts events at the intersection of sacred and civic life. Trinity Talks educate, inform, and inspire – providing in-person opportunities to engage with writers, artists, and thinkers who deepen our understanding on issues of faith, social justice, and community.
Coming Up
A Conversation with Edwidge Danticat
The novelist reflects on her Haitian family’s immigrant story.
October 22, 6:30-8pm, Trinity Commons
Award-winning novelist Edwidge Danticat will discuss Brother, I'm Dying, a poignant memoir about her family’s decision to flee escalating violence in Haiti and seek asylum in America. Drawing on her family’s collective memory, her own experiences, and government documentation, Danticat highlights the potentially deadly consequences of U.S. immigration policy, while demonstrating how a family’s bonds of love can survive distance, loss, and tragedy.
Brother, I’m Dying is a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and National Book Award finalist. Edwidge Danticat has written numerous other books, including Claire of the Sea Light, a New York Times Notable Book, and The Dew Breaker, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist. Her most recent, We’re Alone, is a collection of essays that explore environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and resilience. The recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” grant, Danticat has written articles for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, and other publications.
A Conversation with Amanda Ripley
The conflict mediator and journalist offers insight on breaking the spell of high conflict.
October 27, 1-3pm, Trinity Commons
Journalist Amanda Ripley’s book, High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out, introduces a mind-opening way of thinking about conflict that will transform how we move through the world. Drawing from her experiences as a reporter and trained conflict mediator, Ripley will shed light on how Americans can break out of destructive feuds and find common ground.
Amanda Ripley is a New York Times bestselling author, Washington Post contributing columnist, and co-founder of Good Conflict, a media and training company that helps people reimagine conflict. She has written for Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, Politico, The Guardian and The Times of London. Ripley has spoken at the Pentagon, the U.S. Senate, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as dozens of conferences on leadership, communicating in conflict, disaster behavior and education.
Christian Wiman | The Practice of Christian Hope
February 9, Trinity Commons
Poet and Yale Divinity School professor Christian Wiman will discuss faith as a practice of Christian hope, touching on themes in his recent book, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair. For Wiman, the antidote to despair is awe.
James McBride | Race, Religion and the Ties That Bind
March 30, Trinity Commons
Award-winning author James McBride will share reflections on themes explored in The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, his bestselling novel about how love and community sustain us.
Past Events
A Conversation with Pico Iyer | Finding Peace in Troubled Times
Acclaimed author, journalist, and travel writer Pico Iyer opened the 2024-25 season of Trinity Talks on September 22 with a discussion of his recent bestseller, The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise. Drawing on a lifetime of global explorations, Iyer examined competing ideas of paradise to see how we might find peace in an ever more divided and distracted world.
Pico Iyer is the author of 15 books and a regular essayist for Time, The New York Times, Harper’s, National Geographic, Conde Nast Traveler , and more than 250 other periodicals worldwide.
A Conversation with Author Frank Bruni
In his powerful book, The Age of Grievance, best-selling author and New York Times columnist Frank Bruni examines how grievance has defined and shaped America — from the fierce debates of our Founding Fathers to today’s perilous climate of metastasizing anger. But while our politics and culture may seem irretrievably broken, Bruni says there are cures for what ails us.
Hear a compelling discussion between Bruni and the Rev. Phillip A. Jackson about how the U.S. became a divided land, and what it will take to break the hold of our grudges.
A Conversation with Author Marilynne Robinson
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson discussed her book, Reading Genesis, “a powerful consideration of the profound meanings [of scripture] and promise of God’s enduring covenant with humanity.”
Robinson’s novels are noted for their thematic depiction of both rural life and faith. Her essays have spanned numerous topics, including the relationship between religion and science, US history, nuclear pollution, John Calvin, and contemporary American politics.
A Conversation with Author Richard Powers
Bestselling author Richard Powers discusses his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Overstory, and explores our relationship with nature, our understanding of time, and the defiant act of hope in the face of the climate crisis.
Powers is the author of thirteen novels, including The Overstory and Orfeo, and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award.
Plan Your Week at Trinity
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