Meg Wolitzer and Elizabeth Strout A Conversation About Character and Contemporary Fiction
Wednesday, April 27, 2011 at 6:30 PM
Members' Room; $10 in advance/$15 at the door
Two bestselling Library member authors discuss their craft and their most recent books in this one-of-a-kind evening. Meg Wolitzer's new novel The Uncoupling - inspired by Aristophanes's ancient comedy Lysistrata - tackles an issue with deep ramifications for women's and men's lives in a funny and fresh way. Elizabeth Strout's
Olive Kitteridge was named a best book of the year by eleven prestigious newspapers and won a 2009 Pulitzer Prize. It concerns a retired schoolteacher and her community enduring the changes in their little town and in the world at large. In dialogue, Ms. Strout and Ms. Wolitzer will talk about their ideas of fiction, the process of creating realistic characters, and the importance of stories and novels in communicating truths about love and life.
Meg Wolitzer's previous novels include
The Ten-Year Nap,
The Position, and
The Wife. She sold her first novel,
Sleepwalking, while a senior at Brown University. Her short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories and the Pushcart Prize. Wolitzer has taught writing at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and Columbia University, among others.
Elizabeth Strout is the author of
Abide with Me, a national bestseller, and
Amy and Isabelle, which won the
Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in England. Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker and O: The Oprah Magazine.
