"Let me through. I'm a critic." A cartoon from the New Yorker.
Image Credit:

Condé Nast Collection

*POSTPONED* Critics’ Roundtable: The Art of Writing Criticism on Deadline
With K. Austin Collins (Vanity Fair), Amanda Petrusich (The New Yorker), and Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker), hosted by Dan Chiasson

12/5/2019 5 PM
Newhouse Center for the Humanities, Green Hall, Second Floor
Free and open to the public

*This event has been postponed due to travel complications. Please check back for a rescheduled date in the spring semester.*

A roundtable discussion of the art of writing criticism on deadline, for general audiences. What kinds of choices do critics make when they work up a piece? How do they see the role of praise and promotion in their work? Under what circumstances would they publish a negative review? An hour of lively discussion of the critical art, with questions from the audience.

The critics include:

K. Austin Collins: Collins is a film critic for Vanity Fair. His writing has appeared in The Ringer, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Reverse Shot, and the Brooklyn Rail. He writes crosswords for The New Yorker, The New York Times and the American Values Crossword Club.

Amanda Petrusich: Petrusich is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of three books. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction and has been nominated for a Grammy Award. Her criticism and features have appeared in the Times, The Oxford American, Spin, Pitchfork, GQ, Esquire, The Atlantic, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. Her most recent book, “Do Not Sell At Any Price,” explored the obsessive world of 78-r.p.m. record collectors. She is an assistant professor at New York University’s Gallatin School.

Alexandra Schwartz: Schwartz has been a a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2016. She was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing for 2014.

The roundtable is hosted by Dan Chaisson, Lorraine C. Wang Professor of English at Wellesley and the poetry critic for The New Yorker.

 

For more information, please contact:

nchadmin@wellesley.edu.

Generously supported by:

The Newhouse Center for the Humanities and the English department.