Lannan Foundation is a family foundation dedicated to cultural freedom, diversity and creativity through projects which support exceptional contemporary artists and writers, as well as inspired Native activists in rural indigenous communities. This site is for our audio and video podcasts.
Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on April 18, 2018.
Rachel Kushner’s first novel, Telex from Cuba, is set in Oriente, Cuba, in an expat community funded by the United Fruit Company and a nickel mine, during the years leading up to Castro’s revolution. Of the book, the New York Times wrote, “Out of tropical rot, Kushner has fashioned a story that will linger like a whiff of decadent Colony perfume.”
Her second novel, The Flamethrowers, is set mostly in the mid-1970s and follows the life of Reno, so named for her place of birth, a young artist who comes to New York intent on marrying her love of motorcycles, speed, and art. The title takes its name from weapons used by the Italian Arditi, a division of elite shock troops that operated during the First World War.
Kushner has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award and is a Guggenheim Fellow. Her fiction and essays appear regularly in the New York Times, the Paris Review, The Believer, Artforum, Bookforum, Fence, Bomb, and Grand Street.
This was a Readings and Conversations event.
In this episode, Rachel Kushner was introduced by Michael Silverblatt, then read from her work. You can find the companion conversation here.
You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also listen to the audio recording / watch the videos of this event there. Photos from this event are available on Flickr.
Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on April 18, 2018.
Rachel Kushner’s first novel, Telex from Cuba, is set in Oriente, Cuba, in an expat community funded by the United Fruit Company and a nickel mine, during the years leading up to Castro’s revolution. Of the book, the New York Times wrote, “Out of tropical rot, Kushner has fashioned a story that will linger like a whiff of decadent Colony perfume.”
Her second novel, The Flamethrowers, is set mostly in the mid-1970s and follows the life of Reno, so named for her place of birth, a young artist who comes to New York intent on marrying her love of motorcycles, speed, and art. The title takes its name from weapons used by the Italian Arditi, a division of elite shock troops that operated during the First World War.
Kushner has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award and is a Guggenheim Fellow. Her fiction and essays appear regularly in the New York Times, the Paris Review, The Believer, Artforum, Bookforum, Fence, Bomb, and Grand Street.
This was a Readings and Conversations event.
In this episode, Rachel Kushner joined Michael Silverblatt in conversation. You can find the companion reading here.
You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also listen to the audio recording / watch the videos of this event there. Photos from this event are available on Flickr.
Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on April 18, 2018.
Rachel Kushner’s first novel, Telex from Cuba, is set in Oriente, Cuba, in an expat community funded by the United Fruit Company and a nickel mine, during the years leading up to Castro’s revolution. Of the book, the New York Times wrote, “Out of tropical rot, Kushner has fashioned a story that will linger like a whiff of decadent Colony perfume.”
Her second novel, The Flamethrowers, is set mostly in the mid-1970s and follows the life of Reno, so named for her place of birth, a young artist who comes to New York intent on marrying her love of motorcycles, speed, and art. The title takes its name from weapons used by the Italian Arditi, a division of elite shock troops that operated during the First World War.
Kushner has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award and is a Guggenheim Fellow. Her fiction and essays appear regularly in the New York Times, the Paris Review, The Believer, Artforum, Bookforum, Fence, Bomb, and Grand Street.
This was a Readings and Conversations event.
You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also listen to the audio recording / watch the videos of this event there. Photos from this event are available on Flickr.
Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on November 29, 2017.
Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City in 1983 and has lived in Africa, Asia, Central America, and Europe. She now lives in New York City. Her works have been widely translated and include the novels Faces in the Crowd and The Story of My Teeth, as well as the essay collection Sidewalks, which begins and ends in a cemetery in Venice.
She wrote Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions after working as a volunteer interpreter for Central American immigrant children detained in the United States. In the book she writes, “Children leave their homes with a coyote. They cross Mexico in the hands of this coyote, riding La Bestia. They try not to fall into the hands of rapists, corrupt policemen, murderous soldiers, and drug gangs who might enslave them in poppy or marijuana fields, if they don’t shoot them in the head and mass-bury them.” Luiselli was named one of the 20 best Mexican writers under age 40 by Mexico’s Arts and Culture Council and is completing a PhD in comparative literature at Columbia University.
This was a Readings and Conversations event.
In this episode, Valeria Luiselli was introduced by Sonia Nazario, then read from her work. You can find the companion conversation here.
You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also listen to the audio recording of this event there. Photos from this event are available on Flickr.
Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on November 29, 2017.
Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City in 1983 and has lived in Africa, Asia, Central America, and Europe. She now lives in New York City. Her works have been widely translated and include the novels Faces in the Crowd and The Story of My Teeth, as well as the essay collection Sidewalks, which begins and ends in a cemetery in Venice.
