This event will feature contributors to the series reading extracts from their essays. With Samuel Freedman, Tanya Selvaratnam, Tracy O’Neill, Shane McCrae, Chen Chen & more readers to be announced.​

Since the 2016 election, reading the news each day can send even the most placid among us into a paralyzing apoplexia. We are enraged, we are bewildered, and then we get nothing done all day. We go to bed with teeth clenched, wake up, and it begins again.

But McSweeney's has a solution. All year they have been featuring essays by powerful voices—from poets and novelists to actors and activists—giving voice to their state of mind—and possibly yours, too.

These writers also offer one simple thing you can do that day to take action, to address those concerns, to feel a little less powerless. Maybe it’ll be an organization or charity they find worthy of your donation, a volunteer opportunity worth your time, or an issue that deserves greater awareness. Whatever it is, we hope it will help remind all of us of the big and small things we can do to work toward justice and change.