Photo by Steven Kovich
Billy Collins is a two-term United States Poet Laureate and the founder of Poetry 180, a teaching aid for high school students founded on the belief that "poems can inspire and make us think about what it means to be a member of the human race." Once called "the most popular poet in America" by The New York Times, Collins has, over the course of eight collections of poetry, proven his remarkable facility for attracting a broad audience of readers. Most recently, Collins is the editor of Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems about Birds, with paintings by renowned bird illustrator David Allen Sibley.
This recording from the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar features Collins delivering a lecture and reading entitled "Dear Reader." "I think of the poem as a social encounter," says Collins, one equally dependent upon both reader and writer, for "the poem is completed in the mind of the reader." He quotes noted baseball writer Roger Angell saying "That's what writing is all about: the love of strangers"; and he discusses the work and thought of writers including William Butler Yeats, Jorge Luis Borges, Walt Whitman, and Mark Strand. Collins illustrates the points of his discussion with several poems that explore the intimacy shared by reader and writer. These are "A Portrait of the Reader with a Bowl of Cereal," "You, Reader," "Directions," "Fishing on the Susquehanna in July," "The Trouble with Poetry," "Purity," and "Envoy."
From KWLS 2010: Clearing the Sill of the World
(25:44) / 14.8 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2010 Billy Collins. Used with generous permission from Billy Collins.
Photo by Curt Richter Paul Muldoon was born and raised in Northern Ireland and has lived in the United States since 1987. He is poetry editor for The New Yorker and the author of more than 10 collections of poems, including the 2002 Moy Sand and Gravel, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the International Griffin Poetry Prize. He has also written rock lyrics for Warren Zevon and his own band, Rackett, in which he plays rhythm guitar.
In this recording from the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar, Muldoon delivers a presentation entitled "The Borderline." In it, Muldoon talks about his childhood growing up in a Catholic ghetto in Northern Ireland, and discusses how the political and military struggles around the Irish border and beyond affected the lives of his family and friends. The selection of poems Muldoon reads speak to similar issues; they include "Anseo," "Cuba," "A Christmas in the 50s," "The Loaf," and "Side Man."
From KWLS 2010: Clearing the Sill of the World
(21:47) / 13.1 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2010 Paul Muldoon. Used with generous permission from Paul Muldoon.
Photo by Sharon McGauley As a Pulitzer Prize winner and former Poet Laureate of the United States, Rita Dove is among the most accomplished and recognizable poets of our time. Her collections of poetry include Thomas and Beulah, American Smooth, and, most recently, Sonata Mulattica, an ambitious and fascinating poetic recreation of the life of George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower, a mixed-race violinist born in 1780 in Vienna.
In this recording from the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar, Dove delivers a reading and talk entitled "How Does a Shadow Shine?" In it, she reads excerpts from Sonata Mulattica and discusses her motivation in applying poetic language and intensity to the strange life and times of the violinist Bridgetower, whose prodigious talents and exotic ethnicity were exploited by his showman father to considerable commercial and creative success. We learn of Bridgetower's relationship with the great composer Ludwig von Beethoven, whose Violin Sonata No. 9 was originally written for Bridgetower, and we hear poems including "Prologue of the Rambling Sort," "Disappearance," "The Wardrobe Lesson," "Black Billy Waters at his Pitch," "Ludwig von Beethoven's Return to Vienna," "Cambridge, Great Saint Mary's Church," and "The End, with MapQuest"
From KWLS 2010: Clearing the Sill of the World
(34:59) / 20.6 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2010 Rita Dove. Used with generous permission from Rita Dove.
Photo by Robert Casper Matthea Harvey is the author of three collections of poetry and is a contributing editor to jubilat and BOMB. Her 2007 collection, Modern Life, was a New York Times Notable Book, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Weston Cutter, writing for Bookslut, has called Harvey's work "a form of courage, an act of daring at the outer limits of poetry."
In this recording from the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar, Harvey begins with an unpublished poem that has an image for its title. She continues with two more unpublished poems, "My Wolf-Sister" and "My Octopus Orphan," and a selection of works from Modern Life, including "Inside the Good Idea," "The Future of Terror" parts 1 and 11, "A Theory of Generations," and "Emphasis on Mister or Peanut, Robo or Boy." The final two poems are the uncollected "Baked Alaska, A Theory Of" and "Everything Must Go."
