Where We Are From:
Place and Personhood in Fiction
Tuesday, April 7, 2015 | 7:30 PM
Purchase a single ticket for $15 (buy)
Folger Shakespeare Library – Elizabethan Theatre
201 East Capitol Street SE
Washington, DC 20003 (map)
Few authors portray local life in America with as much generous care as Allan Gurganus and Elizabeth Strout. In acclaimed novels and stories, these authors explore the ways in which our sense of place intersects with our sense of self.
Allan Gurganus is the author of the novels Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All and Plays Well With Others and three collections of short fiction: The Practical Heart, Local Souls, and White People, which was a finalist for the 1992 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The recipient of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Gurganus is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in a village of 6,000 residents in North Carolina.
“The pleasures of Allan Gurganus’ Local Souls are pretty much the pleasures of fiction, period: the satisfactions of the tale and the surprise of the phrase, insights into the human condition and portraits from a particular place, a sharp sense of the physical world and a freshened awareness of the pulls and pains of social class. Pick a page and you’ll find a sentence to love…. Dazzling.”
— Kevin Fenton, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Purchase books by Allan Gurganus.
Elizabeth Strout is the author of the bestselling novels Olive Kitteridge, Abide with Me, and The Burgess Boys, among other works. She has received the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, and has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize. She lives in New York City.
“Miss Strout guides her readers through the action with delicate subtlety and forceful writing. She has a gift for straightforward storytelling and original turns of phrase, coupled with insight into the human heart and psyche.”
— Corrina Lothar, The Washington Times
Purchase books by Elizabeth Strout.