Scott Turow is one of America’s preeminent authors of legal and crime fiction. In 1990, he appeared on the cover of TIME magazine, which proclaimed him “The Bard of Our Litigious Age.”

A former practicing attorney, Turow is the author of fourteen bestselling works of fiction, beginning with Presumed Innocent (1987), which became the basis of Apple TV’s most-watched drama series in 2024, as well as an acclaimed 1990 film starring Harrison Ford.

Turow’s books have been translated into more than 40 languages, and have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. His newest book is Presumed Guilty (2025), the long-anticipated third installment in the “Rusty” Sabich trilogy. Novelist Kristin Hannah called it, “A compelling, unputdownable legal thriller that explores the dark side of justice in a small town and on a fractured family.”

Cosponsored by Albany Law School, the New York State Bar Association, and the Historical Society of the New York Courts.

Michael Luo, Executive Editor at The New Yorker, is the author of a landmark work of American history, Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America (2025). 

Min Jin Lee said, “This is the moving story of a people’s persistence and resistance — how individuals, families, and changing communities looked hard at rejection, endured violence, consumed daily bitterness, and yet sought the higher purposes of humanity and better lives…. Luo’s book serves as a witness of how powerful the love and aspirations of immigrants make real the most beautiful promises of a new homeland.” Winner of a George Polk Award in Journalism, Luo writes regularly for the New Yorker about politics, religion and the Asian American experience.

Adam Johnson, major contemporary novelist, received the Pulitzer Prize for his 2012 novel of North Korea, The Orphan Master’s Son. Writing in the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani called it, “a daring and remarkable novel, a novel that not only opens a frightening window on the mysterious kingdom of North Korea but one that also excavates the very meaning of love and sacrifice.” (Read the review.)

He also received the National Book Award for his 2015 story collection, Fortune Smiles. His new novel is The Wayfinder (2025), a historical epic about a girl from a remote Tongan island who embarks on a risky seafaring journey across a vast ocean empire built on power, consumption, and bloodshed. Born in South Dakota, Johnson is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.

​

Tami Charles, bestselling author of children’s books, will discuss her YA novel, Muted (2021), about a 17-year-old member of an R&B girl band — inspired in part by the author’s own experiences as a member of a girl band that opened for Boyz II Men.

The novel exposes exploitation in the music industry — and what it takes for a young person to fight back. The author recorded four original songs for the Audible version of Muted. Her many prize-winning children’s books include We Are Here (2023), and All Because You Matter (2020). Her newest, Together, United (2025), presents an inspirational message of unity and courage for children in difficult times.

Earlier the same day, she will visit with students at elementary schools in Albany. 

Major support and funding provided by the Carl E. Touhey Foundation.

Sam Tanenhaus, long-time editor of The New York Times Book Review (2004-2013), began writing his biography of William F. Buckley in 1998, ten years before Buckley’s death.

Buckley himself had selected Tanenhaus specifically for the task, granting him extensive interviews, as well as access to his private papers. A monumental work, more than a quarter century in the making, Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America, is now available to readers. More than a biography, the books helps explain the origins of latter-day Conservative politics. Max Boot called it, “A magnificent achievement—a long, gripping, and enthralling account of the life of America’s premier conservative polemicist of the twentieth century.”