Recorded on
Thursday,
March 20, 2008
at 6:30pm
(43.8 mb, 54:39)
What you will hear:
A unique series
for sophisticated writers, readers, and eaters,
Eat, Drink & Be Literary continues
the momentum of the past two sell-out series,
bringing major contemporary authors to BAMcafé
for intimate dinners, readings, and discussions
that are always entertaining and engaging.
There is a brief introduction
by Harold Augenbraum, executive director of the National
Book Foundation, presenter of the National Book Awards.
Peter Carey reads from his novel, His Illegal
Self, followed by a Q&A session with moderator,
Aoibheann Sweeney and the audience. Carey discusses
the difficulty of writing American characters as an
Australian, how class figures into his work, the difference
between the U.S. and Australian class system, and
how he begins work on a novel.
The featured author and moderator is:
"Let me be entirely clear about this: Theft:
A Love Story is a novel that will get right
up your nose...It is a rudely brilliant, infuriatingly
beautiful, belligerently profane work of art."—The
Guardian (UK)
"My fictional project has always been the
invention or discovery of my own country. Looked
at in this way, Great Expectations is
not only a great work of English literature; it
is (to an Australian) also a way in which the
English have colonized our ways of seeing ourselves...Jack
Maggs is an attempt to break open the prison and
to imaginatively reconcile with the jailer."—Peter
Carey
A two-time Man Booker Prize winner, Australian-born
Peter Carey is the author of several books, including
Oscar and Lucinda (1998) and True History
of the Kelly Gang (2001). He has taught writing
at NYU, Columbia University, and The New School,
and currently directs the MFA program at Hunter
College.
Aoibheann Sweeney, moderator
Aoibheann Sweeney is the
Director of the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY
Graduate Center. She has been a resident fellow at
the MacDowell Colony, and has written book reviews
for publications such as The New York Times Book
Review and The Washington Post Book World.
Her first novel, Among Other Things I've Taken
Up Smoking, was published this year.
Eat, Drink & Be Literary
is sponsored by Bloomberg.
