other topics for publications such as the New York Times and National Geographic. The Open Road (2008), describing more than 30 years of talking and traveling with the fourteenth Dalai Lama, was a best seller in the United States. At Wellesley, Iyer will read from his newly released book, The Man Within My Head (Knopf, January 2012).
Pico Iyer
Jennifer Egan
Leah Hager Cohen
Nikky Finney and Tom Sleigh April 10 (Tue) / 4:30 PM The Susan and Donald Newhouse Center for the Humanities (237 Green Hall)
Nikky Finney received the 2011 National Book Award in poetry for her recent work, Head Off & Split. She is a member of the Affrilachian Poets group that includes Frank X Walker and Kelly Norman Ellis.
Jennifer Egan February 28 (Tue) / 4:30 PM
Tom Sleigh is the author of more than half a dozen volumes of poetry, including Space Walk, which won the 2008 Kingsley Tufts Award. Sleigh has also received the Shelley Award from the Poetry Society of America. Sleigh has written several critically acclaimed plays, a multimedia opera, and a full-length translation of Euripides’ Herakles.
The Susan and Donald Newhouse Center for the Humanities (237 Green Hall)
Jim Shepard. Photo by Michael Lionstar
Nikky Finney
Tom Sleigh
THE Susan and Donald NEWHOUSE CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES
Jennifer Egan’s 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad (Knopf, 2010), soared to the top of many publications’ Best of 2010 lists, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Slate, Salon, and People. The book also won the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction and has been tapped by HBO for a series treatment. Egan is also the author of The Invisible Circus, which became a feature film starring Cameron Diaz; Look at Me, a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction in 2001; and The Keep, which was a national best seller.
Improvisation Sound | Music | Space | Time Please see pages 6–9
Leah Hager Cohen and Jim Shepard March 13 (Tue) / 4:30 PM The Susan and Donald Newhouse Center for the Humanities (237 Green Hall)
Founded in 2004 by a generous gift from Susan Marley Newhouse ’55 and Donald Newhouse, the Newhouse Center for the Humanities generates and supports innovative, world-class programming in the humanities and arts. The mission of the Newhouse Center is to create a dynamic and cosmopolitan intellectual community that extends from Wellesley College to the wider Boston-area community and beyond.
Leah Hager Cohen has written four nonfiction books, including Train Go Sorry and Glass, Paper, Beans, and four novels, including House Lights and The Grief of Others. She serves as the Jenks Chair in Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review.
The Distinguished Writers Series
Pico Iyer
This series reminds the world that reading, writing, conversation, and laughter are related arts. The format is simple, the emotional reward complex. The writers read, have a conversation with a faculty member, and then engage in an open dialogue with the audience.
The Susan and Donald Newhouse Center for the
Jim Shepard is the author of six novels and four story collections. His most recent collection, Like You’ d Understand, Anyway, was a finalist for the National Book Award and won The Story Prize. His novel Project X won the 2005 Library of Congress/Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction. His short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Harper’s, The Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New Yorker. Four of his stories have been chosen for the Best American Short Stories, two for the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and one for a Pushcart Prize.
February 2 (Thu) / 4:30 PM Humanities (237 Green Hall)
Pico Iyer is the author of seven works of nonfiction, including Video Night in Kathmandu (cited on many lists of the best travel books) and The Lady and the Monk (finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Award). For a quarter of a century, he has been an essayist for Time magazine, while also writing on literature for The New York Review of Books, on globalism for Harper’s, and on many
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Alloy Orchestra Please see page 22
Dziga Vertov. Still from Man with a Movie Camera (1929).
All events are free and open to the public. www.newhouse-center.org 13