Zadie Smith’s latest collection of essays, Feel Free, offers a survey of important recent events in culture and politics, as well as her own life. It gathers in one place previously unpublished work; already classic essays such as “Find Your Beach,” “On Optimism and Despair,” and “Joy”; examinations of the art of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Sarah Sze; and profiles of Jay-Z, Keegan-Michael Key, and Jordan Peele. Equally at home in the world of good books and bad politics, Brooklyn-born rappers and the work of Swiss novelists, she is by turns wry, heartfelt, indignant, and incisive.

Smith is the multi award-winning author of White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, Changing My Mind, NW, and Swing Time. She contributes regularly to The New Yorker and New York Review of Books. In conversation with Michel Martin, the weekend host of All Things Considered. Book signing to follow.