Wordfest presents George Saunders
Hosted by Zsuzsi Gartner
Sunday, April 9 @ 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm
John Dutton Theatre, Calgary Public Library, 616 Macleod Trail SE
$20 Adults / $17 Students and Seniors
A writer for our time…
“No one writes more powerfully than George Saunders about the lost, the unlucky and the disenfranchised” — Michiko Kakutani, New York Times.
Join Wordfest, Penguin Random House and the Calgary Public Library for the much-anticipated Calgary appearance of George Saunders, who presents his new novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, about Abraham Lincoln and the death of his eleven-year-old son, at the dawn of the American Civil War. Unfolding in a graveyard over the course of a single night and narrated by a dazzling chorus of voices, the novel is an exploration of struggle, death, love and the powers of good and evil. This event is hosted by Zsuzsi Gartner.
A bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation, Saunders’ first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, is nothing less than a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices—living and dead, historical and invented—to ask a timeless question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?
George Saunders is the author of the critically acclaimed short story collections Pastoralia, In Persuasion Nation, and Tenth of December, which was nominated for the National Book Award in 2014. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, and GQ, he has been nominated for seven National Magazine Awards, most recently for his dispatch from the 2016 Presidential campaign, Who Are All These Trump Supporters. A Guggenheim Fellow and winner of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award, he was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014. George Saunders’ much-anticipated first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, was published in February to widespread critical acclaim and is currently #4 on the New York Times bestseller list.
George Saunders in the News
- Contributions to The New Yorker (Fiction & Essays)
- George Saunders Has Written a Weird and Brilliant Novel, Mother Jones
- George Saunders explores empathy and kindness in divided times, Toronto Star
- George Saunders: what writers really do when they writ, The Guardian
- Six questions for author George Saunders, Boston Globe
- George Saunders Featured on BBC Radio Four
