Casey Gerald celebrates the release of The Great Refusal: A New Vision of Resistance, with readings by John Spong and Lisa B. Thompson, followed by a conversation with Taylor Bruce.

September 15 · First Light Books · Doors 6:00 PM

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About the event

Doors open at 6:00 PM, with the evening beginning at 6:30 with readings from John Spong and Lisa B. Thompson. Casey Gerald then sits down with Taylor Bruce for a conversation on The Great Refusal, Gerald's new book on resistance, reinvention, and what it means to build a life on your own terms. Audience Q&A follows, with a signing to close out the night.

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THE GREAT REFUSAL: A New Vision of Resistance

Casey Gerald offers a work of joyous dissent and clear-eyed vision, framed as a survival guide for a society in crisis, in the tradition of writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Rebecca Solnit. Gerald draws on a wide range of voices and figures, from Odysseus to D'Angelo, to make the case for reclaiming power and rebuilding on our own terms rather than working within systems that were never built for us.

The book takes its starting point from a moment in 2019 when Gerald spoke on national television about a different tradition available to marginalized Americans beyond assimilation or endurance: the strategy of flight and escape. The Great Refusal picks up where that conversation left off, arguing that the strategies many of us have been taught — assimilation, respectability, meritocracy — are no longer working, and asking what a different way forward could look like.

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About the author

Casey Gerald is the author of There Will Be No Miracles Here, a memoir that was named a Best Book of 2018 by NPR and The New York Times, a finalist for the LAMBDA Literary Award, a longlist selection for the Carnegie Medal for excellence in Nonfiction among others. Gerald's essays include "The Black Art of Escape," published in New York Magazine and selected by Longform as one of the best essays of 2019; and "Leon Bridges After Dark," a Texas Monthly cover profile that won the 2022 National City & Regional Magazine Award.

Prior to his writing career, Gerald co-founded and served as CEO of MBAs Across America (MBAx), his TED Talks have been viewed over 4 million times, and he opened for President Barack Obama at SXSW in 2016. A native of Oak Cliff, Texas, Gerald attended Dallas Public Schools before college at Yale, where he played varsity football and co-founded the Yale Black Men's Union. He later received an MBA from Harvard Business School. Casey is a Senior Fellow of Humanity in Action, a Presidential Leadership Scholars Fellow, and a former Aspen Words Writer-in-Residence. He serves on the board of Kickstarter, PBC.

He is a New America fellow and resides in Waxahachie, Texas.

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About the readers

John Spong is the host of One by Willie, a PRX podcast in which he talks to notable Willie Nelson fans—think Lyle Lovett, Kacey Musgraves, and Booker T. Jones…but also George Saunders, Whoopi Goldberg, and Ethan Hawke—about the Willie songs they love most, leading to highly personal looks at the life, art, and legacy of a genuine American folk hero.

He created the show in 2020 with Texas Monthly, where he was a writer from 1997-2024, covering everything from rodeo clowns and trial lawyers…to book censors and Hurricane Katrina survivors…to his own military embeds in Iraq and Afghanistan. But his real emphasis was Texas music, work for which he received three National Magazine Award nominations, most recently for two large Willie-related projects in 2021. He's the author of A Book on the Making of Lonesome Dove, and his stories have been collected in Best American Food Writing and Best American Sports Writing, among others.

Lisa B. Thompson is an artist/scholar known for her contributions to both academia and the performing arts. Her artistic endeavors include acclaimed plays that are lauded for their insightful and satirical exploration of Black life. Her plays Single Black Female, Underground, Monroe, The Mamalogues, The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body and African Stew have been staged across the United States, off-Broadway, and internationally. The distinguished scholar's works have also enriched the academic discourse on Black feminist theory, theatre, film, and cultural studies. The author of Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class, she has written articles about figures such as bell hooks, Melvin Van Peebles, and August Wilson. Her public scholarship includes co-hosting and co-producing the Black Austin Matters NPR podcast, a platform that highlights Black life, culture, and politics in Central Texas.

Thompson's artistic and academic achievements have garnered her awards and support from a number of institutions including the American Council of Learned Societies, Hedgebrook, MacDowell, Millay Arts, National Performance Network, the University of California's Office of the President, and the W. E. B. DuBois Research Institute. The California native is currently the Bobby and Sherri Patton Endowed Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies, and Interim Associate Dean for Graduate Education and Academic Affairs of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.

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About the conversation partner

Taylor Bruce is the co-owner of First Light Books, and currently building a new independent publishing house.

He was previously the Founder and Editor in Chief of Wildsam, story-based travel publisher and media brand praised by The New York Times, Outside, Travel + Leisure, and National Geographic.

For 13 years, Wildsam curated a vast network of award-winning writers and cultural luminaries throughout the United States. Its catalog of over 65 American guidebooks sells across a collection of 1000+ independent shops, hotels, museums, and national retailers. The new Wildsam Magazine is a first-of-its-kind publication dedicated to road trips, recreational vehicles and the outdoors, meeting a moment of emerging enthusiasm in American adventure.

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