Philip Schultz In Conversation

The Church in Sag Harbor will host esteemed poet Philip Schultz in conversation with editor Jill Bialosky on Friday, June 3, at 6 p.m. Featuring an excerpt reading and discussion of Schultz’s newly published memoir “Comforts of the Abyss,” the two will converse about Schultz’s writing school, method and how it translates to the page. In this candid and generous book, Schultz reflects on his early life in an immigrant neighborhood of upstate New York, his first writing experiments inspired by Ernest Hemingway and John Keats, his struggles with dyslexia, and the failures he witnessed in his father’s life and his own. Through surprising, sometimes humorous, and encouraging encounters with the writers who influence him — including Elizabeth Bishop, Joan Didion and Norman Mailer — as well as moving experiences of loss, Schultz learns how to fashion personas out of pain. The evening will conclude with a book signing.

Philip Schultz is the author of eight poetry collections, including “Luxury” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Failure,” as well as “Comforts of the Abyss,” the memoir “My Dyslexia” and “The Wherewithal,” a novel in verse. The founder of The Writers Studio, he has been teaching creative writing since 1971. He resides in East Hampton.

Jill Bialosky is the author of five acclaimed collections of poetry, three critically acclaimed novels, along with her forthcoming novel, “The Deceptions” to be published September 2022, and a two memoirs, “Poetry Will Save Your Life” and The New York Times bestselling memoir “History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life.” Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, O Magazine, The Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, and Paris Review, among others. She co-edited with Helen Schulman the anthology, “Wanting a Child.” She is an executive editor and vice president at W. W. Norton & Company. In 2014 she was honored by the Poetry Society of America for her distinguished contribution to poetry.

Tickets for the June 3 conversation are $10 at thechurchsagharbor.org. The Church is at 48 Madison Street, Sag Harbor.