From KWLS 2010: Clearing the Sill of the World
(16:05) / 9.8 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2010 Matthea Harvey. Used with generous permission from Matthea Harvey.
Tina Chang Tina Chang is the author of Half-Lit Houses and the co-editor of Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond. The New York native was appointed poet laureate of Brooklyn in 2010, and has previously earned honors including an award from the Academy of American Poets and a residency at the MacDowell Colony. Chang's new book, Of Gods & Strangers, is forthcoming in 2011 from Four Way Books.
In this recording from the 2008 Key West Literary Seminar, New Voices, Chang reads a selection of poems and discusses the inspiration and influences– from historical figures to newspaper articles to karaoke to conversation– that engendered them. Poems include "Wild Invention," "Love is Scripted," "Self-portrait as an Imaginary D.J.," "The Empress Dowager Has One Bird," "The Empress Dowager Contemplates Her Lineage," "Three Versions of Desiring," and "A Full Life."
From KWLS 2008: New Voices
(18:23) / 10.7 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008, 2010 Tina Chang. Used with generous permission from Tina Chang.
Photo by Sharon McGauley Robert Pinsky is an acclaimed poet, translator, and essayist whom The New York Times has called "our finest living specimen of this sadly rare breed." He has spoken of poetry as "one of the most fundamental pleasures a person can experience," and as U.S. Poet Laureate from 1997-2000, he established the hugely successful Favorite Poem Project, in which Americans from a wide range of backgrounds shared their favorite poems, asserting the role of poetry in the lives of Americans.
In this recording of the John Hersey Memorial Address from the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar, Pinsky reads some of his own favorite poems while musing about the process of remembering and forgetting in the context of modernist poetry. Pinsky discusses work by well-known poets including John Keats, Walter Savage Landor, Dante, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Allen Ginsberg, and Richard Wilbur. He also discusses an anonymous poem from the 18th century that was left with an infant at England's Foundling Hospital; a visit he made to a Zulu Sangomo on a trip to Africa; and the work of psychoanalytic writer Hans Loewald. Pinsky's opening remarks on Cuban patriot José Martí refer to the history of the San Carlos Institute, the venue where the lecture was given, and where Martí campaigned for Cuba's independence from Spain.
From KWLS 2010: Clearing the Sill of the World
(49:48) / 30.4 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2010 Robert Pinsky. Used with generous permission from Robert Pinsky.
Photo by Sharon McGauley Natasha Trethewey is the author of three collections of poetry, including Native Guard, which won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize, Bellocq's Ophelia, and Domestic Work, which won the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize. A native of Mississippi, a member of the Dark Room Collective, and the Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University, Trethewey's work often shifts from the personal to the historical, confronting subjects that include the legacies of racism in America and her own experiences as a person of mixed race growing up in the deep South.
In this recording from the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar, Trethewey reads a selection of poems including "Limen," "Genus Narcissus," "Myth," "Miscegenation," "Taxonomy," and "Knowledge: After a Chalk Drawing by J.H. Hasselhorst, 1864."
From KWLS 2010: Clearing the Sill of the World
(17:57) / 10.3 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2010 Natasha Trethewey. Used with generous permission from Natasha Trethewey.
Photo by Christina Koci Hernandez Kay Ryan is the current Poet Laureate of the United States. Her work has drawn comparisons to Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, and Elizabeth Bishop, and like these poets, Ryan's masterfully concise poems fuse acute observation of the physical world with equally sharp introspection; they are both funny and dark, playful and ready to strike. She has earned fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and is one of the fourteen Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets. Ryan's The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, is being published by Grove Press this month.
In this recording from the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar, Ryan reads 23 poems, all but one of which are included in her forthcoming Selected Poems. Beginning with the unpublished "A Cat," Ryan goes on to read "Her Politeness," and several poems from the 1994 Copper Beech Press collection Flamingo Watching, including the title poem, "This Life," "Apology," "Vacation," "A Certain Kind of Eden," "No Rest for the Idle," "The Narrow Path," "Spring," "Impersonal," "The Working Kabbalist," "The Test We Set Ourself," "The Hinge of Spring," "Deer," "Poetry Is a Kind of Money," "Masterworks of Ming," and "The Great-Taloned Osprey Nests in Scotland." Ryan concludes the reading with the newer poems "Bait Goat," "Dogleg," "Easter Island," and "Spiderweb."
