The Walla Walla Public Library’s Big Idea Talks features authors, poets, innovators, scholars, and artists who share their expertise, experiences, and passion to generate community conversation.

View Big Idea Talks: Online recordings (Click an image or link to play/connect)

Wednesday, May 29, 2024 from 6:30-8:30 pm, Pulitzer Prize-winning artist, writer, and adventurer Tessa Hulls shared her 2025 Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic autobiography Feeding Ghosts, an illustrated memoir of intergenerational and immigrant trauma. This program was sponsored by the Walla Walla Public Library in partnership with The Listeners Project: Queremos Escucharte.  

Hulls’ essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, and Adventure Journal, and her comics have been published in The Rumpus, City Arts, and Spark. She has received grants from the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, 4Culture, and the McMillen Foundation, and she is a recipient of the Washington Artist Trust Arts Innovator Award. Feeding Ghosts is her first book. 

Anyla Dior McDonald read from her first collection, Black Joy & Black Tribulations, Thursday February 1, 2024 6:30-8:00 pm at the Walla Walla Public Library. This collection of poems, short stories, and essays was inspired by McDonald's personal experiences of living in Walla Walla, a predominately white town. Her writing has been published in TumbleWeird and Black Lens News. Her interview with The Listeners Project: Queremos Escucharte is available at https://arminda.whitman.edu/islandora/anyla-dior-mcdonald-interview-tia-kramer-and-jara-moreno-arostegui-0 .

Click here to visit the Blue Zones Project Walla Walla Valley events page (all events are free & open to the public.)

• Big Idea Talks: Powerful Stories: The Search for Healing and Empathy in our Community (Zoom chat transcript)

Listen to recorded Big Idea Talks

• Big Idea Talks: Powerful Stories: The Search for Healing and Empathy in our Community (English)
• Big Idea Talks: Historias Poderosas: La Búsqueda de Sanación y Empatía en Nuestra Comunidad (Español)

• Human Rights Through the Lens of Literature - Week 1
• Human Rights Through the Lens of Literature - Week 2
• Human Rights Through the Lens of Literature - Week 3
• Human Rights Through the Lens of Literature - Week 4
• The Value of Bilingual Education
• Climate Change 102: What We Can Do
• Everything She Didn't Say / Jane Kirkpatrick
• Great American Read: The Fellowship of the Ring
• Big Idea Talks: The Writing Life
• Big Idea Talks: Pride and Prejudice
• Big Idea Talks: Charlotte's Web
• Tessa Hulls: She Traveled Solo: Strong Women in the Early 20th Century
•  Wonders Of Weird with Kelly Milner Halls 
• Craig Johnson: author of the Longmire series. Foundry Vineyards
• Big Idea Talks: Past, Present, Future of Public Broadcasting with Kerry Swanson
• Wildfire Fire Readiness in SE Washington: Be Prepared!
• Red Badge Veteran's Stories with Warren Etheredge
•  Big Idea Talks: Johanna Stoberock
• Big Idea Talks: Winter Reads novel Turtles All the Way Down with Nikki Sharp
• Big Idea Talks: Aaron Bobrow-Strain The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez
• Big Idea Talks: DACA 

Handouts for Human Rights Through the Lens of Literature -  Big Idea Talk

• Week One Reading List edited
• wk 1 - Ferlinghetti Constantly risking absurdity of Mind
• wk 1 - Moore, Marianne Poetry
• Wk 1 - Barzilay, Vered Cohen The Tremendous Power of Literature
• wk 1 - Heaney, Seamus Poetry's Power Against Intolerance
• wk 1 - Levinas, Emmanuel The Name of a Dog
• wk 2 - Week Two Readings
• wk 2 - Dylan, Bob John Brown
• wk 2 - Levinas, Emmanuel Responsibility for the Other
• wk 2 - Levinas, Emmanuel Ethics and Spirit
• wk 2 - Whitman, Walt Vigil strange I kept on the field one night
• wk 3 THIRD GATHERING
• wk 3 Pagis, Dan Draft of a Reparations Agreement and Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway Car
• wk 3 Ozick, Cynthia The Shawl
• wk 3 Levi, Primo This side of good and evil
• wk 3 Levi, Primo On the Bottom, This Side of Good and Evil, October 1944
• wk 3 Forche, Carolyn The Colonel
• wk 3 Corso, The bomb
• wk 3 Delbo, Charlotte Thirst
• wk 4 FOURTH GATHERING
• wk 4 Whitman, Walt Reconciliation
• wk 4 - Cisneros, Sandra Woman Hollering Creek
• wk 4 - Ball, Olivia No-Nonsense Guide to Human Rights
• wk 4 Slaughter, Joseph Codicil Intimations of a Human Rights International
• wk 4 Delbo, Charlotte Prayer to the Living to Forgive them for Being Alive
• wk 4 Kristof, Nicholas Save the Darfur Puppy