Phillip Lopate and Kiese Laymon In Conversation: Notes of a Native Son

Published in 1955, James Baldwin’s uncompromising debut collection of essays Notes of a Native Sonannounced him as a major force in the genre of the American essay. The volume remains a resonant analysis of subjects at once literary and political. Tackling issues as varied as the “dishonest” sentimentality of Harriet Beecher Stowe and the protest fiction of Richard Wright, to colonialism, the relationship between Africans and African Americans, as well as the earnest “good intentions” of white liberals, this inaugural collection of essays retains its marker as a clear sign of James Baldwin’s prophetic witness. Join celebrated essayist and Columbia University School of the Arts Professor, Phillip Lopate, and novelist, essayist, and Vassar College Professor, Kiese Laymon, as they discuss the enduring significance of Notes and Baldwin’s exceptional career as a nonfiction writer.

The evening begins with an introduction by Imani Perry, Professor, Center for African American Studies, Princeton University.

Phillip Lopate was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1943, and received a BA from Columbia in 1964, and a doctorate from the Union Graduate School in 1979. He has written three personal essay collections — Bachelorhood (Little, Brown, 1981), Against Joie de Vivre (Poseidon-Simon & Schuster, 1989), and Portrait of My Body (Doubleday-Anchor, 1996); two novels, Confessions of Summer (Doubleday, 1979) and The Rug Merchant (Viking, 1987) and a pair of novellas (Two Marriages, Other Press, 2008); three poetry collections, The Eyes Don’t Always Want to Stay Open (Sun Press, 1972), The Daily Round (Sun Press, 1976) and At the End of the Day (Marsh Hawk Press, 2010); a memoir of his teaching experiences, Being With Children (Doubleday, 1975); a collection of his movie criticism,Totally Tenderly Tragically (Doubleday-Anchor, 1998); an urbanist meditation, Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan (Crown, 2004); a critical study, Notes On Sontag (Princeton University Press, 2009) and a biographical monograph, Rudy Burckhardt: Photographer and Filmmaker (Harry N. Abrams, 2004.) In addition, there is a Phillip Lopate reader, Getting Personal: Selected Writings (Basic Books, 2003). His two most recent publications are Portrait Inside My Head (personal essays) and To Show and to Tell: the Craft of Literary Nonfiction, which were both released in March 2013 from The Free Press/Simon & Schuster. He has edited the following anthologies: The Art of the Personal Essay (Doubleday-Anchor, 1994); Writing New York (Library of America, 1998), Journey of a Living Experiment (Virgil Press, 1979), a best essays of the year series, The Anchor Essay Annual (1997-99), and American Movie Critics (Library of America, 2006). His essays, fiction, poetry, film and architectural criticism have appeared inThe Best American Short Stories (1974), The Best American Essays (1987), several Pushcart Prize annuals, The Paris Review, Harper’s, Vogue, Esquire, Film Comment, Threepenny Review, Double Take, New York Times, Harvard Educational Review, Preservation, Cite, 7 Days, Metropolis, Conde Nast Traveler, and many other periodicals and anthologies. He has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, and two New York Foundation for the Arts grants. He received a Christopher medal for Being With Children, a Texas Institute of Letters award in the best non-fiction book of the year category for Bachelorhood , and was a finalist for the PEN best essay book of the year award for Portrait of My Body. His anthology, Writing New York, received a citation from the New York Society Library and honorable mention from the Municipal Art Society’s Brendan Gill Award. After working with children for twelve years as a writer in the schools, he taught creative writing and literature at Fordham, Cooper Union, University of Houston, Hofstra University, New York University and Bennington College. He is the director of the nonfiction concentration in the graduate Writing Program at Columbia University School of the Arts, where he also teaches writing.

Kiese Laymon is a black southern writer, born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon attended Millsaps College and Jackson State University before graduating from Oberlin College. He earned an MFA from Indiana University and is currently an Associate Professor of English at Vassar College. Laymon is the author of the novel, Long Division  and a collection of essays,  How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Laymon has written essays and stories for numerous publications including Esquire, ESPN, Colorlines, NPR, Gawker, Truthout, Longman’s Hip Hop Reader, The Best American Non-required Reading, Guernica, Mythium and Politics and Culture. He was selected a member of the Root 100 in 2013 and 2014. Laymon is the recipient of the 2015-2016 Grisham Writer in Residence Fellowship at the University of Mississippi.

Long Division was named one of the Best of 2013 by Buzzfeed, The Believer, Salon, Guernica, Contemporary Literature, Mosaic Magazine, Library Journal, Chicago Tribune and the Crunk Feminist Collective. It was also short-listed for the Believer Book Award, the Ernest Gaines Award and the Morning News Tournament of Books. Long Division won the 2014 Saroyan International Writing Award on November 10.

Three essays in How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America have been included in the Best American series, the Best of Net award, and the Atlantic’s Best Essays of 2013. Laymon has two books forthcoming from Bloomsbury: A Fat Black Memoir and a novel And So On.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO ALL.