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2023 National Book Award finalist Paul Harding

January 25 @ 7:30 pm

The Maine coast glows a few minutes past sunrise.
Photo by Kate Abbott

2023 National Book Award finalist and Pulitzer prizewinning novelist Paul Harding will talk about his new novel, This Other Eden, based on the true story of a multiracial community that took refuge from intolerance on an island off the coast of Maine from 1792 to 1912.

4:30 p.m. — Craft Talk and Q&A in Campus Center West Boardroom (1st Floor)

7:30 p.m. — Reading and conversation in the Recital Hall at UAlbany Performing Arts Center

The novel presents the lives and experiences of a formerly enslaved Black man and his Irish wife, and multiple generations of their descendants and fellow islanders. Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, This Other Eden was also a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction, and an NPR 2023 “Books We Love” Pick.

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A former student at the NYS Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore, Harding received the Pulitzer Prize for his 2009 first novel, Tinkers, a father-and-son story about itinerant peddlers in the backwoods of Maine. The Pulitzer Committee described Tinkers as “a powerful celebration of life [that] offers new ways of perceiving the world and mortality.”

His second novel, Enon (2013), is the story of one man’s enduring love for his daughter, and was named a best novel of the year by The Wall Street Journal and the American Library Association. The Chicago Tribune said “Enon confirms what the Pulitzer jury decided: Paul Harding–no longer a ‘find’ — is a major voice in American fiction.”

Harding, a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, was a fiction fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Harvard University, and Grinnell College. He was also the drummer in the band Cold Water Flat in the early 1990s. He teaches at the MFA in Creative Writing & Literature at Stony Brook University, and lives on Long Island.

Cosponsored by the Honors College at UAlbany, the English Department’s Creative Writing Program and Young Writers Project, and the Writing & Critical Inquiry (WCI) Program.

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Event Details

Details

Date:
January 25
Time:
7:30 pm

Event Location

University of Albany
1400 Washington Ave.
Albany, NY
518-442-5620

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