From KWLS 2010: Clearing the Sill of the World
(29:52) / 21.1 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2010 Kay Ryan. Used with generous permission from Kay Ryan.
Photo by Rollie McKenna Joy Williams is the influential author of dozens of short stories and essays, which are collected in Taking Care (1982), Escapes (1990), Honored Guest (2004), and Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals (2001), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. She has also written four novels, including The Quick and the Dead (2000), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and State of Grace (1973), nominated for a National Book Award.
In this recording from the 1989 Key West Literary Seminar, Williams reads "The Last Generation," which would be published in Esquire later that year. It tells the story of 9 year old Tommy, whose mother has recently been killed in a car crash, and his relationship with Audrey, the darkly philosophical ex-girlfriend of Tommy's teenaged older brother
"The last generation has got certain responsibilities," Audrey said, "though you might think we wouldn't. We should know nothing and want nothing and be nothing. But at the same time we should want everything and know everything and be everything."
Upstairs in his room, Walter Junior was lifiting weights. They could hear him, breathing, gasping. Audrey's strange, smooth face looked blank. It looked empty.
"Did you love my brother?" Tommy asked. "Do you still love him?"
"Certainly not," Audrey said. "We were just passing friends."
From KWLS 1989: The American Short Story: A Renaissance
(31:42) / 14.7 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 1989, 2010 Joy Williams. Used with generous permission from Joy Williams.
Photo by Curt Richter Richard Wilbur is among the singular poets of our time, the only living poet to have twice won the Pulitzer Prize, and a former Poet Laureate of the United States. As a young veteran of World War II, Wilbur became friends with Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens and began writing the refined and rigorously optimistic poetry that characterize his sixty-year oeuvre. In the 1960s, Wilbur and his wife Charlee began spending winters in Key West, where he became friends with a circle of poets including James Merrill, John Ciardi, and John Malcolm Brinnin. In January 2010 we welcomed Wilbur back to Key West with Clearing the Sill of the World, our 28th annual Seminar, held in his honor.
In this recording from January 9, 2010, Wilbur reads more than two dozen poems and translations, many of which will be published by Harcourt this fall in his 10th collection, Anterooms. These new poems include "The House," "A Measuring Worm," "Flying," "Trismegistus," "The Censor," "Out Here," and several new translations of riddles from Symphosias ("Nine lives I have...," "I have no tresses...," "Through middle air...," "All things I powerfully crush...," and "A god's sweet mistress..."). He reads "Security Lights, Key West" from the 2004 New Poems as well as "Nuns at Eve" by John Malcolm Brinnin, for whom the Seminar's Saturday evening address is named. From Mayflies (2000), Wilbur reads "For C.," "Crow's Nests," a translation of Valeri Petrov's "A Cry From Childhood," and "This Pleasing Anxious Being." From 1987's New & Collected Poems, we get "The Ride," Vinicius de Moraes's "Song," and "Hamlen Brook," while from 1976's The Mind-Reader we get "The Writer," and the comic poems "Piccola Commedia," "To His Skeleton," and "The Prisoner of Zenda." Wilbur continues this survey with "Complaint," from Waking to Sleep (1969), and "Advice to a Prophet," from the eponymous 1961 collection, before concluding with several pieces from one of Wilbur's books of light-hearted verse for children, The Disappearing Alphabet.
From KWLS 2010: Clearing the Sill of the World
(1:06:52) / 31 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2010 Richard Wilbur. Used with generous permission from Richard Wilbur.
More Richard Wilbur resources from KWLS:
A reading in tribute to Elizabeth Bishop, from KWLS 1993
A reading from KWLS 2003
The World is Fundamentally a Great Wonder: Wilbur in conversation with Arlo Haskell, 2009
Photo by Curt Richter Jane Hirshfield was born in New York City and graduated from Princeton University in 1973. She studied Zen for nearly eight years at the San Francisco Zen Center, and has taught at UC Berkeley, Duke University, and Bennington College. She is the author of six books of poetry, as well as the influential prose collection Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry. She has also translated and edited the works of early women poets in The Ink Dark Moon: Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu and other books. Hirshfield has said "I am interested in poems that find a clarity without simplicity; in a way of thinking and speaking that does not exclude complexity but also does not obscure; in poems that know the world in many ways at once– heart, mind, voice, and body."
