Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on November 5, 1998.

William Gass is a novelist, essayist, philosopher, and teacher. Mr. Gass, whose books include Cartesian Sonata, The Tunnel, and Omensetter's Luck, received the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. William Gass states in his essay Culture, Self, and Society,, "A culture morally and functionally fails which does not let its crazies, its artists and its saints, its scientists and politicians, claim, on occasion, a higher law than its own congresses can pass, traditions permit, or conscience conceive."

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Length: 47:35; Size: 547 MB

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on November 5, 1998.

William Gass is a novelist, essayist, philosopher, and teacher. Mr. Gass, whose books include Cartesian Sonata, The Tunnel, and Omensetter's Luck, received the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. William Gass states in his essay Culture, Self, and Society,, "A culture morally and functionally fails which does not let its crazies, its artists and its saints, its scientists and politicians, claim, on occasion, a higher law than its own congresses can pass, traditions permit, or conscience conceive."

You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also listen to audio recordings of this event there.

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Length: 50:34; Size: 582 MB

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on November 8, 2001.

J.M. Coetzee was born in Cape Town, South Africa. His novels include The Master of Petersburg, Age of Iron, The Life and Times of Michael K., Waiting for the Barbarians, In the Heart of the Country, and Disgrace. He has also written a memoir, Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life. Mr. Coetzee, who is a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, teaches at the University of Cape Town and the University of Chicago.

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Length: 29:56; Size: 344 MB

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on November 8, 2001.

J.M. Coetzee was born in Cape Town, South Africa. His novels include The Master of Petersburg, Age of Iron, The Life and Times of Michael K., Waiting for the Barbarians, In the Heart of the Country, and Disgrace. He has also written a memoir, Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life. Mr. Coetzee, who is a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, teaches at the University of Cape Town and the University of Chicago.

You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also listen to audio recordings of this event there.

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Length: 29:56; Size: 344 MB

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on November 10, 1999.

Wendell Berry is a poet, essayist, and novelist, who has been called the "prophet of rural America." Mr. Berry, who pursues what he calls "an ethic and way of life based upon devotion to a place and devotion to a land," lives and works on his farm in Port Royal, Kentucky. He has published more than 30 books, including The Wheel, Sabbaths, and Openings (poetry); The Wild Birds, Watch with Me, and Remembering (fiction); and Another Turn of the Crank, What Are People For?, and The Unsettling of America (nonfiction). He received a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction in 1989.

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Length: 25:14; Size: 290 MB

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on May 12, 2010.

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and came to the United States in 1996. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. She has received a Lannan Literary Residency and was selected by Granta as one of the 21 Best Young American Novelists under 35. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and was described by the Washington Post as "a remarkable debut--as acute and authentic-sounding about the domestic effect of cross-cultural change in modern China as Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies was about India. Also like that book, it's one of those rare short story collections where you find yourself reading one perfectly realized gem after the next." Her recent novel, The Vagrants, is set in China in the late 1970s, when Beijing was rocked by the Democratic Wall Movement, an anti-Communist groundswell designed to move China beyond the dark shadow of the Cultural Revolution toward a more enlightened and open society that eventually led to the Tiananmen Square uprising. Li lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and their two sons.

You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website. You may also listen to the audio podcast here.

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Length: 26:08; Size: 224 MB

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on May 12, 2010.

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and came to the United States in 1996. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. She has received a Lannan Literary Residency and was selected by Granta as one of the 21 Best Young American Novelists under 35. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and was described by the Washington Post as "a remarkable debut--as acute and authentic-sounding about the domestic effect of cross-cultural change in modern China as Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies was about India. Also like that book, it's one of those rare short story collections where you find yourself reading one perfectly realized gem after the next." Her recent novel, The Vagrants, is set in China in the late 1970s, when Beijing was rocked by the Democratic Wall Movement, an anti-Communist groundswell designed to move China beyond the dark shadow of the Cultural Revolution toward a more enlightened and open society that eventually led to the Tiananmen Square uprising. Li lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and their two sons.

You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website. You may also listen to the audio podcast here.

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Length: 53:11; Size: 263 MB

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on May 12, 2010.

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and came to the United States in 1996. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. She has received a Lannan Literary Residency and was selected by Granta as one of the 21 Best Young American Novelists under 35. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and was described by the Washington Post as "a remarkable debut--as acute and authentic-sounding about the domestic effect of cross-cultural change in modern China as Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies was about India. Also like that book, it's one of those rare short story collections where you find yourself reading one perfectly realized gem after the next." Her recent novel, The Vagrants, is set in China in the late 1970s, when Beijing was rocked by the Democratic Wall Movement, an anti-Communist groundswell designed to move China beyond the dark shadow of the Cultural Revolution toward a more enlightened and open society that eventually led to the Tiananmen Square uprising. Li lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and their two sons.

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Length: 1:19:46; Size: 18.3 MB

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on April 28, 2010.

Don DeLillo was born and raised in New York City. He is the author of fifteen novels, including White Noise, Libra, Falling Man, and Point Omega, described by The New York Times as, "darkly comic novels about conspiracy, coincidence and obsession in late 20th century America." Of his influences as a writer he said, "I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, and jazz and Abstract Expressionism." His work has won many honors in this country and abroad--among them the National Book Award, the Jerusalem Prize and the PEN-Faulkner Award for Fiction. His novel Underworld won the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Falling Man, DeLillo's haunting novel about September 11, begins in the smoke and ash of the burning towers and traces the aftermath of this global tremor in the altered lives of a few New Yorkers. About writing he said, "I write to find out how much I know. The act of writing for me is a concentrated form of thought."

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Length: 1:17:20; Size: 17.8 MB

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on December 15, 1999.

Wallace Shawn is an Obie-winning playwright and a noted stage and screen actor. His most recent play, The Designated Mourner, was made into a film starring Mike Nichols, Miranda Richardson, and David de Keyser. Mr. Shawn's other plays include The Fever; My Dinner with André, co-written with André Gregory; and Our Late Night. Mr. Shawn lives in New York City.

This is part two of two. You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website.

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Length: 53:59; Size: 622 MB