Pulitzer Prize-winning authors featured in Fall 2018 Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series

Image: Gregory Pardlo 

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gregory Pardlo kicks off the Fall 2018 Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series, sponsored by Cornell’s Creative Writing Program. The Fall series features two Pulitzer Prize winners and a three-time Pulitzer nominee reading from their work, followed by catered receptions and book signings in the English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall. Books by the authors will be available for purchase courtesy of Buffalo Street Books. All events are free and open to the public. 

The series opens with Pardlo’s reading on September 27 at 4:30pm in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall. Pardlo’s many honors include the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection Digest, the APR/Honickman Prize in 2007 for his first collection, Totem, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. His newest work, Air Traffic, a memoir in essays, was released by Knopf in April. He is Poetry Editor of Virginia Quarterly Review. 

Three-time Pulitzer Prize nominee Alice McDermott will give the Eamon McEneaney Memorial Reading on October 11, at 4:30pm in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall. McDermott is the author of eight novels, most recently The Ninth Hour, a finalist for the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2017 Kirkus Prize for Fiction. Three of her novels—After This, At Weddings and Wakes, and That Night—have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Her novel Charming Billy won the National Book Award for fiction in 1998. She is the Richard A. Macksey Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University. 

The Fall series closes with a reading by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and cultural critic Viet Thanh Nguyen on October 25 at 4:30pm in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. Nguyen received the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel The Sympathizer. His most recent book is the bestselling short story collection, The Refugees. Nguyen is a critic-at-large for the Los Angeles Times and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. He is the University Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity and Comparative Literature and Aerol Arnold Chair of English at the University of Southern California. 

Worried about parking? TCAT bus route 10 Commons-Cornell loop leaves Seneca Street station every 12 minutes on Thursday afternoons until 6:16pm and stops outside Klarman/Goldwin Smith Halls. After 6:16pm, the 10 runs every 24 minutes. Last trip from campus to downtown is 8:00pm. The fare for a single ride is $1.50 (cash). 

For more information, visit english.cornell.edu/zalaznick, email creativewriting@cornell.edu, or call 607-255-7847.