In this recording from the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar, January 10, Hirshfield begins with "The Poet," from her 1997 collection Lives of the Heart. The remaining poems are all new and uncollected, including "First Light Edging Cirrus," "French Horn," "The Supple Deer," "Alzheimer's," "Left-handed Sugar," "Vinegar and Oil," "Sonoma Fire," "A Day is Vast," "One Loss Folds Itself Inside Another," and "A Hand is Shaped for What it Holds or Makes."
From KWLS 2010: Clearing the Sill of the World
(16:09) / 8 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2010 Jane Hirshfield. Used with generous permission from Jane Hirshfield.
Photo by Sharon Mcgauley Maxine Kumin was born in 1925 and lives on a horse farm in rural New Hampshire. She has published sixteen collections of poetry as well as numerous books for children, four of which were co-written with the poet Anne Sexton. Kumin won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Up Country, and served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 1981-1982. Three new books by Kumin are forthcoming in the spring of 2010: Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010; The Roots of Things: Essays; and What Color is Caesar?, a book for children.
In this January 10 recording from the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar, Kumin reads a selection of poems from the forthcoming New & Selected, including "Looking for Luck in Bangkok," "Praise Be," "The Nuns of Childhood: Two Views," "Rendezvous," "Jack," "The Final Poem," and "Seven Caveats in May."
From KWLS 2010: Clearing the Sill of the World
(15:45) / 7.8 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2010 Maxine Kumin. Used with generous permission from Maxine Kumin.
Photo by Curt Richter Mark Strand was born in 1934 on Canada's Prince Edward Island and raised in the United States. He is the author of more than 10 collections of poetry, for which he has won the prestigious Bollingen and Pulitzer Prizes, among other honors. Strand has also translated the works of Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade, edited poetry anthologies and collections of art criticism, and written three books for children. In 1990, he was named United States Poet Laureate.
This recording combines two readings given by Strand at the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar. In the first, from Friday January 8, Strand reads a selection of poems spanning his career, including the early works "Sleeping with One Eye Open," "The Mailman," and "The Tunnel." Later works include "I Had Been a Polar Explorer," "Elevator," "Man and Camel,""Some Last Words," and two passages from the 1993 book-length poem "Dark Harbor" ("If dawn breaks the heart..." and "It is true, as someone has said..."). The first reading concludes with recent poems including "Fire," "Old Man Leaves Party," and "Black Sea." In the second reading, from Sunday January 10 (beginning at 20:35), Strand reads "Keeping Things Whole," two passages from "Five Dogs," "Two Horses," "Black Fly," "The Disquieting Muses," "Mirror," and "A Piece of the Storm." Strand's remarks in between poems provide context and explain references to cultural figures including the writers Franz Kafka and Wallace Stevens, and the painter Giorgio De Chirico.
From KWLS 2010: Clearing the Sill of the World
(33:53) / 16.3 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2010 Mark Strand. Used with generous permission from Mark Strand.
photo by Curt Richter Barry Unsworth's body of work is marked by scrupulous historical research and compelling narratives. In this recording from the 2009 Key West Literary Seminar, Unsworth discusses the impulses, instincts, and concerns that drive his fascination with history. The often intimate discussion suggests that Unsworth's chief aim as a novelist is to explore the ethical complexities of humankind as presented in the customs and sensibilities of distinct historical periods.
"The past is another country, we know. It's not recoverable. Even our own past, our own childhood is not recoverable. We know that we can't get back to it, but we know at the same time that we've never lost it. We know it belongs to us because it has made us what we are."
From KWLS 2009: Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth
(28:19) / 13.1 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2009 Barry Unsworth. Used with generous permission from Barry Unsworth.
photo by Isak Tiner Patricia Engel was the winner of the Key West Literary Seminar's Marianne Russo Scholarship for 2009. She subsequently signed a two-book contract with Grove/Atlantic, which will publish Vida, a collection of short stories, in 2010. Engel's short story "Madre Patria," workshopped at KWLS 27 with Hilma Wolitzer, is forthcoming in Quarterly West, while "The Bridge," which debuted at the Seminar, will appear in print in The Atlantic Monthly's 2010 Fiction Issue.
