Events Calendar

Please join Adam Haslett and Jess Walter for a reading in the Frank Conroy Reading Room at 8pm on Thursday, November 29.

A National Book Award finalist and winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award, Jess Walter is the author of six novels, one book of short stories and one nonfiction book. His work has been translated into 32 languages, and his essays, short fiction, criticism and journalism have been widely published, including appearances in Best American Short Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Harper's, Esquire, McSweeney's, Byliner, Playboy, ESPN the Magazine, Details and many others. Walter’s work has been described by reviewers as “lyrical,” “heartbreakingly grim,” “sneakily sad,” “wildly entertaining,” and “badass.” Helen Shulman, writing for the New York Times, says that Walter’s “balanced mixture of pathos and comedy stirs the heart and amuses as it also rescues us from the all too human pain…”

Adam Haslett is the author of three works of fiction: Imagine Me Gone (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award), the short story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award), and the novel Union Atlantic (winner of the Lambda Literary Award, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize). He has been awarded the Berlin Prize by the American Academy in Berlin, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the PEN/Malamud and PEN/Winship Awards. In 2016, he received the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. His books have been translated into 18 languages, and his journalism on culture and politics have appeared in The Financial Times, Esquire, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, The Nation, and The Atlantic Monthly, among others. Of his work Alexis Burling writes in the San Francisco Chronicle that: “By signing on with Haslett and his characters…we are reminded of what it is like to be truly, if fleetingly, alive.”