Reading and Writing Lives

Join Windham-Campbell Prize recipients Gwendoline Riley and Adam Ehrlich Sachs for an incisive conversation on the craft of fiction and the realities of living a writer's life, moderated by editor and writer Jessie Kindig. Both Riley and Sachs are master observers of human friction, family dynamics, and the precise, often surreal ways people interact. In this event, they look past the finished page to examine the labor itself: how personal history feeds into imaginative work, the boundary between living life and turning it into material, and how reading shapes a writer's voice over time. Together with Kindig, they will explore the daily discipline of storytelling, the art of style and tone, and what it truly takes to sustain a life dedicated to the written word. Whether you are an aspiring author or a dedicated reader, this discussion offers a candid, illuminating look behind the mechanics of fiction.

Jessie Kindig is senior editor for the humanities at Yale University Press, a contributing editor at the feminist magazine Lux, and an associate faculty member at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. Her criticism and essays have appeared in The New Republic, n+1, Orion, the New York Review of Books, and elsewhere.