Tag Archives: Fiction

Sebastian Barry with Daniel Mendelsohn, Reading, 1 May 2019 – Video

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on May 1, 2019.

Sebastian Barry is a novelist, poet, and playwright. His latest book, Days without End (2016), tells the story of Thomas McNulty, a 17-year-old fleeing the Great Famine in Ireland by enlisting in the U.S. Army in the 1850s. He is sent to fight Sioux and Yurok Indians and, ultimately, fights in the Civil War. The central love story of the novel is between two men and was inspired by Barry’s son’s homosexual relationship. Of his son’s relationship, Barry states, “I look at them and I think, ‘This is not something that needs our tolerance, this is something we should be emulating. There is magnificence here of soul.'”

The New York Times calls Days without End “a dreamlike Western with a different kind of hero.” He is “an orphan, a refugee from Ireland’s Great Famine, a crack shot, a cross-dresser and a halfhearted soldier, but mostly he’s in love with a young man.” In the novel Barry writes, “A man’s memory might have only a hundred clear days in it and he has lived thousands. Can’t do much about that. We have our store of days and we spend them like forgetful drunkards.” Days without End won the 2017 Costa Book of the Year Award, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the Independent Bookseller’s Award.

Barry’s plays include The Steward of Christendom (1995), Our Lady of Sligo (1998), and The Pride of Parnell Street (2007). His novels include A Long Long Way (2005); The Secret Scripture (2008), named Novel of the Year by the Irish Book Awards and Costa Book of the Year; and The Temporary Gentleman (2014). He has won, among other awards, the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize, the Independent Booksellers Prize, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. A Long Long Way and the top-10 best seller The Secret Scripture were short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. He was born in Dublin in 1955 and lives in County Wicklow, Ireland.

This was a Readings and Conversations event.

In this episode, Sebastian Barry was introduced by Daniel Mendelsohn, then read from his 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.

Sebastian Barry with Daniel Mendelsohn, Conversation, 1 May 2019 – Video

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on May 1, 2019.

Sebastian Barry is a novelist, poet, and playwright. His latest book, Days without End (2016), tells the story of Thomas McNulty, a 17-year-old fleeing the Great Famine in Ireland by enlisting in the U.S. Army in the 1850s. He is sent to fight Sioux and Yurok Indians and, ultimately, fights in the Civil War. The central love story of the novel is between two men and was inspired by Barry’s son’s homosexual relationship. Of his son’s relationship, Barry states, “I look at them and I think, ‘This is not something that needs our tolerance, this is something we should be emulating. There is magnificence here of soul.'”

The New York Times calls Days without End “a dreamlike Western with a different kind of hero.” He is “an orphan, a refugee from Ireland’s Great Famine, a crack shot, a cross-dresser and a halfhearted soldier, but mostly he’s in love with a young man.” In the novel Barry writes, “A man’s memory might have only a hundred clear days in it and he has lived thousands. Can’t do much about that. We have our store of days and we spend them like forgetful drunkards.” Days without End won the 2017 Costa Book of the Year Award, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the Independent Bookseller’s Award.

Barry’s plays include The Steward of Christendom (1995), Our Lady of Sligo (1998), and The Pride of Parnell Street (2007). His novels include A Long Long Way (2005); The Secret Scripture (2008), named Novel of the Year by the Irish Book Awards and Costa Book of the Year; and The Temporary Gentleman (2014). He has won, among other awards, the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize, the Independent Booksellers Prize, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. A Long Long Way and the top-10 best seller The Secret Scripture were short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. He was born in Dublin in 1955 and lives in County Wicklow, Ireland.

This was a Readings and Conversations event.

In this episode, Sebastian Barry joined Daniel Mendelsohn 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.

Sebastian Barry with Daniel Mendelsohn, 1 May 2019 – Audio

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on May 1, 2019.

Sebastian Barry is a novelist, poet, and playwright. His latest book, Days without End (2016), tells the story of Thomas McNulty, a 17-year-old fleeing the Great Famine in Ireland by enlisting in the U.S. Army in the 1850s. He is sent to fight Sioux and Yurok Indians and, ultimately, fights in the Civil War. The central love story of the novel is between two men and was inspired by Barry’s son’s homosexual relationship. Of his son’s relationship, Barry states, “I look at them and I think, ‘This is not something that needs our tolerance, this is something we should be emulating. There is magnificence here of soul.'”

The New York Times calls Days without End “a dreamlike Western with a different kind of hero.” He is “an orphan, a refugee from Ireland’s Great Famine, a crack shot, a cross-dresser and a halfhearted soldier, but mostly he’s in love with a young man.” In the novel Barry writes, “A man’s memory might have only a hundred clear days in it and he has lived thousands. Can’t do much about that. We have our store of days and we spend them like forgetful drunkards.” Days without End won the 2017 Costa Book of the Year Award, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the Independent Bookseller’s Award.

