Ideas Festival Emory, the flagship event of Emory University’s Center for Public Scholarship and Engagement (CPSE), returns for a second year on Saturday, Oct. 18, with a keynote conversation with Rosanne Cash.

Building on the success of the inaugural Ideas Festival Emory in September 2024, this year’s edition will share the wisdom of more than 30 scientists, scholars, musicians, filmmakers and other creative minds.

Set on the Oxford College campus, the festival will again feature conversations, performances and stories dealing with important topics of our time.

“Ideas Festival Emory is based on a simple idea: knowledge belongs to all of us,” says Kenneth Carter, founding director of the CPSE and the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Psychology at Emory University.  “When people come together to talk about the challenges we all face, the closer we can get to solutions.”

Cash boasts a recording career that spans more than 45 years and includes 10 No. 1 country singles and four Grammy Awards. Three of those Grammys came in 2015, when she won for her critically acclaimed masterpiece “The River & the Thread.”

She’s also an accomplished writer, publishing her first book of short stories, “Bodies of Water,” in 1996. Her children’s book, “Penelope Jane: A Fairy's Tale,” was published in 2000, and her 2010 memoir, “Composed,” was a New York Times bestseller, which the Chicago Tribune called “one of the best accounts of an American life you’ll likely ever read.” 

Her essays have appeared in outlets including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Oxford American, The Nation. Along with her induction into The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, she is also the recipient of The Edward MacDowell Medal, an annual honor given to one person for outstanding contribution to American culture and the arts, and was elected an Honorary American member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Cash, the eldest daughter of country legend Johnny Cash, will take the stage at Ideas Festival for a conversation and live taping with Sing for Science podcast host Matt Whyte at 5 p.m. Oct. 18.

With arts funding dwindling, the importance of libraries and museums is crucial. Part of the CPSE’s mission is to foster meaningful discussion of pressing issues of our world today.

At Ideas Festival, The New Yorker’s poetry editor, Kevin Young, former director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, will be on hand to discuss the importance of these institutions as they, too, face funding cuts. He previously served as the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Young will be in conversation with Atlanta author Jessica Handler.

Film gets a spotlight with a discussion with producer-director Brad Lichtenstein. Two-time Emmy nominee Lichtenstein will talk about his latest film, “American Reckoning: Wilmington 1998” (with producer-director Yoruba Richen), which recounts the story of a little-known coup that took place in North Carolina. Fearing self-rule by the city’s democratically elected Black citizens, a group of self-described white supremacists used intimidation and violence to destroy Black political and economic power and overthrow Wilmington’s multi-racial government.

Local concerns get the spotlight as well. Rose Scott will host a live taping of her WABE show, “A Closer Look,” featuring an examination of the promise and costs of the World Cup as Atlanta prepares to be a host city in 2026. The festival will also mark a homecoming for former Atlanta Journal-Constitution food and dining critic John Kessler, who is now a Chicago resident and chronicler of the Windy City’s dining scene. He also continues to contribute to national outlets such as The Washington Post and The Bitter Southerner.

While the provocative talks and discussions take place across campus to feed the mind, there will be food trucks and barbecue on hand to feed the body. Music is also on the menu to sustain the soul. The duo of poet Kim Addonizio and musician Danny Caron will perform along with singer and songwriter Anya Marina.

“I couldn’t be happier about this year’s featured speakers,” says Carter. “They remind us that great ideas come from labs, libraries, and from songs, poems, neighborhoods and lived experience. At Emory, we’re creating a space where those voices can come together where ideas aren’t just studied, they’re shared.”

Ideas Festival Emory will take place from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18, on the Oxford College campus of Emory University.

Those interested in sponsoring the festival can visit the CPSE’s sponsorship page for additional information.

Registration for the festival will open in early August. Visit the CPSE website for more information.