We are most pleased to announce the addition of William Kennedy as a panelist for January's HISTORICAL FICTION and The Search for Truth. Kennedy's writing centers on life in his native city of Albany, New York. He has published seven novels in his Albany Cycle, treating life in Albany during the 19th and 20th centuries. These novels are Legs (1975), Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (1978), Quinn's Book (1988), Very Old Bones (1992), The Flaming Corsage (1996), Roscoe (2002), and Ironweed (1983), which won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, a PEN-Faulkner Award, and was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It begins:

Riding up the winding road of Saint Agnes Cemetery in the back of the rattling old truck, Francis Phelan became aware that the dead, even more than the living, settled down in neighborhoods. The truck was suddenly surrounded by fields of monuments and cenotaphs of kindred design and striking size, all guarding the privileged dead. But the truck moved on and the limits of mere privilege became visible, for here now came the acres of truly prestigious death: illustrious men and women, captains of life without their diamonds, furs, carriages, and limousines, but buried in pomp and glory, vaulted in great tombs built like heavenly safe deposit boxes, or parts of the Acropolis. And ah yes, here too, inevitably, came the flowing masses, row upon row of them under simple headstones and simpler crosses. Here was the neighborhood of the Phelans.

You can see the up-to-date roster of panelists here. Click here to register for the 2009 Seminar.

Four more authors have been confirmed for our 2009 Seminar: HISTORICAL FICTION and The Search for Truth.

Francisco Goldman is the author, most recently, of The Art of Political Murder: Who killed the Bishop?, a non-fiction work on the Bishop Gerardi murder case in Guatemala. It was named a "Notable Book" by The New York Times for 2007, and a best book of the year by the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Economist. His three earlier novels are The Long Night of White Chickens, The Ordinary Seaman, and The Divine Husband. He last joined us in 2004, for Crossing Borders: The Immigrant Voice in American Literature. We happily welcome Francisco back to Key West.

Alan Cheuse, "The Voice of Books on National Public Radio" has been "reading for America" every week on NPR. He is the author of The Bohemians, a historical novel about John Reed and Louise Bryant, Fall Out of Heaven, which focused in large part on the life of his father, a pilot in the Red Air Force, during the 1930s, and the novels The Grandmothers' Club and The Light Possessed. His forthcoming novel To Catch the Lightning (October, 2008) follows the career of turn-of-the-century photographer Edward S. Curtis and his quest to photograph the western tribes of North America. Alan last joined us as a moderator in 2003 for Poetry: The Beautiful Changes.