She wrote Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions after working as a volunteer interpreter for Central American immigrant children detained in the United States. In the book she writes, “Children leave their homes with a coyote. They cross Mexico in the hands of this coyote, riding La Bestia. They try not to fall into the hands of rapists, corrupt policemen, murderous soldiers, and drug gangs who might enslave them in poppy or marijuana fields, if they don’t shoot them in the head and mass-bury them.” Luiselli was named one of the 20 best Mexican writers under age 40 by Mexico’s Arts and Culture Council and is completing a PhD in comparative literature at Columbia University.
This was a Readings and Conversations event.
In this episode, Valeria Luiselli joined Sonia Nazario in conversation. You can find the companion reading here.
You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also listen to the audio recording of this event there. Photos from this event are available on Flickr.
Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on November 29, 2017.
Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City in 1983 and has lived in Africa, Asia, Central America, and Europe. She now lives in New York City. Her works have been widely translated and include the novels Faces in the Crowd and The Story of My Teeth, as well as the essay collection Sidewalks, which begins and ends in a cemetery in Venice.
She wrote Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions after working as a volunteer interpreter for Central American immigrant children detained in the United States. In the book she writes, “Children leave their homes with a coyote. They cross Mexico in the hands of this coyote, riding La Bestia. They try not to fall into the hands of rapists, corrupt policemen, murderous soldiers, and drug gangs who might enslave them in poppy or marijuana fields, if they don’t shoot them in the head and mass-bury them.” Luiselli was named one of the 20 best Mexican writers under age 40 by Mexico’s Arts and Culture Council and is completing a PhD in comparative literature at Columbia University.
This was a Readings and Conversations event.
In this episode, Valeria Luiselli read from her work, then joined Sonia Nazario in conversation.
You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also watch the video recordings of this event there. Photos from this event are available on Flickr.
Recorded at the Lannan Garden Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on August 13, 2017.
Wallace Shawn, playwright, actor, screenwriter, and essayist has said, “I don’t know about you, but I only have one life, and I don’t want to spend it in a sewer of injustice.” Best known for his roles in My Dinner with André and as Vizzini in The Princess Bride, Shawn also has had an illustrious career in theater, both as an actor and writer. His plays include Grasses of a Thousand Colors, The Fever, and The Designated Mourner, described by The Times (London) as “…highly unconventional, much concerned with matters of politics, culture and human significance.”
Shawn has written on subjects such as war, money, sex, and aesthetics. His newest book-length essay, Night Thoughts (Haymarket Books 2017) is an examination of how justice-minded people might use the tools of civilization against its excesses. In his 2006 book, Essays, he says, “somehow poetry and the search for a more just order on earth are not contradictory, and rational thought and dreams are not contradictory, and there may be something necessary as well as ridiculous in the odd activities of racing back and forth on the bridge between reality and the world of dreams.”
This was a private In Pursuit of Cultural Freedom event.
In this episode, Wallace Shawn read from his works and joined Sarah Knopp in conversation.
You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also listen to the audio recording of this event there.
Recorded at the Lannan Garden Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on August 13, 2017.
Wallace Shawn, playwright, actor, screenwriter, and essayist has said, “I don’t know about you, but I only have one life, and I don’t want to spend it in a sewer of injustice.” Best known for his roles in My Dinner with André and as Vizzini in The Princess Bride, Shawn also has had an illustrious career in theater, both as an actor and writer. His plays include Grasses of a Thousand Colors, The Fever, and The Designated Mourner, described by The Times (London) as “…highly unconventional, much concerned with matters of politics, culture and human significance.”
Shawn has written on subjects such as war, money, sex, and aesthetics. His newest book-length essay, Night Thoughts (Haymarket Books 2017) is an examination of how justice-minded people might use the tools of civilization against its excesses. In his 2006 book, Essays, he says, “somehow poetry and the search for a more just order on earth are not contradictory, and rational thought and dreams are not contradictory, and there may be something necessary as well as ridiculous in the odd activities of racing back and forth on the bridge between reality and the world of dreams.”
This was a private In Pursuit of Cultural Freedom event.
In this episode, Wallace Shawn read from his works and joined Sarah Knopp in conversation.
You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also watch the video recording of this event there.
Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on March 16, 2011.
David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) was one of the most acclaimed and influential American writers of his generation. A gifted novelist, essayist and humorist, he is best known for his 1996 opus, the novel Infinite Jest. His other books include his debut novel The Broom of the System (1987), followed by the short story collections Girl With Curious Hair (1989) and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999), the essay collections A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (1997) and Consider the Lobster (2005), and the nonfiction work Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity (2003). He received a Whiting Writers’ Award in 1987, a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction in 1996, and a MacArthur Fellowship in 1997. Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, educated at Amherst College, and lived for many years in Illinois. He taught creative writing at Pomona College in Claremont, California, from 2002 until his death in 2008.
