2010 PEN/Faulkner Foundation Gala (2010)

This event happened on September 20th 2010 at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

“Indiscretion(s),” a celebration benefiting the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, features readings by noted authors including Nicholas Delbanco, Lisa Grunwald, Jane Hamilton, Maxine Hong Kingston, Walter Kirn, Laura Lippman, Manuel Muñoz, Bich Minh Nguyen, Audrey Niffenegger, Howard Norman, and ZZ Packer.

Nicholas Delbanco is the Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan and Chair of the Hopwood Committee. He has published twenty-five books of fiction and non-fiction. His most recent novels are The Count of Concord and Spring and Fall; his most recent works of non-fiction are The Countess of Stanlein Restored and The Lost Suitcase: Reflections on the Literary Life. As editor he has compiled the work of, among others, John Gardner and Bernard Malamud. The long-term Director of the MFA Program as well as the Hopwood Awards Program at the University of Michigan, he has served as Chair of the Fiction Panel for the National Book Awards, received a Guggenheim Fellowship and, twice, a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship.

Lisa Grunwald is the author of the novels The Irresistible Henry House, Whatever Makes You Happy, New Year’s Eve, The Theory of Everything, and Summer. Along with her husband, Reuters Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler, she edited the anthologies The Marriage Book, Women’s Letters, and Letters of the Century. Grunwald is a former contributing editor toLife and former features editor of Esquire. She lives in New York City.

Jane Hamilton is the author of The Book of Ruth, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction; A Map of the World, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and named one of the top ten books of the year by Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly, the Miami Herald, and People magazine; Disobedience; and The Short History of a Prince. She lives in Rochester, Wisconsin.

Maxine Hong Kingston is the author of The Woman Warrior, China Men, and The Fifth Book of Peace, among other works. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal, the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award. She worked for many years as a senior lecturer in creative writing at UC Berkeley. Kingston lives in Oakland, California.

Walter Kirn is the author of eight books and an e-book. His most recent is Blood Will Out, a memoir of his friendship with the con artist and murderer, Clark Rockefeller. His other books include Up in the Air, Thumbsucker (both of which have been made in to feature films), Mission to America, My Mother’s Bible (e-book), The Unbinding, She Needed Me, and My Hard Bargain.

Laura Lippman since her debut in 1997, New York Times bestseller Laura Lippman has been recognized as one of the most gifted and versatile crime novelists working today. Her series novels, stand-alones and short stories have all won major awards, including the Edgar and the Anthony, and her work is published in more than 20 countries. A former Baltimore Sun journalist, she has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, O, The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Glamour and Longreads. "Simply one of our best novelists, period," the Washington Post said upon the publication of the ground-breaking What the Dead Know. She lives in Baltimore and New Orleans with her family.

Manuel Muñoz is the author of a novel, What You See in the Dark, and the short-story collections Zigzagger and The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue, which was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.  He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts.  He has been recognized with a Whiting Writer’s Award, three O. Henry Awards, and an appearance in Best American Short Stories.

Audrey Niffenegger is a visual artist and a faculty member at Columbia College in Chicago. In addition to her bestselling debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, she is the author of two illustrated novels, The Three Incestuous Sisters and The Adventuress. She lives in Chicago.

Howard Norman is a three-time winner of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and a winner of the Lannan Award for fiction. His 1987 novel, The Northern Lights, was nominated for a National Book Award, as was his 1994 novel The Bird Artist. He is also author of the novels The Museum Guard, The Haunting of L, and Devotion. His books have been translated into twelve languages. Norman teaches in the MFA program at the University of Maryland. He lives in Washington, D.C., and Vermont with his wife and daughter.

ZZ Packer is the author of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (2003). Frequently published in such journals as The New Yorker and Granta, she is at work on a novel, The Thousands, which explores the lives of former Louisiana slaves in forming a labor movement, as well as the fates of African-American “buffalo soldiers” assigned in the Southwest to battle the last Native American resistance force, the Apaches. She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Academy in Berlin Prize and a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship. She has taught at many institutions including Princeton, where she was a Hodder Fellow; the Michener Center at the University of Texas; Vassar College; and as a Jones Lecturer at Stanford. She received her education at Yale (BA), Johns Hopkins  (MA), the University of Iowa (MFA), and Stanford as a Stegner Fellow.