"Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth" is now less than a month away. Writers of historical fiction, historians, and a few hundred guests will come together for two long weekends of readings, panel discussion, and lectures at the historic San Carlos Institute; while informal gatherings and parties will take place each evening at local cultural institutions and lush gardens.

The first session, as expected, has been completely sold out. Tickets are still available for the second session, which opens with a keynote address by Booker Prize winner Barry Unsworth on Thursday January 15, and closes on the afternoon of Sunday January 18. Unsworth, who begins the book tour for his new novel Land of Marvels at the Seminar, will be joined by Marilynne Robinson (Home) and Rachel Kushner (Telex From Cuba), two of this year's nominees for the National Book Award; as well as Pulitzer Prize-winner William Kennedy, Joyce Carol Oates, Russell Banks, Thomas Mallon, and many more.

Admission for the entire weekend, including receptions (with open bar and passed hors d'ouevres) and a light continental breakfast each morning, is only $495. If you have any questions about the Seminar or would like to register, please call Miles at 888-293-9291, or send an email to mail@kwls.org.

We endeavor to make our website as useful and informative as possible to anyone who is planning to attend the Seminar. Here is a brief guide.

    • Complete Schedule of Events for the first and second sessions.
    • Complete list of Speakers, with biographies, bibliographies, and links to resources on the web
    • Key West Lodging Guide, including discounts at hotels and guesthouses for Seminar registrants
    • Our Interview Series– with Barry Unsworth, Geraldine Brooks, Thomas Mallon, and more
    • Our podcast series: free, downlowdable recordings from past events, perfect for the drive or flight to Key West

We will soon begin to release audio recordings from our 1993 Seminar devoted to poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979). The event was organized by John Malcolm Brinnin, a friend of Bishop's since the 1940s, and brought together many of Bishop's intimates for a weekend of informal tribute. In many ways, it anticipated the field of Bishop scholarship as we know it today.

At the time, Bishop's extra-literary life was largely unknown to the public; her private letters and unpublished works were still private and unpublished, and the experiences revealed by biographies and oral histories were mainly known to those she shared them with. Brinnin recognized a beginning flood of interest in Bishop, writing in an invitation to Octavio Paz of "the slow but sure rise of Elizabeth's reputation, from the devoted attention of an elite to the acclaim of an ever-broadening audience." He ended up orchestrating an event that offered a richer, deeper, more fully-known Bishop than ever before.

Among those Brinnin gathered in Key West was Robert Giroux, Bishop's longtime editor and publisher, whose reading from her letters (a selection of which he published the following year as One Art) was likely the first public presentation of this important material. Bishop's close friend and fellow poet James Merrill also took part. He read a selection of her poems along with the poems they inspired him to write, linking the pairs with private anecdotes that reveal and offer insight into each poet's creative process. Paz, the Mexican poet and Nobel Prize winner whom Bishop translated into English, joined Richard Wilbur and Ashley Brown, who had translated portions of Bishop's anthology of 20th-century Brazilian poets. Alice Quinn, editor of the 2006 Edgar Allan Poe and the Juke-Box (the "uncollected" Bishop poems) was here with Alice Helen Methfessel, Bishop's companion in her last years and the executor who has made possible so much of what we now know of Bishop. In addition to the readings and discussions, Bishop's watercolors (loaned by Methfessel) were exhibited to the public for the first time. The collection, curated by William Benton and later documented in his book Exchanging Hats, presents a folk-art version of the Key West Bishop knew and loved in the 1930s and 1940s. Finally, in a ceremony coordinated by the Friends of the Library USA, her former home at 624 White Street was added to the national register of Literary Landmarks.

Our audio engineers at Private Ear Recording Studios have remastered the original recordings from nine cassettes and converted them into digital .wav files for our use. We're now in the editing process– listening to the recordings, selecting the material that will be of most use to readers, fans, and scholars, and securing permissions from various copyright holders. The production of these recordings for the web has been a particular goal of our audio archives project. We look forward to sharing them with you here soon.