A friend of his wife gave his novel Empire Falls to Ivanka Trump. Her response: “This is a book about poor people. Why would I want to read a book about poor people?” Some bad reviews are better than good reviews. Presented with the Center for Fiction and the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. Continue reading »

“I think the best writers always know the characters more than the characters know themselves,“ she says. The author of The Book of Goose talks about War and Peace, Wuthering Heights, the stories of William Trevor, and her old army buddies. Produced with A Public Space and Rizzoli Bookstores.  Music: Liz Hanley. Continue reading »

Like Conrad, Nabokov, and Beckett, this novelist—In the Distance, Trust— writes in a language other than the one he spoke as a child, and it helps him see the world afresh: “If you move out of one language and into another, it is like moving out of one country and into another.” A conversation at … Continue reading »

Since he achieved widespread acclaim for his trilogy of novels about Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, his admiring readers have sent him all sorts of gifts—artwork, a meteorite. But has anyone sent him pie, and did he eat it? “I’m not recalling anything right now; I would have eaten it, though.”  The weirdly intimate connection … Continue reading »

Some scholars toil away their lives, humbly adding their mote to the supply of human knowledge. Then there was Selma Barkham. “She was responsible for finding out something about Newfoundland that nobody had ever known,” says Annie Proulx. A fine writer––The Shipping News, Brokeback Mountain––tells the story of an extraordinary scholar. Presented with the American Academy of Arts and … Continue reading »

When  the admired writer — Election, Little Children, The Leftovers — was off at college, he got some unsettling news from his beloved cousin Mike: “He was a really talented indie rocker, but he ended up with a bunch of his friends playing in a wedding band.” This became the basis for The Wishbones, whose protagonist believes such bands emit … Continue reading »

Our conversation ranged over modern boxers, Victorian writers, one-room schools, and that nearly mythical creature, that unicorn of politics, the moderate Republican. (I hope to see one someday.) It was a treat to engage with someone interested in, well, everything. Continue reading »

Some novelists begin with a character, some with a plot; Jennifer Egan – A Visit From the Goon Squad, Manhattan Beach – often starts with a sense of place: “That seems to come before there are people.” A conversation at the Center for Fiction cosponsored by the Municipal Art Society. Music: Lily Henley and Duncan Wickel. Photo: … Continue reading »

Like many funny writers, this essayist and novelist grew up around someone with a highly cultivated sense of humor, in this case her grandmother Nettie. “She was extremely funny. She was sarcastic in a very loving way, which I think is a hard note to hit.” The challenge of being simultaneously funny and sweet. Plus … Continue reading »

When she was 13, her father let her skip school to stay home and read in bed. “It was a great paternal moment, too,” she tells the New York Society Library, “to say to your child: I get that this is more important than going to school today.” The making of a reader, the making … Continue reading »

Admired for fiction (The Russian Debutante’s Handbook) and non-fiction (Little Failure), he began at age five when his grandmother asked him to write a book about Lenin. “She paid me a piece of cheese for every page I wrote, and I wrote 100 pages. I love cheese.” A conversation at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan with music … Continue reading »