The CT Forum Panelists - In the News!

Connecticut Forum panelists have been making lots of headlines lately. Here's a round-up of some past and future CT Forum panelists who have been featured in recent national headlines:

Kurt Vonnegut: The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library was recently the recipient of a $100,000 grant that will go towards finishing up the library's downtown Indianapolis space dedicated to the legendary American author. Vonnegut participated in our 2006 Forum, An Evening With our Favorite Writers. You can read about the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.

Watch Vonnegut at The Forum

Tina Brown: A seasoned Forum Alum, Tina Brown has participated in not one but two Forum events - A World of Change in 2010 and Talkin' 'Bout My Generation in 2005. As the founder and editor of The Daily Beast, Brown's been making headlines this week - including this story in the New York Times - because of The Daily Beast's merger with Newsweek in a joint venture to form The Newsweek Daily Beast Company.

Watch Brown at The Forum

Jonathan Franzen: We're beyond excited that Celebrated Author Jonathan Franzen will be participating in our last Forum of the season, Forum Book Club on May 7, 2011. Franzen, who was also recently featured on the cover (the COVER!) of TIME magazine, has been showered with accolades for his new novel, Freedom, since its release earlier this year. He'll be a guest on Oprah (OPRAH!!) on December 6, where the two are expected to kiss and make-up after their publicized spat a few years back. Here's the dish: Oprah wanted to feature Franzen's first novel, The Corrections, in her book club. Franzen spoke publicly about his concerns that the opportunity might turn off potential readers (namely: males) from reading the book. Oprah subsequently un-invited him and, we can assume, many Oprah viewers added him to their black-list. Now, however, the spat seems to be over and the love-fest can begin.

Patti Smith: Rock Legend Patti Smith wowed everyone at our Forum Music Fest last May - from long time fans to high school age CT YOUTH Forum members who were just meeting her for the first time. Cool, real, and incredibly talented, we celebrate Patti's latest accomplishment: the National Book Award for nonfiction for her memoir, Just Kids.

Watch Smith at The Forum

Freedom Author Jonathan Franzen Joins CT Forum Panel

Franzen photo credit Greg Martin (Freedom)

We are thrilled to announce that

JONATHAN FRANZEN

Celebrated Novelist...The Corrections and Freedom

will be a panelist at our Forum Book Club on Saturday, May 7, 2011. 

He will join fellow panelists Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, and John Irving, author of The Cider House Rules and The World According to Garp.

Jonathan Franzen is a celebrated American novelist and essayist whose most recent book, Freedom, much like his 2001 novel The Corrections, has won widespread critical acclaim. Touted as “a work of total genius,” and a “tour de force,” Freedom is considered a masterpiece in American fiction and Franzen a “literary genius of our time.” He is the first American author to appear on the cover of TIME magazine in the last ten years.

Franzen’s acclaimed novel, The Corrections, earned the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction, the 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, and was a finalist for the 2002 Pultizer Prize for Fiction. The Corrections was also selected for Oprah Winfrey’s book club in 2001; however, Franzen declined the opportunity for fear that the Oprah logo on the cover might dissuade men from reading the book. Franzen subsequently gained widespread media attention and The Corrections became one of the decade’s best-selling works of literary fiction. His other novels include The Twenty-Seventh City and Strong Motion.

Franzen’s 2002 essay collection, How to Be Alone included “Perchance to Dream, “ a 1996 Harpers essay bemoaning the state of literature and his discomfort with the place of fiction in contemporary society. He further explored the influence of his childhood and adolescence on his creative life in his 2006 memoir, The Discomfort Zone.

Among Franzen’s rules for aspiring writers are: ”You see more sitting still than chasing after” and “Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.”

Educated at Swarthmore, Franzen studied on a Fulbright Scholarship in Germany. He lives in New York City and also writes for The New Yorker magazine.

Please visit our website for more information about Forum Book Club on Saturday, May 7, 2011.

Note: At this time, tickets for Forum Book Club are currently on sale to Forum Members only, but you may call (860) 509-0909 to get on the pre-sale waiting list. Wait list ticket orders will be processed in the order they are received.