For the first time, The Paris Review is live at Chautauqua Institution! This in-depth interview of John Keene by writer-in-residence Jeffery Renard Allen will offer attendees a glimpse into the insights, influences and practices of author and MacArthur Genius Keene. This special program is co-sponsored by the African-American Heritage House.

Since 1953, The Paris Review’s Writers at Work interview series has made the wisdom of literary masters from Toni Morrison to Stephen King available to its readers—and sometimes lucky live attendees. This conversation, introduced by Paris Review editor Emily Nemens, will be the groundwork for a new interview in the series.

John Keene is the author of the story collection Counternarratives and the novel Annotations, as well as a former member of the Dark Room Writers Collective, a graduate fellow of Cave Canem, and the recipient of many awards and fellowships―including a MacArthur Genius Award, the Windham-Campbell Prize and the Whiting Foundation Prize for fiction. Keene teaches at Rutgers. He will also deliver the Thursday, July 27 CLSC presentation on Kindred by Octavia E. Butler.

Jeffery Renard Allen is a professor of creative writing at the University of Virginia and the author of five books, including two award-winning novels, Rails Under My Back and Song of the Shank. His short-story collection, Holding Pattern, won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. He will also lead a Writers' Center prose workshop, "Distortion, the Other Magical Realism," during his Week One residency at Chautauqua.

Emily Nemens joined The Paris Review as editor in 2018. Stories published during her tenure at The Southern Review were selected for the Pushcart Prize anthology, Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Prize anthology, and PEN America Best Debut Fiction. Her debut novel, The Cactus League, is forthcoming from FSG.

This event requires a gate pass. For more information please visit the Chautauqua Institute website

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