Tag Archives: novelist

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.

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

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

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 joined Maxine Hong Kingston 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.

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

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

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 was introduced by Maxine Hong Kingston, 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.

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.

Ru Freeman with John Freeman, 21 September 2016 – Audio

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on September 21, 2016.

Ru Freeman with John Freeman

Ru Freeman is a Sri Lankan-born writer and activist whose creative and political writing has appeared internationally. She is the author of the novels A Disobedient Girl (Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2009) and On Sal Mal Lane (Graywolf, 2013), a New York Times Editors’ Choice. On Sal Mal Lane takes place off a major road in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, home to Sinhalese, Tamils, Burghers, and Muslims. Of their differences, Freeman writes, “To the untrained eye, the physical distinction between the Sinhalese and the Tamil races was so subtle that only the natives could distinguish one from the other, pointing to the drape of a sari, the cheekbones on a face, the scent of hair oil to clarify. But distinctions there were, and the natural order of things would eventually come to pass: resentments would grow…” Both of Freeman’s novels have been translated into several languages, including Italian, French, Hebrew, and Chinese. In 2015 she edited the anthology Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine, bringing together the work of 65 writers and poets. She blogs for the Huffington Post on literature and politics, is a contributing member of the Asian American Literary Review editorial board, and has been a fellow with the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is the 2014 winner of the Sister Mariella Gable Award for fiction and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for fiction by an American woman. Freeman was a Lannan Residency Fellow in the winter of 2016.

This was a Readings and Conversations event.

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.

Ru Freeman with John Freeman, Conversation, 21 September 2016 – Video

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on September 21, 2016.

Ru Freeman is a Sri Lankan-born writer and activist whose creative and political writing has appeared internationally. She is the author of the novels A Disobedient Girl (Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2009) and On Sal Mal Lane (Graywolf, 2013), a New York Times Editors’ Choice. On Sal Mal Lane takes place off a major road in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, home to Sinhalese, Tamils, Burghers, and Muslims. Of their differences, Freeman writes, “To the untrained eye, the physical distinction between the Sinhalese and the Tamil races was so subtle that only the natives could distinguish one from the other, pointing to the drape of a sari, the cheekbones on a face, the scent of hair oil to clarify. But distinctions there were, and the natural order of things would eventually come to pass: resentments would grow…” Both of Freeman’s novels have been translated into several languages, including Italian, French, Hebrew, and Chinese. In 2015 she edited the anthology Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine, bringing together the work of 65 writers and poets. She blogs for the Huffington Post on literature and politics, is a contributing member of the Asian American Literary Review editorial board, and has been a fellow with the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is the 2014 winner of the Sister Mariella Gable Award for fiction and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for fiction by an American woman. Freeman was a Lannan Residency Fellow in the winter of 2016.

This was a Readings and Conversations event.

In this episode, she is joined in conversation John Freeman. 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.

Ru Freeman with John Freeman, Reading, 21 September 2016 – Video

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on September 21, 2016.

Ru Freeman is a Sri Lankan-born writer and activist whose creative and political writing has appeared internationally. She is the author of the novels A Disobedient Girl (Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2009) and On Sal Mal Lane (Graywolf, 2013), a New York Times Editors’ Choice. On Sal Mal Lane takes place off a major road in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, home to Sinhalese, Tamils, Burghers, and Muslims. Of their differences, Freeman writes, “To the untrained eye, the physical distinction between the Sinhalese and the Tamil races was so subtle that only the natives could distinguish one from the other, pointing to the drape of a sari, the cheekbones on a face, the scent of hair oil to clarify. But distinctions there were, and the natural order of things would eventually come to pass: resentments would grow…” Both of Freeman’s novels have been translated into several languages, including Italian, French, Hebrew, and Chinese. In 2015 she edited the anthology Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine, bringing together the work of 65 writers and poets. She blogs for the Huffington Post on literature and politics, is a contributing member of the Asian American Literary Review editorial board, and has been a fellow with the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is the 2014 winner of the Sister Mariella Gable Award for fiction and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for fiction by an American woman. Freeman was a Lannan Residency Fellow in the winter of 2016.

This was a Readings and Conversations event.

In this episode, she is introduced by John Freeman and then read 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.

Kevin Barry with Ethan Nosowsky, Conversation, 4 March 2015 – Video

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on March 6, 2015.

This event was part of the Lannan Literary series.

Kevin Barry described his home in his native Ireland by saying, “I myself live in County Sligo in what seem like the perfect conditions for a writer–a room looking out on a swampy lake, all very atmospheric, ethereal mists, yadda yadda, and there’s nothing to f—–g do but write.” Barry’s recent story collection, Dark Lies The Island, includes tales of unreformed criminals, awkward youth in love, and middle aged women on a road trip making plans for a kidnapping. Of his original and fresh writing, The Paris Review writes, “Barry’s language drags you into a strange, darkly lyrical world, enacting his own definition of literature as a mode of transport.”

Barry’s first novel, City of Bohane, appeared in the UK in 2011 and went on to win the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was described by The New Yorker as, “A grizzled piece of futuristic Irish noir with strong ties to the classic gang epics of yore.”

In this episode he is joined in conversation with Ethan Nosowsky. 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.