The Letters of Oliver Sacks: A Reading and Conversation
Please join us to celebrate the publication of Letters, the new collection of Oliver Sacks’s correspondence! November 7, 2024, at 8 pm at 92Y in NYC (and online), with Zachary Quinto, Kay Redfield Jamison, Maria Popova, Wendy Lesser, Bill Hayes, Ira Flatow, Michael Grassi, and Kate Edgar.
Pioneering neurologist and bestselling author Oliver Sacks — a self-described “philosophical physician” and “neuropathological Talmudist” — was one of the great observers of the human mind in the modern era.
His writing captures the drama of medicine and science with the psychological precision and grace of a great literary stylist. And his writing was never more intimate and surprising than in his letters, now collected for the first time ever.
In celebration of their publication, hear a one-of-a-kind reading from these letters with acclaimed actor Zachary Quinto — who plays a neurologist inspired by Sacks in the new series Brilliant Minds — followed by a candid conversation with award-winning writers Kay Redfield Jamison, Maria Popova, Wendy Lesser, journalist Ira Flatow, Brilliant Minds showrunner Michael Grassi, and Sacks’ partner, Bill Hayes.
In correspondence with the likes of W.H. Auden, Bjork, Harold Pinter, David Remnick, Susan Sontag, Robin Williams, and dozens of other friends and fellow scientists, Sacks wrestles with the workings of the brain and mind — through his eyes, we see the beginnings of modern neuroscience, following the thought processes of one of the great intellectuals of our time. Don’t miss Quinto, Popova, Lesser, Flatow, Jamison, Hayes, and Grassi as they bring these letters to life.
