[caption id="attachment_47769" align="alignleft" width="200"] Lorin Stein[/caption]
Renowned Paris Review editor Lorin Stein and former New Yorker fiction editor, author, and professor Dan Menaker will talk about writing at what will now be the first installment of the Spring Writers Speak Wednesdays series of free author talks and readings open to the public at Stony Brook Southampton. Mr. Stein and Mr. Menaker will speak on Wednesday, February 10, at 7 p.m. in the Radio Lounge on the second floor of Chancellors Hall.
Artist April Gornik and Parrish Art Museum Curator of Special Projects Andrea Grover were scheduled to be the first featured guests in the Spring Writers Speak series on January 27, but the event was cancelled on January 25.
Since taking over as the editor of The Paris Review in 2010, Mr. Stein has shaped the esteemed periodical to match his own vision. He has developed an online archive of Review interviews from the “Writers at Work Series,” has written an advice column, and oversees the journal’s daily blog. Under his leadership, The Review has received two National Magazine Awards, as well as Webby honors, Pushcart Prizes, and O'Henry Awards. Stein’s criticism and translations have appeared in The New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, n+1, and Harper’s. Stein has also edited “The Unprofessionals: New American Writing From The Paris Review” (Penguin) and co-edited “Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story” (Picador). Both are anthologies of the best work from The Paris Review.
An editor at The New Yorker for 20 years, Mr. Menaker went on to the post of editor-in-chief at Random House, and now serves as a consultant for Barnes & Noble. He worked with such writers as Salman Rushdie, Colum McCann, Elizabeth Strout, and Nassim Taleb. He has published five books, two of them New York Times Notable Books, and has twice won the O. Henry Award for short fiction.
Other writers scheduled for the series include: poet Gregory Pardlo, March 2; MFA in Creative Writing faculty members Ursula Hegi, Susan Scarf Merrell, Roger Rosenblatt, Julie Sheehan and Lou Ann Walker, March 9; novelist Terese Svoboda in conversation with poet and MFA in Creative Writing Director Julie Sheehan, March 23; Robert MacNeil in conversation with Roger Rosenblatt, April 6; and Erica Jong, April 27. On May 4, the evening will be devoted to readings by “the stars of tomorrow”: students currently enrolled in the MFA in Creative Writing and Literature program.
Writers Speak Wednesdays programs are free and open to the public. The evenings begin with a brief reception at 6:30 p.m.; readings begin at 7 p.m., followed by a Q&A and book signing. All programs are held in the Radio Lounge on the second floor of Chancellors Hall at Stony Brook Southampton, 239 Montauk Highway, Southampton. For more information, call 631-632-5030 or visit www.stonybrook.edu/mfa.