Backtalker: an American Memoir

All PEN World Voices Festival tickets are non-refundable. Please confirm the time and location of your event before finalizing your purchase.

The PEN World Voices Festival & Reparations Club are thrilled to host a special pre-publication launch of Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw’s new memoir Backtalker: An American Childhood.

is the powerful and intimate story of how a little girl from Canton, Ohio, came up with a new way to look at the world. Crenshaw’s memoir traces the way her lived experience made her see things others didn’t as the daughter of a strong-minded teacher and a pathbreaking public servant, and as the sister of a protective, yet bullying older brother. She starts to talk back, and that backtalking has continued throughout her life. It happens when she is denied a role in the kindergarten school play. When she is escorted to the back door of a private club. When Anita Hill is exiled for testifying against Clarence Thomas. When OJ Simpson goes on trial. When Obama launches My Brother’s Keeper, a movement focused on boys of color only. When the movement against police violence overlooks Black women. Crenshaw is there for all of it.

Backtalker will be for sale at the event. Can't make it? Pre-order a copy here!

The 2026 PEN World Voices Festival is a celebration of world literature and free expression. The 2026 edition will be the 21st World Voices Festival. Over four days, more than140 writers from over 40 countries will be featured in 40+ engaging talks, panels, readings, and activations in New York City and greater Los Angeles.

Visit for more information about the entire festival, as well as PEN America.

CAAM is an accessible venue.

Please ask a Box Office Attendant or festival representative upon arrival for directions to accessible seating if preferred.

For further information on accessibility in this space, or to make a request, please contact [email protected]

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