On this recording from 2009, Engel reads from "The Bridge," about a father who throws his young son off Miami's Rickenbacker causeway.
"When he found out his wife was unfaithful, Hector Castillo told his son to get in the car because they were going fishing. It was after midnight, but this was nothing unusual. The Rickenbacker bridge hanging over Biscayne Bay was full of night fisherman leaning over the railings, catching up on the gossip over beer and fishing lines, avoiding going home to their wives. Except Hector didn't bring any fishing gear with him."
From KWLS 2009: Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth
(7:11) / 3.4 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2009 Patricia Engel. Used with generous permission from Patricia Engel.
photo by Curt Richter Barry Unsworth is the English-born author of 16 novels, most recently Land of Marvels, a historical novel set in Mesopotamia on the eve of World War I. Three of his books have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, including Sacred Hunger, which is concerned with the 19th-century Atlantic slave trade and won the prestigious award in 1992.
In this recording of the 2009 Key West Literary Seminar John Hersey Memorial address, Unsworth outlines his thoughts on the nature of truth in works of fiction. On the one hand, argues Unsworth, the novelist must strive for accuracy in relating the historical facts of a period. On the other hand, "the writer of fiction should be seeking a larger truth, a purer truth." In pursuit of this aesthetic aim, the author strives to appeal to the reader's experience and intuition, and so may take liberties with "the categories of factual falsehood or truth." In making his case for an "economy of truth," Unsworth cites authors Mark Twain, Umberto Eco, and D.H. Lawrence, as well as British spy-turned-author Peter Wright.
From KWLS 2009: Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth
(39:49) / 18.3 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2009 Barry Unsworth. Used with generous permission from Barry Unsworth.
photo by Curt Richter Gore Vidal has been one of America's most distinct voices for more than half a century. The author of more than 20 novels, hundreds of essays, and several plays for screen and stage, Vidal is perhaps best known for the eloquent and witheringly sarcastic political commentary that has made him a darling of the American left. With dependably erudite attacks on right-wing figures, this quixotic scion of a privileged political family, friend of the Kennedys and playwright Tennessee Williams, has staked out a unique position in American political and intellectual life.
This recording from the 2009 Key West Literary Seminar consists of an hourlong conversation between Vidal and Jay Parini, his literary executor, a poet, biographer, and critic. Vidal discusses the influences on his work as a historical novelist, his views on the American educational system, and his admiration for figures including Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. George W. Bush, then serving his final week in office, is the target of particular scorn, as Vidal levels a litany of complaints accusing his administration of "shredding" the Bill of Rights and striving "to make lying the national pastime." In a question-and-answer session,Vidal discusses efforts to bring Tennessee Williams's final play to the public, as well as his feelings on disgraced financier Bernard Madoff and former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
From KWLS 2009: Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth
(59:09) / 27.1 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2009 Gore Vidal and Jay Parini. Used with generous permission from Gore Vidal and Jay Parini.
Photo by Nick Vagnoni Andrea Barrett's acclaimed novels and short-stories are marked by their investigation of scientific and historical themes. In this recording from the 2009 Key West Literary Seminar, Barrett explains how she began to write about science and history in the short story form after the disappointment of writing four unsuccessful novels. "With nothing to lose," Barrett recounts, "I began to write about the thing that I actually loved the most, but had never dared to write fiction about before." She follows this account with an excerpt from "Ship Fever," the title novella of her National Book Award-winning first collection of short stories. In it, Lockland Grant, a bright young doctor who has come to the island of Gros Île in 1847 to treat the population of newly landed Irish immigrants, has fallen victim to the typhus epidemic raging through the community.
From KWLS 2009: Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth
(11:13) / 5.2 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2009 Andrea Barrett. Used with generous permission from Andrea Barrett.
Photo by Nick Vagnoni Valerie Martin is the author of three collections of short fiction, including The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories; several novels, including Tresspass and Mary Reilly, which was made into a movie with Julia Roberts and John Malkovich; and a nonfiction work about St. Francis of Assisi.
