What makes uprisings rise up? What makes an individual dissenter decide to go against the grain? This discussion will include Nathan Schneider, author of Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse, based on his reporting on Occupy Wall Street for magazines including Harper's and The Nation; Louisa Thomas, author of Conscience: Two Soldiers, Two Pacifists, One Family, the story of conscientious objectors in her own family during World War I; and Peter Dimmock, author of the novel George Anderson: Notes for a Love Song in Imperial Time, a tale of an ingenius form of dissent.

Performer Bio(s): 

Nathan Schneider is the author of God in Proof: The Story of a Search, from the Ancients to the Internet (UC Press). He wrote about Occupy Wall Street for Harper’s, The Nation, The New York Times, and Boston Review, among other publications. He is an editor of the websites Waging Nonviolence and Killing the Buddha.

Louisa Thomas has written for the New York Times Book Review, Newsweek, Vogue,  and other publications. She lives in New York. Norman Thomas was her great-grandfather.

Peter Dimock has long worked in publishing—at Random House, and as senior executive editor for history and political science at Columbia University Press, where he worked with authors including Angela Davis, Eric Hobsbawm, Toni Morrison, and Amartya Sen. His first novel, A Short Rhetoric for Leaving the Family, was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 1998.