The Atlantic Festival, the magazine’s annual speaker series and ideas forum, is expanding this year to a seven-day event, with a line-up that includes Dr. Anthony Fauci and actor and activist Rosario Dawson. In prior years, the festival was three days.
The overarching theme is “Visions of What America Can Be,” following a year of intense political upheaval and the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“So much has happened since the last festival, and I think it would behoove us not to take a really cursory look at everything under the lens of what America could be,” says Candace Montgomery, senior vice president and general manager of AtlanticLive. “Thinking about what’s happened to America in the past year, we tried to look forward.”
The festival is entering its second virtual year. “We have done our best to try and replicate as much as we can in terms of allowing people to connect inside the platform, to allow them to have some of the interactivity they would have during the live experience,” says Montgomery. For instance, audience members can follow five “content tracks”—business and tech, climate, culture, health and race, and identity and politics. A new feature this year is the Atlantic Festival Artist Studio, a stage where artists will create works inspired by the “Visions of What America Could Be” theme.
The seven-day festival will be split up between two weeks, September 22-24, and September 27-30. You can see the full list of speakers here, and you can register here.
Clara Grudberg joined Washingtonian in July 2021. Originally from New York City, she studies history and journalism at Georgetown University.
