Stony Brook Southampton MFA in Writing and Literature

Writers Speak: Spring 2012
A Point of View on a Point of View

A series of readings and conversations with veteran editor
Daniel Menaker

Elizabeth Strout - Monday, Feb. 13

Sam Lipsyte - Monday, Feb. 27

Charles McGrath - Monday, March 12

All events are FREE and held at 7 p.m. at Stony Brook Manhattan
101-113 East 27th Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10016

RSVP to: sbmanhattanmfa@gmail.com
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DANIEL MENAKER started at The New Yorker in 1969 as a fact checker and became fiction editor in 1976. In that capacity, Mr. Menaker discovered and was the first to publish the stories of David Foster Wallace, Michael Chabon, Michael Cunningham, Susan Minot, Jennifer Egan, Antonya Nelson, Ann Packer, George Saunders, Matthew Klam, Ann Cummins, Laura Cunningham, Noah Baumbach, and others. He also edited the writing of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Salman Rushdie, Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, Stanislaw Lem, Pauline Kael, Max Frisch, Larry Woiwode, and Winthrop Sargent.

He moved to Random House as Senior Editor in 1995, became Executive Editor at HarperCollins in 2001 and returned to Random House as Executive Editor-in-Chief from 2003 until 2007. In book publishing, the first novel Mr. Menaker published was the bestselling sensation "Primary Colors," by Anonymous (Joe Klein). He also acquired and/or edited books by Pulitzer Prizewinner Elizabeth Strout, National Book Award winner Colum McCann, National Book Critics Circle Award winner Ted Conover, Gary Shteyngart, Benjamin Kunkel, Salman Rushdie, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the poets Deborah Garrison, Virginia Hamilton Adair, Simon Rich, Matthew Klam, George Saunders, Lane Smith, Daniel Silva, Jonathan Kellerman, and many others. He left Random House in July of 2007.

Mr. Menaker is also the author of five books, two of which were named New York Times Notable titles. His novel, "The Treatment," was made into a movie starring Ian Holm and Famke Janssen. He has also twice won the O. Henry Award for short fiction. He has written fiction, nonfiction, humor, and essays for The New Yorker, the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic, Harper's, Country Music Magazine, Parents, Redbook, and many other publications. He was the host of his own online literary-interview program, titlepage.tv, has conducted interviews with writers for PEN International, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Symphony Space. He has taught writing at UCLA, the City University of New York, and Columbia University's School of the Arts. He was the Editor of the Barnes & Noble Review's humor feature Grin & Tonic and currently serves Publishing Liaison — a consultant position — for B&N. He is working on a memoir, tentatively titled "My Mistake."

Feb. 13—Elizabeth Strout’s most recent work, Olive Kitteridge, a novel in stories, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was a New York Times Bestseller. She is the author of Abide with Me, a national bestseller and Book Sense pick, and Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in England. Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker and O: The Oprah Magazine. She is on the faculty of the MFA program at Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina, and lives in New York City.

Feb. 27—Sam Lipsyte was born in 1968. He is the author of the story collection Venus Drive (named one of the top twenty-five books of its year by the Voice Literary Supplement) and three novels: The Ask, The Subject Steve and Home Land, which was a New York Times Notable Book and received the first annual Believer Book Award.

Lipsyte is also the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.

March 12—Charles McGrath is a writer at large at The New York Times, and was formerly editor of The New York Times Book Review and deputy editor of The New Yorker. He is the editor of Golf Stories, Books of the Century, the co-author of The Ultimate Golf Book and a frequent contributor to Golf Digest. He lives in New Jersey.

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