Barry’s plays include The Steward of Christendom (1995), Our Lady of Sligo (1998), and The Pride of Parnell Street (2007). His novels include A Long Long Way (2005); The Secret Scripture (2008), named Novel of the Year by the Irish Book Awards and Costa Book of the Year; and The Temporary Gentleman (2014). He has won, among other awards, the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize, the Independent Booksellers Prize, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. A Long Long Way and the top-10 best seller The Secret Scripture were short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. He was born in Dublin in 1955 and lives in County Wicklow, Ireland.

This was a Readings and Conversations event.

You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also watch the videos of this event there. Photos from this event are available on Flickr.

Rachel Kushner with Michael Silverblatt, Reading, 18 April 2018 – Video

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.

Rachel Kushner with Michael Silverblatt, Conversation, 18 April 2018 – Video

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.

Rachel Kushner with Michael Silverblatt, 18 April 2018 – Audio

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on April 18, 2018.

Rachel Kushner with Michael Silverblatt

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.

Viet Thanh Nguyen with Maxine Hong Kingston, 29 March 2017 – Audio

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on March 29, 2017.

Viet Thanh Nguyen with Maxine Hong Kingston

Viet Thanh Nguyen‘s debut novel is The Sympathizer, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It is a spy novel set during and just after the war in Vietnam, told in the form of a forced confession by a spy for the communist-held North. The New York Times said of the book, “The great achievement of The Sympathizer is that it gives the Vietnamese a voice and demands that we pay attention. Until now, it’s been largely a one-sided conversation.” Nguyen’s other books are Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. His honors include the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, a Gold Medal in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and the Asian/Pacific American Literature Award from the Asian/Pacific American Librarian Association. He is the Aerol Arnold Professor of English and an associate professor of American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Nguyen is currently at work on a short story collection, forthcoming from Grove Press.

This was a Readings and Conversations event.

In this episode, Viet Thanh Nguyen, introduced by Maxine Hong Kingston, read from his work then joined Ms. Kingston 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.

Alice McDermott with Michael Silverblatt, Conversation, 22 October 2014 – Video

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on October 22, 2014.

This event was part of the Lannan Literary series.

Alice McDermott has, in the words of The New York Times, “staked an impressive claim on a subject matter and a turf–Irish American Catholic families congregated, for the most part, in New York City and its suburbs on Long Island.” Her seven works of fiction include At Weddings and Wakes, Charming Billy, and Child of My Heart: A Novel. Her most recent book, Someone, follows the everyday rhythms in the life of Marie, an ordinary Irish-American girl from Brooklyn in the 1930s, of which she said, “Setting the story there–not in the literal, geographical Brooklyn but in the one of memory, of romanticized recollection–is my way of visiting a place that I suspect never really existed.”

McDermott currently teaches at Johns Hopkins University as the Richard A. Macksey Professor of Humanities.

In this episode she is joined in conversation with Michael Silverblatt. The companion Reading episode may be found here.

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

Additional photos of this event are available on Flickr.

Alice McDermott with Michael Silverblatt, Reading, 22 October 2014 – Video

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on October 22, 2014.

This event was part of the Lannan Literary series.

Alice McDermott has, in the words of The New York Times, “staked an impressive claim on a subject matter and a turf–Irish American Catholic families congregated, for the most part, in New York City and its suburbs on Long Island.” Her seven works of fiction include At Weddings and Wakes, Charming Billy, and Child of My Heart: A Novel. Her most recent book, Someone, follows the everyday rhythms in the life of Marie, an ordinary Irish-American girl from Brooklyn in the 1930s, of which she said, “Setting the story there–not in the literal, geographical Brooklyn but in the one of memory, of romanticized recollection–is my way of visiting a place that I suspect never really existed.”

McDermott currently teaches at Johns Hopkins University as the Richard A. Macksey Professor of Humanities.

In this episode she is introduced by Michael Silverblatt and then reads from her work. The companion Conversation episode may be found here.

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

Additional photos of this event are available on Flickr.

Alice McDermott with Michael Silverblatt, 22 October 2014 – Audio

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on October 22, 2014.

Alice McDermott with Michael Silverblatt

This event was part of the Lannan Literary series.

Alice McDermott has, in the words of The New York Times, “staked an impressive claim on a subject matter and a turf “Irish American Catholic families congregated, for the most part, in New York City and its suburbs on Long Island.” Her seven works of fiction include At Weddings and Wakes, Charming Billy, and Child of My Heart: A Novel. Her most recent book, Someone, follows the everyday rhythms in the life of Marie, an ordinary Irish-American girl from Brooklyn in the 1930s, of which she said, “Setting the story there “not in the literal, geographical Brooklyn but in the one of memory, of romanticized recollection “is my way of visiting a place that I suspect never really existed.”

McDermott currently teaches at Johns Hopkins University as the Richard A. Macksey Professor of Humanities.

You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also view the video recordings of this event there.

Additional photos of this event are available on Flickr.