{"product_id":"the-auburn-conference-9781609388812","title":"The Auburn Conference","description":"It is 1883, and America is at a crossroads. At a tiny college in Upstate New York, an idealistic young professor has managed to convince Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Confederate memoirist Forrest Taylor, and romance novelist Lucy Comstock to participate in the first (and last) Auburn Writers' Conference for a public discussion about the future of the nation. By turns brilliantly comic and startlingly prescient, \u003ci\u003eThe Auburn Conference\u003c\/i\u003e vibrates with questions as alive and urgent today as they were in 1883--the chronic American conundrums of race, class, and gender, and the fate of the democratic ideal. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTom Piazza\u003c\/b\u003e's twelve books include the novels \u003ci\u003eA Free State\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eCity of Refuge\u003c\/i\u003e, the story collection \u003ci\u003eBlues and Trouble\u003c\/i\u003e, and his nonfiction work \u003ci\u003eWhy New Orleans Matters\u003c\/i\u003e. He was a principal writer for the HBO series \u003ci\u003eTreme\u003c\/i\u003e, and lives in New Orleans. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"University of Iowa Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50613845328146,"sku":"9781609388812","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_218cb207-797b-4f90-bf07-ead56135d3d6.jpg?v=1732420697","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-auburn-conference-9781609388812","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}