On the morning a powerful US senator is accused of a long-buried sexual scandal, his son Harris wakes to a world suddenly unrecognizable.
A journalist, husband, and father, Harris has built his life on reason, responsibility, and restraint. But as headlines spread and reputations unravel, he is pulled back into the unresolved gravity of his childhood—into memories of political ambition, parental absence, and a father whose public idealism shaped Harris’s private life in ways he is only beginning to understand.
Opening on a single charged day—as Harris navigates work, marriage, parenthood, and a culture hungry for judgment—Judah Can’t Tell becomes a powerful meditation on power, consent, masculinity, and moral inheritance. What do we owe the people we love when the truth threatens to destroy them? And what do we owe our children when silence feels safer than honesty?
Written with emotional acuity and moral clarity, Judah Can’t Tell is a timely, deeply human novel about reckoning—personal, political, and generational.
Cal Hoffman is the author of Easy to Slip, an acclaimed debut novel. He graduated from Catholic University and attended Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London and the MFA Fiction Writing Program at Columbia University. He taught English and creative writing, and as an actor performed in regional theater across the country, starring in the acclaimed New York revival of Jules Feiffer’s play, Elliot Loves. Cal lives with his wife, Victoria Leacock Hoffman, and their son, Harry, in Washington, DC.
Hoffman will be joined in conversation with Harry Lennix. Lennix is a world-class actor across theater, film, and television. For ten seasons, he starred as Harold Cooper on NBC’s acclaimed series The Blacklist. Films include: Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Justice League; The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions; and the Academy Award®-winning film Ray, and as Dresser in the beloved film The Five Heartbeats. On television, Lennix portrayed legendary Congressman Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. for Showtime and had a recurring role on Billions. Lennix made his Broadway debut in August Wilson’s Tony-nominated Radio Golf, in a role created specifically for him by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. His long-standing collaboration with Wilson also includes acclaimed performances in King Hedley II at the Mark Taper Forum and as Levee Green in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, for which he received the Joseph Jefferson Award. In 2025, he received a Tony Award® nomination for his role as Solomon “Sonny” Jasper in the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning play Purpose. Lennix will return to that role in November at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.