John Irving at the Forum Book Club this past Saturday. He talked about his relationship with Vonnegut and why stories featuring dysfunction are the only stories that are interesting. He referenced Melville and Shakespeare and Dickens, but then told us about being censored by The New York Times and that penis is his favorite word (you know, because it lets you get your kids’ attention in the airport). He was contradictory and spirited, funny and thoughtful.
Writers John Irving, Jonathan Franzen and Azar Nafisi took the stage at The Bushnell Theater in Hartford on Saturday for a spirited and enlightening conversation about their craft, their lives and the world we live in.
More photos are available on our Facebook page, here.
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.
Note: At this time, tickets forForum 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.
The Connecticut Forum Announces: John Irving to Join Azar Nafisi at The Forum Book Club Saturday, May 7, 2011
Novelist and screenwriter John Irving is one of the most popular and respected writers in the world. His novels have become American classics; each one is a publishing event.
Irving’s first international bestseller, The World According to Garp, introduced a world of readers to his inventive and expansive style, memorable characters and masterfully woven stories-within-stories. Garp won a National Book Award in 1980 and was made into a film starring Robin Williams.
Since Garp’s release, all of Irving’s novels, including Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany, andA Widow for One Year, have been translated into over 30 languages and sold tens of millions of copies, and The Cider House Rules was turned into a movie in 1999 that won him the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Irving has three screenplays in-progress; his 12th novel, Last Night in Twisted River, was released in 2009.
Irving has won the O. Henry Award and awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 1992 Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma and in 2001 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Watch Irving talk about the "Writer's Craft" below.
Azar Nafisi, Author of Reading Lolita in Tehran
will be a Panelist at Forum Book Club
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Azar Nafisi is best known as the author of the national bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, which electrified its readers with a compassionate and often harrowing portrait of the Islamic revolution in Iran and how it affected one university professor and her students. Earning high acclaim and an enthusiastic readership, Reading Lolita in Tehran is an incisive exploration of the transformative powers of fiction in a world of tyranny. The book has spent over 117 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Nafisi is a Visiting Professor and the Executive Director of Cultural Conversations at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, where she is a professor of aesthetics, culture, and literature, and teaches courses on the relation between culture and politics. Nafisi held a fellowship at Oxford University, teaching and conducting a series of lectures on culture and the important role of Western literature and culture in Iran after the revolution in 1979. She taught at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University, and Allameh Tabatabai before her return to the United States in 1997 - earning national respect and international recognition for advocating on behalf of Iran’s intellectuals, youth, and especially young women. In 1981, she was expelled from the University of Tehran for refusing to wear the mandatory Islamic veil and did not resume teaching until 1987.
Nafisi also conducted workshops in Iran for women students on the relationship between culture and human rights; the material culled from these workshops formed the basis of a new human rights education curriculum. She has lectured and written extensively in English and Persian on the political implications of literature and culture, as well as the human rights of the Iranian women and girls and the important role they play in the process of change for pluralism and an open society in Iran. She has been consulted on issues related to Iran and human rights both by the policy makers and various human rights organizations in the US and elsewhere. She is also involved in the promotion of not just literacy, but of reading books with universal literary value.
Azar Nafisi has written for The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Her cover story, “The Veiled Threat: The Iranian Revolution’s Woman Problem” published in The New Republic (February 22, 1999) has been reprinted into several languages. Additionally, she has published a children’s book (with illustrator Sophie Benini Pietromarchi) BiBi and the Green Voice. Azar Nafisi’s most recent book, Things I Have Been Silent About: Memories, a memoir about her mother, was published in January 2009. She is currently working on a book entitled Republic of the Imagination, which is about the power of literature to liberate minds and peoples.
After reading hundreds of suggestions about Forum topics submitted by our subscribers, volunteers, sponsors, YOUTH Forum members, Friends of The Forum and community members, we are thrilled to share with you this first glimpse at our 2010-2011 Forum Season!
We will be announcing our first round of panelists soon, but we'd still like to hear your suggestions. (And we listen!)
Who do you want to us to bring to Hartford for a "civil" dialogue about ugly politics, the erosion of public discourse, and the crudeness that pervades our daily lives?
Are you an educator? School Administrator? Parent? Concerned citizen? Who do you want to hear talk strategies and solutions to the challenges facing our schools...and our future?
The human brain is perhaps the real "final frontier" - a vast unexplored territory about which scientists know relatively little. What brainiacs do youwant to hear talk about thoughts, memory, health, science?
Mystery. Romance. Historical Fiction. Memoir. Who do you love to read?
Please leave a comment and tell us what you think, and stay tuned for updates and more about our upcoming 19th Season! Cheers!
We are a one-of-a-kind nonprofit organization serving Connecticut and beyond with live, unscripted panel discussions among renowned experts and celebrities, and community outreach programs including our award-winning CT YOUTH Forum. Our mission: To encourage the free and active exchange of ideas in Forums that inform, challenge, entertain, inspire and build bridges among all people and organizations in our community.
Photo by Nick Caito
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