In this recording from the 27th Key West Literary Seminar, Martin reads from her Orange Prize-winning historical novel, Property. Set on a plantation outside New Orleans in 1828, Property is narrated by Manon Gaudet, a slaveowner whose husband has fathered two children with one of Manon's slaves. In the passage presented here, Manon meets with her brother-in-law following an insurrection in which Manon has been shot in the shoulder, the slave has run away, and her husband has been killed.
From KWLS 2009: Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth
(13:54) / 6.4 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2009 Valerie Martin. Used with generous permission from Valerie Martin.
photo by Curt Richter William Kennedy is best known for the novels of his Albany Cycle. A singular epic of that capital city and its Irish-American clans in the 19th and 20th centuries, the work has earned Kennedy comparisons to James Joyce and Saul Bellow. Among its novels are Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (1979), The Flaming Corsage (1996), and Ironweed (1983), which won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a PEN/Faulkner Award, and was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
In this audio recording from the 27th Key West Literary Seminar, Kennedy reads two unpublished pieces. The presentation begins with a brief (5:30) essay recounting Kennedy's first short story, "Eggs," and the lukewarm reaction it garnered from his friends and family. This is followed by a reading from the opening chapter of Kennedy's unnamed novel-in-progress. A continuation of the Albany Cycle, this forthcoming novel focuses on Daniel Quinn, a reporter for the Albany Times Union and the grandson of the Daniel Quinn from Kennedy's Quinn's Book.
From KWLS 2009: Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth
(29:27) / 13.5 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2009 William Kennedy. Used with generous permission from William Kennedy.
photo by Ellen Warner Richard Wilbur is a former United States Poet Laureate and the only writer since Robert Frost to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice. In this recording from the 2003 Key West Literary Seminar, Wilbur reads and comments upon numerous poems, translations, lyrics, and light verse spanning his career.
Wilbur begins the reading with two poems, "The Reader" and "Man Running," from the then-unpublished Collected Poems, 1943-2004, and continues with "A Barred Owl," "For Charlee," Valeri Petrov's "A Cry from Childhood," and "This Pleasing Anxious Being," all from Mayflies. From 1989's New and Collected Poems, Wilbur chooses "The Ride," "Lying," "On Having Mis-identified a Wild Flower," Vinicius de Moraes's "Song," and "Hamlen Brook"; from The Mind-Reader, he reads "The Writer" and "A Wedding Toast." Wilbur's early collections Ceremony, Things of This World, and Advice to a Prophet are represented by "Museum Piece," "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World," "Two Voices in a Meadow," and "Pangloss's Song: A Comic-Opera Lyric," written for the 1956 musical version of Voltaire's Candide, which Wilbur collaborated on with Lillian Hellman and Leonard Bernstein. Wilbur's reading concludes with several humorous poems, including "A Late Aubade," the two-part "Flippancies" (including "The Star System" and "What's Good for the Soul Is Good for Sales"), "To His Skeleton," "The Prisoner of Zenda," and several verses from his book for children, The Disappearing Alphabet.
Wilbur's hourlong reading was given in memory of John Malcolm Brinnin, an influential early KWLS organizer. In a brief (1:26) introduction, program chair Irving Weinman discusses Brinnin and the regular game of Anagrams he played with Brinnin and Wilbur.
Wilbur joins us again in January 2010 as our guest of honor for Clearing the Sill of the World.
From KWLS 2003: The Beautiful Changes
(1:03:12) / 29.1 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2003, 2009 Richard Wilbur. Used with generous permission from Richard Wilbur.
photo by Michael Blades
Tesla's drawing for the AC dynamo;
U.S. patent 390,721 Samantha Hunt is the author of The Invention of Everything Else, which has been shortlisted for the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction. In this recording from the 2009 Key West Literary Seminar, Hunt discusses the subject of her historical novel, Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla, whose revolutionary inventions included alternating current and wireless technology. Briefly employed by Thomas Edison, Tesla routinely found himself on the wrong side of American capitalism and died impoverished and marginalized. In Hunt's passage, Tesla recounts his initial meeting with the financially-driven American inventor who sought to keep Tesla's inventions from reaching the public.
"'Capitalism! Ever heard of it?'
'Yes, I have,' I said. 'I've heard of it. I'm not certain I agree.'
"There's nothing wrong with capitalism,' he told me."