An evening in celebration of the life and work of DAVID FOSTER WALLACE (1962-2008). Writers David Lipsky, Rick Moody, and Joanna Scott will read some of their favorite selections from Wallace’s writings followed by an in depth discussion moderated by Michael Silverblatt, host of the radio interview program, Bookworm.
Abstraction has all kinds of problems and headaches built in, we all know. Part of the hazard is how we use nouns. We think of nouns’ meanings in terms of denotations. Nouns stand for things–man, desk, pen, David, head, aspirin. A special kind of comedy results when there’s confusion about what’s a real noun, as in ‘Who’s on first?’ or those Alice in Wonderland routines–’What can you see on the road?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘What great eyesight! What does nothing look like?’ The comedy tends to vanish, though, when the nouns denote abstractions, meaning general concepts divorced from particular instances. Many of these abstraction-nouns come from root verbs. ‘Motion’ is a noun, and ‘existence’; we use words like this all the time. The confusion comes when we try to consider what exactly they mean. – From Everything and More.
David Lipsky is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine and the author of works of fiction, nonfiction, and short stories including The Art Fair and Three Thousand Dollars. David Lipsky Bio and Cross Links
Rick Moody has been celebrated in America for twenty years for his work in fiction, nonfiction, and short stories. His first novel, Garden State (1992), was the winner of the 1991 Editor’s Choice Award from the Pushcart Press. Rick Moody Bio and Cross Links
Joanna Scott is the author of eight novels, including Liberation, Tourmaline, Make Believe, The Manikin, Arrogance, and most recently Follow Me (2009) as well as two collections of short fiction, Various Antidotes, and Everybody Loves Somebody. Joanna Scott Bio and Cross Links
Michael Silverblatt, a New York native, studied at Johns Hopkins University, where he came under the influence of such cutting-edge author-teachers as Donald Barthelme and John Barth. Michael Silverblatt Bio and Cross Links
Additional photos of this event are available on Flickr.
You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website.
Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on March 16, 2011.
David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) was one of the most acclaimed and influential American writers of his generation. A gifted novelist, essayist and humorist, he is best known for his 1996 opus, the novel Infinite Jest. His other books include his debut novel The Broom of the System (1987), followed by the short story collections Girl With Curious Hair (1989) and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999), the essay collections A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (1997) and Consider the Lobster (2005), and the nonfiction work Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity (2003). He received a Whiting Writers’ Award in 1987, a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction in 1996, and a MacArthur Fellowship in 1997. Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, educated at Amherst College, and lived for many years in Illinois. He taught creative writing at Pomona College in Claremont, California, from 2002 until his death in 2008.
An evening in celebration of the life and work of DAVID FOSTER WALLACE (1962-2008). Writers David Lipsky, Rick Moody, and Joanna Scott will read some of their favorite selections from Wallace’s writings followed by an in depth discussion moderated by Michael Silverblatt, host of the radio interview program, Bookworm.
Abstraction has all kinds of problems and headaches built in, we all know. Part of the hazard is how we use nouns. We think of nouns’ meanings in terms of denotations. Nouns stand for things–man, desk, pen, David, head, aspirin. A special kind of comedy results when there’s confusion about what’s a real noun, as in ‘Who’s on first?’ or those Alice in Wonderland routines–’What can you see on the road?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘What great eyesight! What does nothing look like?’ The comedy tends to vanish, though, when the nouns denote abstractions, meaning general concepts divorced from particular instances. Many of these abstraction-nouns come from root verbs. ‘Motion’ is a noun, and ‘existence’; we use words like this all the time. The confusion comes when we try to consider what exactly they mean. – From Everything and More.
Joanna Scott is the author of eight novels, including Liberation, Tourmaline, Make Believe, The Manikin, Arrogance, and most recently Follow Me (2009) as well as two collections of short fiction, Various Antidotes and Everybody Loves Somebody. Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous journals such as The Paris Review, Harper’s, Esquire, and Conjunctions and she has reviewed for The New York Times, The Nation, and The Los Angeles Times. Scott has been honored with a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her books have been finalists for the Pulizter Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and The Los Angeles Times Book Award. She is the Roswell Smith Burrows Professor of English at the University of Rochester. Joanna Scott Bio and Cross Links
Michael Silverblatt, a New York native, studied at Johns Hopkins University, where he came under the influence of such cutting-edge author-teachers as Donald Barthelme and John Barth. Dubbed “the best reader in America” by Norman Mailer, he is the host of the literary talk show Bookworm, which he created in 1989 for KCRW 89.9 FM in Santa Monica. He has participated in numerous Readings & Conversations programs, interviewing Gore Vidal, Susan Sontag, Salman Rushdie, and A.S. Byatt, among others. Bookworm airs locally on KSFR 101.1FM every Sunday at 1:30pm. Michael Silverblatt Bio and Cross Links
Additional photos of this event are available on Flickr.
You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website.
You must be logged in to post a comment.