The Creative Writing Lectures

(l-r) Jim Shepard, Zadie Smith, Samuel R. Delany, Hari Kunzru

(l-r) Michael Chabon, Jennifer Egan, Nicholson Baker, Lydia Millet

(l-r) Aimee Bender, Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Gaitskill, James Wood

The Creative Writing Lecture Series, now in its fifth year, brings distinguished writers to Columbia for original talks on literary craft. The writers are diverse and brilliant, with a wide range of artistic strategies, and each talk turns into a short course on the challenges of making vital literary art. Among our past guests are Aimee Bender, Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Gaitskill, James Wood, Michael Chabon, Jennifer Egan, Nicholson Baker, and Lydia Millet (above).

All events are free and open to the public. They are held in Dodge Hall or Philosophy Hall on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University, at 116th Street and Broadway, at 7 pm; any schedule or location changes will be posted. The series is sponsored by the Columbia University School of the Arts Writing Program. 

-- Series Director Ben Marcus

2011-2012
September 22 - Jim Shepard
October 20 - Zadie Smith
November 11 - Samuel R. Delany
February 2 - Lynne Tillman
March 1 - Hari Kunzru
April 5 - George Saunders
Series archive
 

Jim Shepard is the author of six novels and four story collections. His third collection, Like You’d Understand, Anyway, was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Story Prize in 2007. His writing has appeared in Esquire, Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Believer, Playboy, and The Atlantic Monthly, among others. Four of his stories have been chosen for The Best American Short Stories series, and he has won a Pushcart prize. He lives in Williamstown, MA, where he teaches creative writing and film at Williams College. His most recent book is You Think That’s Bad (Knopf, 2011).  

Zadie Smith is the author of three novels and a book of essays. Her first novel, White Teeth (2000), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction and was included in Time Magazine’s 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923-2005. Her third novel, On Beauty (2005), won the Orange Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Granta, McSweeney’s, The Guardian, and VIBE, to name a few. In 2003 she was included on Granta’s list of 20 Best Young Authors. Her most recent book, Changing My Mind, was published in 2009 by Penguin Press. She is a Professor of Creative Writing at New York University.

Samuel R. Delany has written twenty novels and several books of stories, essays, criticism, and autobiography in a career that spans nearly 40 years. He is the winner of four prestigious Nebula Awards for the novels Babel-17 and The Einstein Intersection, and the short stories, “Aye, and Gomorrah” and  “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones,” which also won a Hugo Award. For his contributions to the genre, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2002. Since 2001, he has been a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he is Director of the Graduate Creative Writing Program.

Lynne Tillman is the author of five novels, three story collections, and three books of nonfiction. Her novel, No Lease on Life, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1998. Her most recent novel, American Genius, A Comedy (2006), was named among the “Best Works of Fiction of the Millennium” by The Millions. Some of her work has appeared in Tin House, McSweeney’s, Bomb, Conjunctions, The New York Times Book Review, and Artforum. Ms. Tillman is a 2006 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the fiction editor at FENCE. Currently she is Professor/Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at the University of Albany.

Hari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist (2002), Transmission (2004), My Revolutions (2007), and Gods Without Men (2011), and the story collection, Noise (2006). The Impressionist won the 2002 Betty Trask Award for first novels and the 2003 Somerset Maugham Award. In 2003, Granta named him one of the twenty “Best of Young British Novelists.” His second novel, Transmissions, was a 2004 New York Times Notable Book of the Year.  His fiction and journalism have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New York Times, Washington Post, Wired, and elsewhere. He is the Deputy President of English PEN and lives in New York City.

George Saunders is the author of five works of fiction, including the award-winning story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (1996), Pastoralia (2000), and In Persuasion Nation (2006), as well as the collection of essays, The Braindead Megaphone (2007). In 1999, he was chosen as one of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40.” He is the winner of four National Magazine Awards and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, GQ, and McSweeney’s, among many others. In 2006, Mr. Saunders was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Syracuse University.