Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner, David Levering Lewis, will join us for the 2009 Seminar: Historical Fiction and The Search for Truth. Lewis is the Julius Silver University Professor at New York University, specializing in 20th-century U.S. social history. He is the author of a two-volume life-and-times of W.E.B. DuBois, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 (1993), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, the Bancroft Prize, and the Francis Parkman Prize; and W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963 (2000), which also won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography. He is the first author to win two Pulitzer Prizes for biography for back-to-back volumes.

Professor Lewis has received fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (twice), the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the American Academy in Berlin. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society. He is a former trustee of the National Humanities Center, a former commissioner of the National Portrait Gallery, a former senator of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and was president of the Society of American Historians, 2002-'03.

Lewis joins fellow historians Eric Foner and Jill Lepore, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tony Horwitz, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks, Booker Prize-winner Barry Unsworth, and iconoclast Gore Vidal for what promises to be an invigorating, weekend-long debate on the diverse contributions historians and novelists make to the writing of history. Click here to register.

We are happy to announce the addition of Calvin Baker to the second session of our 2009 Seminar: Historical Fiction and The Search for Truth. Calvin Baker was born in Chicago, attended the University of Chicago Lab Schools, and graduated from Amherst College. At the age of twenty-three, he published Naming the New World, which Publishers Weekly called "brilliant," saying Baker "proves himself a powerful new male voice in African American literature." With his second novel, Once Two Heroes, and his third, Dominion, Baker has continued to garner acclaim from major media, including USA Today, The Village Voice, and GQ. Dominion was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Award, as well as one of New York Newsday's Best Books of the Year. In 2005, Esquire Magazine named Baker one of the best young writers in America.

Click here for our complete roster of panelists.
Click here to register.

Photograph of Calvin Baker © Henry Leutwyler

Pulitzer Prize-winning Australian novelist Geraldine Brooks will deliver the John Hersey Memorial Address on Thursday, January 8, 2009, during the first session of our twenty-seventh annual Key West Literary Seminar: Historical Fiction and The Search for Truth. Booker Prize-winner Barry Unsworth will have the honors for the second session, delivering his keynote on January 15.

Each year, we begin the Seminar with The John Hersey Memorial Address, established by members of the literary community in fond remembrance of Hersey (1914-1993), a much-loved figure in Key West, where he lived with Barbara, his wife, for many years. Hersey's writings include the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Bell for Adano, Hiroshima, A Single Pebble, and Key West Tales.

On Saturday, January 10, we will host a special Gala Evening with Gore Vidal. The famed iconoclast and prolific writer returns to the island he came to know as a friend of Tennessee Williams in the 1950s. This event is in memory of John Malcom Brinnin (1916-1999), another greatly-loved Key West figure, the author of several collections of poetry, as well as biography and social criticism including Dylan Thomas in America, The Third Rose: Gertrude Stein and Her World, and The Sway of the Grand Saloon: A Social History of the North Atlantic.

Click here for pictures of John Hersey and John Malcolm Brinnin from the KWLS archives.

Image of six year-old newsboy, "Little Fattie," is by photographer Lewis Hine, 1910. It is in the public domain.

We are delighted to announce the addition of Peter Matthiessen to Session One of our 2009 Key West Literary Seminar: HISTORICAL FICTION and The Search for Truth. Matthiessen is the author of more than twenty-five books of fiction and nonfiction, including At Play in the Fields of the Lord, which was made into a major motion picture in 1991, and The Snow Leopard, which won the National Book Award in 1979. His new book, Shadow Country, is a revision of his acclaimed trilogy about the legendary life and death of Floridian Edgar J. Watson, originally published separately as the novels Killing Mr. Watson, Lost Man's River and Bone by Bone. As a young man in the 1950s, Matthiessen co-founded The Paris Review, worked as a commercial fisherman off Montauk, NY, and, it was recently revealed, served in the CIA. He is no stranger to South Florida, nor to our stage, having previously appeared at the Seminar in 2006, 2002, 1999, and 1991. You can find Matthiessen's author page here, with biography, bibliography, and links to interviews, reviews, and features from around the Web.

We are happy to announce which panelists will be appearing at which session of our twin bill 2009 Seminar: HISTORICAL FICTION and The Search for Truth.

**Session One**, from January 8 - 11, will include Geraldine Brooks, Peter Ho Davies, Eric Foner, Alan Gurganus, Ursula Hegi, Tony Horwitz, Samantha Hunt, Jane Kamensky, Jill Lepore, Megan Marshall, Peter Matthiessen, Ivy Meeropol, Michael Meeropol, Patricia O'Toole, Barry Unsworth, Gore Vidal, and John Wray.

**Session Two**, from January 15 - 18, will include Russell Banks, Andrea Barrett, Madison Smartt Bell, Alan Cheuse, Elizabeth Gaffney, Francisco Goldman, William Kennedy, Thomas Mallon, Valerie Martin, Anchee Min, Mary Morris, David Nasaw, Marilynne Robinson, John Burnham Schwartz, and Barry Unsworth.

We will likely add a few more panelists over the summer. Speakers and session assignments will be announced as they're added to the roster— right here in the News category of Littoral, and also on our Speakers page, where you can see all of our current speakers, with links to their biographies, bibliographies, and other information from around the Web.

You are welcome to attend either or both sessions of the Seminar, which run from Thursday to Monday. If you are interested in registering for the Seminar, we urge you to act soon, as seats do fill quickly. We will hold your space for a deposit of $100. Click here to register.