English 217 Fall 2006: Writers of Litchfield County Nonfiction and Memoir
August 30 - December 6, 2006
Lecturer: Davyne Verstandig
Wednesday evenings 6:30 - 9:00 pm
Litchfield
County
writers reflect through memoir and nonfiction on a variety of issues: addiction, recovery, the death penalty, suicide, and life as immigrants. One of the major focus points of the course will be the question of what is truth versus what is invented truth.
Frank McCourt
December 6, 2006
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(photo:Justin Lyga)
Frank McCourt was born in 1930 in Brooklyn, New York, to Irish immigrant parents, grew up in Limerick, Ireland, and returned to America in 1949. For thirty years he taught in New York City high schools. His first book, Angela’s Ashes, won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the L.A. Times Book Award. He spoke about his book Teacher Man .
Peter Duchin & Brooke Hawyard Duchin
November 15, 2006
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(r: photo by Justin Lyga)
Son of the celebrated bandleader Eddy Duchin and Marjorie Oelrichs, Peter Duchin grew up to be America’s preeminent society bandleader. He is vice-chairman of the New York State Council on the Arts and serves on the boards of many cultural institutions. Duchin co-authored two mystery novels, Blue Moon and Good Morning Heartache, with John Morgan Wilson. He spoke about his memoir Ghost of a Chance co-authored wtih Charles Michener. Michener is a former senior editor for cultural affairs at Newsweek, and now a senior editor at The New Yorker as well as the music critic for The New York Observer.
On the same evening, Brooke Hawyard Duchin, the daughter of film star Margaret Sullavan and agent-producer Leland Hayward, spoke about her book Haywire. The family biography, written in 1977, exposes the tragic underbelly of a world of privilege and glamour. Brooke is the wife of Peter Duchin, with whom she has three children.
Tom Hunt
November 1, 2006
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(r: photo by Justin Lyga)
Tom Hunt teaches English at Kent School. He spoke about Cliffs of Despair: Journey to the Edge , an expansion of his essay of the same name cited as a notable work in The Best American Essays collection.
Donald Connery
October 24, 2006
Donald Connery of Kent, a former foreign correspondent for TIME and LIFE magazines spoke on the topic of police interrogation and civil rights.
Ken Simpson
October 19, 2006
(2005 Neag Distinguished Visting Professor in British Literature at the University of Connecticut )
(photo by Justin Lyga)
“Of Mice and Women: Sentimental Encounters in the work of Robert Burns and Laurence Sterne.”
Ken Simpson, a scholar on both Scotland and Burns, was the founding Director of the Centre for Scottish Cultural Studies at the University of Strathclyde where he taught for 34 years. In addition, he established and directed the annual International Burns Conference and organized the Writerfest program of readings by Scottish Writers. Scot Robert Burns was the most celebrated literati of his time, so beloved that over 10,000 people attended his burial. A national celebrity to this day, Burns has been honored with traditional Scottish feasts on the anniversary of his birth in 1759 for over 200 years. The title of the lecture is a play on famous Anglo-Irish writer Laurence Sterne’s work A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. Sterne, a novelist and clergyman of the 18 th century, is best known for his book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. Both Burns and Sterne have influenced and continue to influence writers to this day. Ken Simpson is the 2005 Neag Distinguished Visting Professor in British Literature at the University of Connecticut.
Antoinette Bosco
October 18, 2006
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(r. photo by Justin Lyga)
Antoinette Bosco is a syndicated columnist with the national Catholic News Service in Washington D.C. A prize-winning journalist and the author of over 200 magazine article, several thousand newspaper stories and columns, she is widely known as the leading proponent against the death penalty. Author of over a dozen books, Bosco received the Walter Everett Humanitarian Award for her work in the advancement of human rights. Antoinette Bosco spoke about her book Choosing Mercy: A Mother of Murder Victims Pleads to End the Death Penalty.
Robin Magowan
October 4, 2006
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(r.photo by Justin Lyga)
Robin Magowan founded the transatlantic review Margin in 1986, which he edited until 1990. Magowan has published seven books of poetry including Lilac Cigarette in a Wish Cathedral, which was chosen for the “James Dickey Contemporary Poetry” series. His books include a translation of Michaux’s Ecuador; Narcissus and Orpheus; travel writings such as And Other Voyages and Fabled Cities: Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva; and two books on bicycle racing. He spoke about his memoir Memoirs of a Minotaur, from Merrill Lynch to Patty Hearst to Poetry.
Dani Shapiro
September 27, 2006
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(r.photo by Justin Lyga)
Dani Shapiro is the author of three acclaimed novels, Playing with Fire, Fugitive Blue, and Picturing the Work. Slow Motion: A True Story was chosen as a LondonTimes Best Book of the Year. She teaches in the creative writing program at Columbia University and The New School, and has written for many magazines, including The New Yorker, Vogu, and Granta. Dani spoke about her memoir Slow Motion.
Burton Bernstein
September 20, 2006
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(r.photo by Justin Lyga)
Burton Bernstein was a staff writer for The New Yorker from 1957 to 1992. His works of fiction include The Grove and The Lost Art; The Sticks, a Profile of Essex County, New York; Thurber: A Biography; Look Ma, I am Kool! and Other Casuals, a collection of humor pieces; The Great and Terrible Wilderness; and Plane Crazy: A Celebration of Flying. Bernstein spoke about his memoir Family Matters, Sam, Jennie, and the Kids.
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