Tag Archives: Ben Marcus

Lydia Davis with Ben Marcus, 16 May 2012 – Audio

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on 16 May, 2012.

Lydia Davis with Ben Marcus

Lydia Davis has been called “an American virtuoso of the short story form” (Salon.com) and “one of the quiet giants of American fiction” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). She has published seven collections including Sketches for a Life of Wassily (1981), Almost No Memory (2001), Samuel Johnson is Indignant (2002), Varieties of Disturbance (2007), and The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (2009), as well as a novel, End of the Story. She was born in 1947 and after graduating from Barnard worked as a translator before turning to fiction. Ms. Davis is a celebrated translator of French literature including works by Jean-Paul Sartre, Flaubert, and Maurice Blanchot, as well as biographies of Marie Curie and Alexis de Tocqueville, with her most recent translation being a much-lauded Madam Bovary (2010).

Ms. Davis’ honors include being a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award for Varieties of Disturbances, a Whiting Award, a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, a MacArthur Fellowship, and in 2005 she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has been named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government for her fiction and translations. She lives in upstate New York.

Additional photos of this event are available on Flickr.

You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website.

John D’Agata with Ben Marcus, Conversation, 16 February 2011 – Video

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on February 16, 2011.

John D’Agata published his first book, Halls of Fame, a collection of lyric essays, in 2001 and Annie Dillard called it “A daring, utterly original book by a young writer of rare intelligence and artistry… With wit and finesse, and writing that’s as much poetry as it is prose, D’Agata is redefining the modern American essay.” He has since edited two essay collections, The Next American Essay (2002) and The Lost Origins of the Essay (2009) and his creative nonfiction book, About a Mountain, was published in 2010. His most recent book is The Lifespan of a Fact, published in 2012, and is a collaboration with Jim Fingal, the fact-checker, who worked on a D’Agata essay originally slated to publish in 2003. D’Agata holds MFAs in both nonfiction and poetry and teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, where he lives.

Additional photos of this event are available on Flickr.

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

John D’Agata, Reading, 16 February 2011 – Video

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on February 16, 2011.

John D’Agata published his first book, Halls of Fame, a collection of lyric essays, in 2001 and Annie Dillard called it “A daring, utterly original book by a young writer of rare intelligence and artistry… With wit and finesse, and writing that’s as much poetry as it is prose, D’Agata is redefining the modern American essay.” He has since edited two essay collections, The Next American Essay (2002) and The Lost Origins of the Essay (2009) and his creative nonfiction book, About a Mountain, was published in 2010. His most recent book is The Lifespan of a Fact, published in 2012, and is a collaboration with Jim Fingal, the fact-checker, who worked on a D’Agata essay originally slated to publish in 2003. D’Agata holds MFAs in both nonfiction and poetry and teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, where he lives.

Additional photos of this event are available on Flickr.

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

John D’Agata with Ben Marcus, 16 February 2011 – Audio

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on February 16, 2011.

John D’Agata published his first book, Halls of Fame, a collection of lyric essays, in 2001 and Annie Dillard called it “A daring, utterly original book by a young writer of rare intelligence and artistry . . .With wit and finesse, and writing that’s as much poetry as it is prose, D’Agata is redefining the modern American essay.” He has since edited two essay collections, The Next American Essay (2002) and The Lost Origins of the Essay (2009) and his creative nonfiction book, About a Mountain, was published in 2010. His most recent book is The Lifespan of a Fact, published in 2012, and is a collaboration with Jim Fingal, the fact-checker, who worked on a D’Agata essay originally slated to publish in 2003. D’Agata holds MFAs in both nonfiction and poetry and teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, where he lives.

Additional photos of this event are available on Flickr.

You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website.

Deborah Eisenberg with Ben Marcus, 17 January 2007 – Audio

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on January 17, 2007.


Deborah Eisenberg is the author of five collections of short stories, All Around Atlantis, The Stories (So Far) of Deborah Eisenberg, Under the 82nd Airborne, Transactions in a Foreign Currency, and the most recent, Twilight of the Super Heroes: Stories. Eisenberg is the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and, in 2003, a Lannan Literary Fellowship. She is a professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.

You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website.

Additional photos from this event are available on Flickr.