All-star cast of artists, writers headed to Chautauqua
Before you settle in to your beach reading list, get in touch with your inner writer at the Chautauqua Institution’s weeklong celebration of wordsmiths talking about their craft.
From Monday through July 11, the Southern Tier culture center will present a panoply of best-selling authors and beloved names in literature, including E. L. Doctorow, Amy Tan, Garry Trudeau, Billy Collins and Joyce Carol Oates.
Instead of a lecture from the podium on a specific subject, audiences will witness the writers in conversation with author and playwright Roger Rosenblatt. The audience will be able to submit questions, which Rosenblatt will choose from for more dialogue.
All of the events are scheduled for 10:45 a. m. (Ticket information is at https://tickets. ciweb.org).
Monday
Poet Billy Collins, a former United States poet laureate, has been praised for achieving both popular appeal and critical acclaim.
Collins has published eight collections of poetry, including “Questions About Angels,” “The Art of Drowning,” “Picnic,” “Lightning,” “Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes,” “Sailing Alone Around the Room: New & Selected Poems,” “Nine Horses” and “The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems.”
Tuesday
E. L. (Edgar Lawrence) Doctorow has earned a reputation as one of America’s great masters of the historical novel.
Doctorow’s most recent work, 2005’s “The March,” uses carefully drawn characters to describe Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s infamous military rampage from the burned-out ruins of Atlanta to the Carolinas, leaving a path of destruction that affected the South for generations. “The March” received the 2006 PEN/Faulkner Award and the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award.
Wednesday
Joyce Carol Oates, who hails from Lockport, is one of the country’s most prolific and versatile contemporary writers. With a writing career that spans 25 years, Oates is the author of more than 70 books, including novels, short-story collections, poetry volumes, plays, literary criticism and essays.
Her writing has earned her much praise and many awards, including the PEN/Malamud Award for Achievement in the Short Story (1996), the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature (1998) and the 2003 Kenyon Review Award for Literature.
She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, where she is a professor of creative writing in the University Center for the Creative and Performing Arts.
Next Thursday
Amy Tan, born in the United States to Chinese immigrants, is a best-selling novelist whose books include “The Joy Luck Club,” “The Kitchen God’s Wife” and “The Bonesetter’s Daughter.”
Her work has been translated into 35 languages. Tan served as co-producer and co-screenwriter for the film adaptation of “The Joy Luck Club.” She was also the creative consultant for “Sagwa,” the Emmy-nominated PBS television series for children.
July 11 In 1975, Garry Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury, became the first comic-strip artist to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. Doonesbury, launched in 1970, now appears in about 1,400 daily and Sunday newspapers in the United States and abroad. His work has been collected in nearly 60 hardcover and paperback editions that have cumulatively sold more than seven million copies worldwide.
In 2000, Trudeau, working with Dotcomix, launched Duke2000, a presidential campaign and Web site featuring a real-time 3-D streaming- animation character. Nearly 30 campaign videos were posted on the site, and “Ambassador Duke” was interviewed by satellite on “Larry King Live” and 60 local TV news programs.
Trudeau is currently a contributing essayist for Time magazine.