'Except that in order to sell something, a person must first own it, and how can a person own these things that we are inventing? How could I own alternating current? That's like owning thunder or lightning.'
'Men own thunder all the time. That's how America works. And please, I've heard enough about your alternating current. ... AC is dangerous, and more importantly'– Edison drove his finger once directly into the center of my chest– 'my light bulbs don't work on it.'"
From KWLS 2009: Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth
(14:05) / 6.6 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2009 Samantha Hunt. Used with generous permission from Samantha Hunt.
photo by Nick Vagnoni David Levering Lewis's two-volume biography of W.E.B. Du Bois, each of which won the Pulitzer Prize, is the definitive work on the life and thought of a complex American intellectual. In this lecture from the 2009 Key West Literary Seminar, Lewis examines Du Bois's largely-forgotten work as a writer of historical fiction, whose journey "beyond the borders of social science certitude" was the result of a "poetic temperament combined with an intellectual's dissatisfaction about the limits of the historically knowable." Lewis discusses Du Bois's early historical novels, The Quest of the Silver Fleece and Dark Princess; as well as the later Black Flame Trilogy (The Ordeal of Mansart, Mansart Builds a School, and Worlds of Color). In a brief question and answer session, Lewis comments on Du Bois's persecution at the hands of the U.S. government during the 1950s, his reputation as a "ladies' man," and his early life and education in Great Barrington, MA.
From KWLS 2009: Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth
(25:35) / 11.8 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2009 David Levering Lewis. Used with generous permission from David Levering Lewis.
photo by Nick Vagnoni Eric Foner is one of America's preeminent historians, especially known for his work on the post-Civil War period of Reconstruction. In this fascinating lecture from the 2009 Key West Literary Seminar, Foner explores the social and political implications of historical inquiry, and the role of the imagination in the historian's work. Drawing on sources as diverse as Jane Austen, Friedrich Nietszche, Newt Gingrich, and Diane Feinstein, Foner says society's understanding of history is both reflected in and shaped by contemporary thought. Rebutting a popular claim regarding "facts" in the historical record, Foner argues that "the constant search for new perspectives [is] the lifeblood of historical understanding."
“The line between historical scholarship and historical fiction is not as hard and fast as we sometimes might think. ... Every novel is an expression of the sensibility of the novelist; and, as E.H. Carr wrote, 'to study history, study the historian.' The reason historical interpretations change is that historians change, as does the world around them.”
From KWLS 2009: Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth
(38:44) / 17.8 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2009 Eric Foner. Used with generous permission from Eric Foner.
Bishop photo by Rollie McKenna
Wilbur photo by Stathis Orphanos The 1993 Key West Literary Seminar was devoted entirely to Elizabeth Bishop. A series of readings-in-tribute offered her fellow poets the opportunity to discuss Bishop and her influence.
In this recording from the event, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Wilbur reads Bishop's "Little Exercise." Originally published in her debut 1946 collection North and South, the poem ostensibly describes a thunderstorm "roaming the sky" over the mangrove islands, palm-lined boulevard, herons, and sleeping indigents characteristic of Key West, a place each poet called home. Wilbur also reads his translation of "Song," by Vinícius de Moraes, the Brazilian poet and Bossa Nova pioneer who co-wrote many of João Gilberto's hits. Bishop herself translated de Moraes, and included his work in her landmark Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry, along with poems by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Manuel Bandeira and others in translations by North American poets including Wilbur, Paul Blackburn and Mark Strand. Wilbur discusses he and Bishop's shared affinity for Edgar Allan Poe and their fascination with "stages and half-stages of the mind," and concludes by reading a selection of his own poems which he says were inspired, influenced, or enjoyed by Bishop, including "A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra" and "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World" from his 1956 collection Things of This World; and "In Limbo," from his 1976 The Mind-Reader.
Wilbur returns to KWLS in 2010 as our guest of honor for Clearing the Sill of the World.
From KWLS 1993: The Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop
(18:22) / 8.4 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 1993, 2009 Richard Wilbur. Used with generous permission from Richard Wilbur.
photo by Curt Richter Billy Collins served two terms as United States Poet Laureate and founded Poetry 180, a teaching aid for high school students based on the belief that "poems can inspire and make us think about what it means to be a member of the human race." Collins has joined us for the Seminar nearly every year since he left the Library of Congress office, and is an annual favorite of the students who join us from Key West High School.
