Please join WTTW and PBS Books in collaboration with The Library of Congress on Wednesday, August 17 at 7:00 pm via Facebook Live for a conversation with Kate Clifford Larson about her book Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer, the community organizer and civil rights leader. Tim Russell, WTTW-WFMT’s VP of Community Engagement and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and Heather-Marie Montilla, National Director of PBS Books, will moderate the conversation.

Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer is the most complete biography ever written about this civil rights icon, drawing on recently declassified sources on both Hamer and the civil rights movement, including unredacted FBI and Department of Justice files. The book also makes full use of interviews with civil rights activists conducted by the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress and Democratic National Committee archives, in addition to extensive conversations with Hamer's family and those with whom she worked most closely. Stirring, immersive, and authoritative, Walk with Me does justice to Fannie Lou Hamer's life, capturing in full the spirit, and the voice, that led the fight for freedom and equality in America at its critical moment.

Dr. Kate Clifford Larson is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author of four critically acclaimed biographies: Walk With Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer; Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero; Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter; and The Assassin's Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln. After earning BA and MA degrees from Simmons University and an MBA from Northeastern University, Larson earned a doctorate in American History at the University of New Hampshire, specializing in 19th and 20th century U.S. Women's and African American history. An award-winning consultant, Larson has worked on feature film scripts, documentaries, museum exhibits, curriculum guides, and public history and tourism initiatives, and she appears frequently on local, national, and international media outlets. Dr. Larson is also a Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center Visiting Scholar.

This conversation is part of the Books Bring Us Together: The Library of Congress National Book Festival on Saturday, September 3 from 9:00 am-8:00 pm at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. Doors will open at 8:30 am. The festival is free and open to everyone. Interested attendees not able to attend the festival in person can tune into sessions throughout the day. Events on several of the stages will be livestreamed on loc.gov/bookfest. Videos of all presentations will be made available on demand shortly after the festival.