Join us for a conversation between John Edgar Wideman, 2018 Lannan Literary Lifetime Achievement Awardee, and Mitchell S. Jackson, 2021 Pulitzer Prize winner in Feature Writing. Their conversation will be an opportunity to become immersed in the rich tapestry of Wideman’s work and to discover a new dimension of literary brilliance as the two authors discuss Wideman’s chronicles of contemporary life and consider the historical and existential questions that underlie it.
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In his stunning work, John Edgar Wideman chronicles contemporary life while considering the historical and existential questions that underlie it. A novelist, short story writer, essayist and critic, he has contributed to a new humanist perspective in American literature, one that distills personality and history, crime and mysticism, art and the exigencies of material life through his work. The author of more than twenty novels, includingLook for Me and I’ll Be Gone, Writing to Save a Life, and Brothers and Keepers, he is a MacArthur Fellow, has won the PEN/Faulkner Award twice, and has twice been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award. He also received the Lannan Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2018.

In his forthcoming book Slaveroad, he uses his unique generational perspective to explore a daunting, haunting reality that runs throughout American history – offering a palimpsest of physical, social, and psychological terrain, that unsettles the boundaries of memoir, history, and fiction. In Wideman’s telling, the slaveroad begins with the Atlantic Ocean, across which enslaved Africans were carried, but the term comes to encompass the journeys and experiences of Black Americans up to the present, carrying with them the many insidious ways that slavery separates, wounds, and persists.

Mitchell S. Jackson is the John O. Whiteman Dean’s Distinguished Professor in the Department of English. Recipient of a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, Jackson won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing for his article about the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. He is the author of The Residue Years, winner of a Whiting Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Prize, and Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family.

***Register through Ticket Tailor to receive a link to the live-streamed video on the day of the event. This event will also be recorded and captioning will be provided.***

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Purchase tickets for the in-person event here:

https://tickets.lensic.org/9249/9250?_gl=1*17bhvcj*_gcl_au*NTc3ODcwMzc5LjE3MDc0MzQ4MTY.
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Speakers:

John Edgar Wideman's books include American Histories, Writing to Save a Life, Philadelphia Fire, Brothers and Keepers, Fatheralong, Hoop Roots, and Sent for You Yesterday. He is a MacArthur Fellow, has twice won a PEN/Faulkner Award, and has twice been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award. He received the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. He divides his time between New York and France.

Mitchell S. Jackson is the winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing and the 2021 National Magazine Award in Feature Writing. Jackson’s debut novel The Residue Years won a Whiting Award and The Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. His essay collection Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family was named a best book of 2019 by fifteen publications. Jackson is also the author of USA Today bestselling Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion, described by the New York Times, as “A coffee-table book that elevates the subject to the same decorative status as a Dior or Gucci monograph.” Jackson’s other honors include a Doctor of Humane Letters from Lewis & Clark College; as well as fellowships, grants, and awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Capital, the Cullman Center of the NYPL, Lannan Foundation, PEN, and TED. His writing has been featured on the cover of the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, Time, Esquire, and Men’s Health, as well as in The New Yorker, Harpers, Harper’s Bazaar, The Paris Review, The Guardian, and elsewhere. Jackson is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Esquire. He holds the John O. Whiteman Dean’s Distinguished Professorship in the English Department of Arizona State University.

Jackson is also a well-regarded speaker who has delivered lectures and keynote addresses both in the US and abroad, including the TED Conference, the Ubud (Bali) Writers and Readers Festival, the Sydney Writers’ Festival; the Hegra Conference of Nobel Laureates and Friends; as well as at Yale University, Brown University, Cornell University, Columbia University, Oberlin College, UCLA, and other esteemed institutions. A formerly incarcerated person, Jackson is also a social justice advocate who, as part of his outreach, visits prisons and youth facilities in the United States and abroad.

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This event is a partnership between Lannan Foundation and Haymarket Books. Lannan Foundation's Readings & Conversations series features inspired writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, as well as cultural freedom advocates with a social, political, and environmental justice focus. We are excited to offer these programs online to a global audience. Video and audio recordings of all events are available at lannan.org. Haymarket Books is a radical, independent, nonprofit book publisher based in Chicago. Our mission is to publish books that contribute to struggles for social and economic justice. We strive to make our books a vibrant and organic part of social movements and the education and development of a critical, engaged, international left. Lannan Foundation is a family foundation dedicated to cultural freedom, diversity, and creativity through projects that support exceptional contemporary artists and writers, inspired Native activists in rural communities, and social justice advocates.