This recording was made in January of 2003, during Collins's second term as Laureate. He reads a selection of poems, including "Shoveling Snow With Buddha," "Monday," "Flock," "Creatures," "The Lanyard," "The Country," "Surprise," "No Time," "Love," "Sonnet," "Japan," "Forgetfulness," "Consolation," "On Turning Ten," and "Nightclub."
Collins will join us again in 2010 for Clearing the Sill of the World.
(30:31) / 14 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2003, 2009 Billy Collins. Used with generous permission from Billy Collins.
Allan Gurganus is best known as the author of Oldest Living Confederate Widow Talls All, his 1984 debut novel
that spent eight months on the bestsellers list of The New York Times and has been translated into at least 12 languages. Other books include Plays Well with Others and White People, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.In this recording from the 2009 Key West Literary Seminar, Gurganus delivers a laugh-out-loud lecture titled "A Still Small Voice Under the Cannonade: Field Notes towards Fiction's Pact with History."
From KWLS 2009: Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth.
(42:31) / 38.9 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2009 Allan Gurganus. Used with generous permission from Allan Gurganus.
Australian-born Geraldine Brooks is the author of novels including People of the Book and March, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2005. As a journalist for The Wall Street Journal in the 1980s and 1990s, Brooks covered crises in the the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans.In this recording from the 2009 Key West Literary Seminar, Brooks reads from March, which tells the story of Captain March, known to readers of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women as the character of the father and husband who has left the family to fight in the Civil War.
From KWLS 2009: Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth.
(20:14) / 18.5 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2009 Geraldine Brooks. Used with generous permission from Geraldine Brooks.
Barry Unsworth is the author of 16 published novels, including the Booker Prize-winning Sacred Hunger, and his newest, Land of Marvels, which The Washington Post has called "immensely intelligent and entertaining." In this recording from the first session of the 2009 Key West Literary Seminar, Unsworth reads a passage from Land of Marvels, concerning Somerville, the British archelogist whose work on an ancient Assyrian site is threatened by a railroad being constructed by a German company, and Jehar, the financially-motivated Arab he pays to report on the railway's progress.
From KWLS 2009: Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth.
(20:01) / 18.3 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2009 Barry Unsworth. Used with generous permission from Barry Unsworth.
Mark Doty is the author of eight books of poems and four volumes of nonfiction prose. He has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and his Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems is nominated for the 2008 National Book Award in poetry. In this recording from our 2008 Seminar, Doty reads a selection of work inspired by a visit to Key West in 1997, including a section from his 2007 memoir Dog Years, and the poems "Sea Grape Valentine," "Watermelon Soda," and "Catalina Macaw." 
from "Watermelon Soda"Strange island,
to yield a walking
hot-pink soda can
inhabited by a lucky
Modernist crab,
carrying on his back
a tropic shelter
by Barragan
or Corbusier,
perennially modish
if not quite practical...
From KWLS 2008: New Voices. (11:19) / 5.2 MB
To download, right-click here (Mac users: ctrl+click) and choose 'save as'
This recording is being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2008 Mark Doty. Used with generous permission from Mark Doty.
The Key West Literary Seminar's audio archives contain more than 20 years of
unique presentations by some of the world's most influential writers. The best
of these recordings are now being digitized and released online in .mp3 format
for use by educators, students, and readers worldwide. To be notified when new
recordings are issued,
connect with us via email, become our fan on Facebook,
follow us on Twitter, or subscribe
via iTunes
or your preferred RSS reader.
Recordings are produced for the web by Arlo Haskell, with recording and engineering services provided by Private Ear Recording Studios.
Please contact arlo [at] kwls [dot] org with any questions, concerns, or special requests.
Each January, we explore a different literary theme through lectures, panel presentations, readings, informal gatherings, and discussions. In January 2011, we explore food in literature with our 29th annual Seminar, THE HUNGRY MUSE
.
Audio recordings from the Key West Literary Seminar are available for educational
and noncommmercial use only. All rights to the recorded material belong to the
author or authors speaking. Recordings may not be retransmitted without the
preceding statement, and retransmissions must include a link to the original
source on www.kwls.org.
Sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of
Cultural Affairs, the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, and the National
Endowment for the Arts.
