Carnegie Conversations - Listening to America

The Carnegie Club of St Andrews is delighted to announce our final speaker of the year for Carnegie Conversations: the writer Ryan Bernsten. Ryan is an award-winning speaker, author, playwright and creative. He has worked on Hillary Clinton’s electoral campaign trail, and currently serves as the Senior Managing Editor for the Trevor Project’s creative team, an organisation committed to ending suicide among LGBTQ youth. As part of his drive to hear and tell stories, he travelled to all 50 states of the US to hear from the nation during the 2016 election year. Through his journey, he met mayors, governors, community leaders and voters on both sides of the aisle to find the stories that bound Americans then and continue to today. The book he subsequently wrote, 50 States of Mind: A Journey to Rediscover American Democracy, has been featured on NPR, Talking Politics and Condé Nast Traveler. This is the perfect opportunity to hear from the American people that the media often overlooks. Through this talk, we hope to extend empathy and dialogue to communities otherwise misrepresented and often misunderstood. We will discuss the rural and the urban, ranging from West Virginia to New York to Kansas City, talk politics, culture and language, and ultimately find a people not as divided as we might think. The event will be split evenly; we will first hear a discussion between Ryan and a Carnegie Club member, followed by half an hour of audience questions. We look forward to welcoming you there! In addition, we kindly ask you to respect the following basic rules: No bags No food/drink Smart casual attire