Events

ALA Annual Conference & Exhibition

Event Start Date: Wednesday, June 23, 2021 - 12:00 am

Event End Date: Tuesday, June 29, 2021 - 11:59 pm

Location: Virtual


The American Library Association (ALA) announced on June 2 that former President Barack Obama will be the Closing Session speaker at ALA’s Annual Conference and Exhibition Virtual on Tuesday, June 29, from noon–1 p.m. Central. The full statement follows.

Former President of the United States Barack Obama will close ALA’s 2021 Annual Conference and Exhibition Virtual Closing Session. He will appear noon–1 p.m. Central on Tuesday, June 29, in conversation with Lonnie G. Bunch III, the 14th secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and first African American appointed to the role. They will be introduced by ALA President Julius C. Jefferson Jr.

Obama will discuss A Promised Land, the stirring first volume of his presidential memoirs that was released in November 2020 by Crown, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House. In it, Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from a young man searching for his identity to the leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

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