Distinguished Writers Series Kicks Off with Nathan Englander
Newhouse Center for the Humanities Brings Noted Authors and Poets to Wellesley
Nathan Englander is the author of the story collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges and the novel The Ministry of Special Cases (both Alfred A. Knopf). His fiction and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, Electric Literature and anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Anthology and numerous editions of Best American Short Stories, including the latest issue Best American Short Stories 2011 (ed: Geraldine Brooks).
The New Yorker named Englander one of "20 Writers for the 21st Century." He has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a PEN/Malamud Award, and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
He has translated the text for the forthcoming New American Haggadah (ed: Jonathan Safran Foer) from Hebrew to English, and is translating some short stories by the renowned Israeli writer, Etgar Keret. Englander's new collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, was published by Knopf in February 2012 and the theatrical adaptation of his short story "The Twenty-Seventh Man," will premiere at The Public Theater in New York in the Fall of 2012. That play is Englander's first, and as he told ArtsFuse, wouldn't be in existence without Wellesley's own Nora Ephron.
He said, "When my first book came out in 1999, the very amazing and sorely missed Nora Ephron read the book and said there was a play in the story "The Twenty-Seventh Man." It was her idea—I had never had any interest in writing a play."
Nathan Englander visits Wellesley to read from his work and speak at the Newhouse Center for the Humanities on Thurday, September 28, at 4:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
Other authors in the Distinguished Writers Series include:
- October 16: Joy Harjo
- October 30: Mat Johnson and Tracy Smith
- November 12: Geoff Dyer
