IDEAS: the Magazine of the Aspen Institute Summer 2019

Building communities in places that don’t have them or need strenghtening is a core part of what the Institute does in all its programs. And building community is a core part of what our colleagues do off the clock, too, wherever they call home.

With support from the Institute, the New York Rangers, the National Hockey League, Ice Hockey in Harlem, the New York City Department of Education, and Columbia University, 3,000 elementary and middle-school students in Harlem will have street hockey during gym class in 2019 and 2020.

Programs like the CUNY Fatherhood Academy are excellent at equipping fathers with the tools to become better parents.

On April 11, the Institute awarded its second annual Aspen Words Literary Prize, which is dedicated to fiction that has social impact, to Tayari Jones, the author of An American Marriage.

The Institute’s new initiative, Weave: the Social Fabric Project, asks Americans to find a better way to live.

Colson Whitehead spoke to an Aspen Words audience about his life as a writer, the difference between fiction and nonfiction, and how he came up with the fantastical premise for his most recent book, The Underground Railroad, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.