SUNY Purchase College will present Michael Chabon: A Reading and Conversation on Sept. 25. The program, which is free and open to the public, will take place at SUNY Purchase in the Natural Sciences Building Lecture Hall located at 735 Anderson Hill Road in Purchase. The bestselling author, who has won a Pulitzer Prize and many other awards, has been named Suny Purchase’s 2017-2018 Roy and Shirley Durst Distinguished Chair in Literature, and will be featured in a series of events.
Benjamin Tice Smith
“Michael Chabon is a perfect fit for the position of the Roy and Shirley Durst Distinguished Chair in Literature,” said Anthony Domestico, assistant professor of literature at SUNY Purchase. “His varied tastes are reflected in the programs he’s designed for the coming year: a lecture and a reading from his work, a film screening and a public conversation with Neil Gaiman. He has a fascinating mind and is a distinctive prose stylist. We’re lucky to have him with us for the 2017-2018 academic year.”
One of the most acclaimed and popular contemporary American authors, Michael Chabon received a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and more than 30 other awards. The bestselling novelist is the author of “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh,” “A Model World,” “Wonder Boys,” “Werewolves in their Youth,” “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” “Summerland,” “The Final Solution,” “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union,” “Maps & Legends,” “Gentlemen of the Road,” “Telegraph Avenue,” “Moonglow,” and “The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man.”
Kathleen McCormick, professor of literature and pedagogy at SUNY Purchase , commented, “There’s a keen frisson at Purchase since it was announced that Michael Chabon was becoming the Roy and Shirley Durst Distinguished Chair in Literature. Chabon’s a wonderfully capacious and beautiful writer, moving easily across genres—sci fi, magic realism, comic-book heroes, and now he’s written a ‘fictional memoir,’ ‘Moonglow.’ I’m teaching the book and it is inspiring students to read more of Chabon’s work. His range and ease of blending literary and genre fiction will have incredible appeal to the Purchase community.”
The Durst Distinguished Lecture Series and the Roy and Shirley Durst Distinguished Chair in Literature are funded by the Roy and Shirley Durst Distinguished Chair in Literature Endowment. The mission of the Durst programs is to infuse the experience and intellect of leading writers into the SUNY Purchase community, while providing diverse opportunities for these writers to interact with students and influence campus life.
For more information, please visit: Purchase.edu/live/events/6210-durst-distinguished-lecture-series-michael-chabon or call 251-6550.
