Songs in the Key of Life with Hanif Abdurraqib and Nate Sloan

What are the songs on your life’s playlist, the sonic touchstones that transport you across time and space? Stanford Public Humanities, Department of Music, and Creative Writing Program invite you to an evening of deep listening and musical insights as award-winning author Hanif Abdurraqib discusses 12 tracks from across his life experience. He will be in conversation with Nate Sloan, musicologist, co-host of the podcast Switched on Pop, and Stanford PhD graduate. Book selling/signing to follow. 

Please RSVP at this link to attend this free event. 

Hanif Abdurraqib is an award-winning poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio and the 2025-26 Denning Visiting Artist at Stanford. His newest release, There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random House, 2024) was a New York Times Bestseller and longlisted for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. His previous book, A Little Devil In America (Random House, 2021) was a winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burn Prize. In 2021, Abdurraqib was named a MacArthur Fellow, and in 2024 was named a Windham-Campbell Prize recipient. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.

Nate Sloan is a musicologist and performer who researches jazz, classical, and popular music. He is assistant professor of musicology at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music and co-host of the podcast Switched on Pop. Nate is co-author of Switched on Pop: How Popular Music Works and Why it Matters and has contributed articles about music to the New York Times, Musical Quarterly, and Journal of Musicology, and appeared as a music commentator for NPR, CBS, PBS, and CNN and other acronymic media companies. Nate graduated from Stanford University with his PhD in musicology in 2016. 

This event is made possible by the Stanford Visiting Artist Fund in Honor of Roberta Bowman Denning. Cosponsored with the Institute for Diversity in the Arts.