English Department to Host Panel on Crafting a Memoir

Five members of Fordham’s Department of English will participate in a panel discussion on the challenging yet increasingly popular genre of memoir, and read from their works.

“The Art of the Memoir”
Tuesday, May 1
7 p.m.
12th Floor Lounge, Lowenstein, Lincoln Center Campus

Moderated by Susan Kamil, publisher of Random House and Dial Press imprints, the panel will consist of faculty members who have recently published memoirs. Speakers will present short readings of their works, ranging in subject matter from the AIDS crisis to the Holocaust, followed by a panel discussion and a Q&A.

Panelists include:

•    Mary Bly, Ph.D., professor of English, author of Paris in Love (Random House, 2012), a memoir of her sabbatical year in Paris, which is currently #35 on The New York Times bestseller nonfiction list;
•    Richard Giannone, Ph.D., professor emeritus of English, author of Hidden: Reflections on Gay Life, AIDS, and Spiritual Desire (Fordham University Press, 2012), a chronicle of Giannone’s transformation from a solitary gay academic to the primary caregiver of his dying mother and sister;
•    Eve Keller, Ph.D., professor of English, and director of graduate studies in the English Department, author of Two Rings: A Story of Love and War (PublicAffairs, 2012), a story co-authored by Keller and Millie Werber, who was a teenager during the Holocaust;
•    Kim Dana Kupperman, writer-in-residence, author of the award-winning I Just Lately Started Buying Wings: Missives from the Other Side of Silence (Grayworld, 2010), a collection of autobiographical, personal, and lyric essays; and
•    Elizabeth Stone, Ph.D., professor of English, who helped Dina Matos McGreevey write her memoir,Silent Partner (Hyperion, 2010), and author of A Boy I Once Knew: What a Teacher Learned from her Student (Algonquin, 2002), which tells the story of Stone’s student, Vincent, who left Stone his diaries and asked her to write about him following his death from AIDS.

The panel is sponsored by Fordham’s Creative Writing program, the Deans of Arts and Sciences, and PublicAffairs Books.