Pasadena Public Library Hosts Author Talk With Shoshana Walter and Barbara Kingsolver

Two writers whose work has shaped public conversation — one through relentless investigative reporting, the other through the moral weight of literary fiction — will “share the stage” on Tuesday, March 24. Shoshana Walter, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and senior reporter at ProPublica known for her investigations into the addiction treatment industry, joins Barbara Kingsolver, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Demon Copperhead,” for a free midday conversation that promises to be one of the library’s most compelling author events of the year.

Kingsolver’s novel “Demon Copperhead,” a reimagining of Dickens’ “David Copperfield” set amid the opioid crisis in Appalachian Virginia, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2023 and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her work has long explored the intersection of social justice and the natural world, earning her a place among the most significant American novelists of the past three decades. Walter’s investigative journalism has exposed the failures of court-mandated drug treatment programs, work that earned her a Pulitzer finalist citation and a National Magazine Award.

The pairing is not incidental — both writers have spent years examining addiction, exploitation, and the systems that fail vulnerable Americans, approaching the same terrain from different disciplines. Their conversation, hosted by the Pasadena Public Library, offers a rare opportunity to hear how journalism and fiction can illuminate the same crisis from distinct but complementary angles.

Shoshana Walter and Barbara Kingsolver Author Talk will run on Tuesday, March 24 at 11 a.m. to noon. It is an online program and  those interested can sign up to attend and submit questions for the speakers at: https://libraryc.org/pasadenalibrary/117469.