Acclaimed novelist Ben Lerner will provide keynote at SUNY New Paltz English Graduate Symposium, April 3
The Department of English at SUNY New Paltz will welcome Ben Lerner, the renowned novelist, poet and literary critic, as the keynote speaker for the 37th annual English Graduate Symposium on Thursday, April 3.
Lerner’s keynote will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the Coykendall Science Building Auditorium. He will stick around for a Q&A and book signing after his talk, which is free and open to the public.
The English Graduate Symposium is a long-running showcase of original creative work and critical essays by New Paltz graduate students pursuing master’s degrees in English. Presentations will run from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. in the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art on campus, in the Chandler/North gallery.
This year’s work is grounded in the theme “The I Who Is Not Me,” with students investigating the differences between narrated selves and writing selves, as well as the differences between the world that is and the world that may come to be.
Learn more here about the Department of English at SUNY New Paltz.
About Ben Lerner
An award-winning poet, novelist, essayist and critic, Lerner is the author of several full-length poetry collections, most recently including “The Lights” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), and a highly regarded trilogy of novels in which he blends autobiography and fiction–“Leaving the Atocha Station,” “10:04” and “The Topeka School,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2020.
“We are incredibly fortunate to have Ben Lerner on our campus,” said Mary Holland, professor of English at SUNY New Paltz and co-coordinator of the Symposium. “He’s not just widely renowned and accomplished; he’s one of my absolute favorite writers to read and teach. His work is smart, funny, and big-hearted, and interested in the things we care about today as a society, like climate change and consumerism, and as individuals—like making art and loving each other well.”
Kristopher Jansma, director of the Creative Writing program at New Paltz, is thrilled to have a writer like Lerner spending time with our students. “It is truly a rare thing for them to get feedback and even collaborate with an author as accomplished and thoughtful as Lerner.”
Lerner has been recognized with a Fulbright Scholarship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship, and his individual publications have received many national and international awards.
As an educator, Lerner has taught at California College of the Arts, the University of Pittsburgh and Brooklyn College, where he is currently a Distinguished Professor in the English Department.
If you have accessibility questions or require accommodations to fully participate in this event, please contact Mary Holland, Professor of English, at hollandm@newpaltz.edu as soon as possible.