Steve Wasserman celebrates his new book of essays published by Heyday, Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It’s a Lie, in conversation with Marie Arana at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, DC.

In-person event. 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC. Free and open to the public.

Steve Wasserman is publisher of Heyday. A 1974 graduate of UC Berkeley, he holds a degree in criminology. His past positions include being deputy editor of the op-ed page and opinion section of the Los Angeles Times; editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review; editorial director of New Republic Books; publisher and editorial director of Hill and Wang at Farrar, Straus & Giroux and of the Noonday Press; editorial director of Times Books at Random House; and editor at large for Yale University Press. A former partner of the literacy agency Kneerim & Williams, he represented many authors, including Christopher Hitchens, Linda Ronstadt, Robert Scheer, and David Thomson. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Marie Arana is a prizewinning author, literary critic, and the inaugural Literary Director of the Library of Congress. Among her numerous books are the memoir and National Book Award Finalist for nonfiction American Chica, the highly praised novels Cellophane and Lima Night, her biography Bolívar: American Liberator, and a sweeping history of Latin America Silver, Sword, and Stone.  Her most recent book Latinoland, a portrait of the largest and least understood minority in America, was published in 2024. Winner of the American Academy of Arts & Letters Award for Literature in 2020, Marie has been an executive at two publishing houses, a judge for the National Book Awards and Pulitzer Prizes, a Latin America columnist for the New York Times, a media commentator for numerous news outlets, and editor in chief of Book World at the Washington Post. Apart from her service on the board of the Amazon Conservation Association, she sits on the boards of PEN/Faulkner, PEN America, the American Writers Museum, and the Board of Governors of Northwestern University. She is president of the Authors Guild Foundation as well as president of the 150-year-old Literary Society of Washington.