Writing, Reading, and Being All Too Gloriously Human: George Saunders with Tobias Wolff on the Storytelling Greats

• Literary
• Writing & Publishing

Tickets include a copy of A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. Copies will begin shipping on January 12, when the book is published. Note, this event will be a one-time-only, live, interactive virtual experience, not to be re-aired.

Part hilarious prophet, part tender interpreter of the human condition, Booker Prize winner George Saunders (Lincoln in the Bardo) has been called “the only writer who predicted 2020.” His tales, which generally are “not like anything anyone has written before” (The Atlantic), mix razor-sharp absurdism with a huge heart. They’re routinely celebrated with headlines like “George Saunders has written the best book you’ll read this year” (that was the New York Times on Tenth of December in 2013) or “a luminous feat of generosity and humanism” (Colson Whitehead on Lincoln in the Bardo in 2016). Or, as Khaled Hosseini put it, “Saunders makes you feel like you’re reading fiction for the first time.”

How does he do it? In our once-in-a-lifetime live, virtual event, Saunders teams up with his dear friend and mentor, Tobias Wolff (This Boy’s Life) — one of Barack Obama’s National Medal of the Arts honorees — to celebrate Saunders’ first book in four years, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life. They’ll discuss how to channel the craft of four Russian greats (Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol) to create lives — both on and off the page — imbued with the profound humanity these masters awaken in readers: a recognition of our fragile, surreal, frequently funny, sometimes tragic, always beautiful existence. Join these two literary legends (and their favorite literary ancestors) for an unforgettable Friday night as together we kick off a new year with warmth, wit, and wisdom.

Each ticket includes private access to the event recording for 10 days following the live event.