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After Kapuscinski: The Art of Reportage in the 21st Century
The New York Institute for the Humanities, together with
the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, the National Book Critics Circle, and
the Literary Reportage concentration at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute
present
AFTER KAPUŚCIŃSKI:
THE ART OF REPORTAGE IN THE 21ST CENTURY
A PUBLIC CONVERSATIONon the ins and outs of long-form and literary journalism with leading authors of the genre
October 6-7, 2009
NYU’s Hemmerdinger Hall100 Washington Square East (entrance midway between Waverly and Washington)
At a time when categorical differences between fiction and nonfiction are increasingly ambiguous, and the gap between their respective segments of the publishing market increasingly small, a discussion of reportage as a literary art form seems paramount.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6th, 5:00 PM–7:00 PM
PANEL I: The Art of Reportage, On the Ground and On the Page
How does narrative arise from reportage? What transformation occurs during the writing process? Answers from journalists who combine investigative skills and literary craft.
JANE CIABATTARI, Moderator, is President of the National Book Critics Circle and a member of the Executive Board of the Overseas Press Club. Her reporting from abroad and cultural criticism have appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian online, npr.org, Bookforum, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Columbia Journalism Review.
JOSHUA CLARK is author of Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone (2007 National Book Critics Circle award finalist). He has worked as a correspondent for NPR and Salon.com and is president and founder of Light of New Orleans Publishing.
ELIZA GRISWOLD is author of The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam (FSG, forthcoming 2010), a New America Fellow, and a 2010 Rome Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Her reportage has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s and the New Republic.
ARIF JAMAL is author of The Shadow War: The Untold Story of Jihad in Kashmir (Melville House, 2009). Former contributing writer to the New York Times, he is a fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University.
ELIZABETH RUBIN, a recent Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. Her award-winning reportage from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudia Arabia, Russia, the Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the New Republic, Harper's, and the New Yorker.
PAWEL SMOLENSKI is author of 7 books in Polish, including Burial of a Butcher, on tensions between Poles and Ukrainians, and Hell in Paradise, on post-Saddam Iraq. He received a 2005 Kurt Schork Award in International Journalism from Columbia University's Journalism School.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6th, 7:30 PM–9:00 PM
Panel II: Literary Reportage Between Self and Other, Fact and Fiction If a strictly objective take is self-evidently impossible, what sort of warrant as to strict veracity ought the reader expect from the creator of long-form narrative nonfiction? To what extent, if any, ought that writer's vantage be grounded in a personal "I" voice, and to what extent does even that commitment shade into a sort of fiction?
LAWRENCE WESCHLER, Moderator, is concurrently Director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU and Artistic Director of the Chicago Humanities Festival, and the author of over a dozen books, including The Passion of Poland, Calamities of Exile, and Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences (2007 National Book Critics Circle Award winner).
WOJCIECH JAGIELSKI is the author of 4 books in Polish, including Night Wanderers (2009), about child soldiers in Uganda, and, in English translation, Towers of Stone: The Battle of Wills in Chechnya (Seven Stories, October 2009).
ADRIAN NICOLE LEBLANC is author of Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx (2003, NBCC finalist), a 2006 MacArthur Fellow, and a visiting scholar at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
SUKETU MEHTA is author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found (2004), a 2007 Guggenheim Fellow, and Associate Professor in the Literary Reportage concentration of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU.
ALASTAIR REID is an eminent poet, longtime New Yorker correspondent from Spain, Scotland, and Latin America, one of the foremost translators of the work of both Pablo Neruda and Jorge Luis Borges, and a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7th, 6:30 PM–8:30 PM
Panel III: Kapuściński’s Legacy in the 21st Century
Ryszard Kapuściński was one of the most celebrated, albeit controversial journalists of the last fifty years, a gorgeous stylist and a rhapsodic, if at times not strictly reliable, witness. To what extent is the kind of reportage he engaged in even possible today? What lessons can the next generation of writers draw from his example?
ROBERT S. BOYNTON, Moderator, is Director of NYU’s new Literary Reportage concentration, former Senior Editor at Harper’s, and author of The New New Journalism (2005).
ANNA BIKONT is a senior writer and co-founder of Poland’s leading daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, author of We, People from Jedwabne (2004; English translation forthcoming from Yale Univ. Press), and a 2008-09 Cullman Center fellow at the NYPL, where she was researching a biography of Ryszard Kapuściński.
TED CONOVER is the author of Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (2001 National Book Critics Circle Award winner), a 2003 Guggenheim Fellow, and Distinguished Writer in Residence at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
KLARA GLOWCZEWSKA is Editor in Chief of Condé Nast Traveler, the only travel publication to win a National Magazine Award, translator of three of Ryszard Kapuściński’s books, including Travels With Herodotus (2007). She is a member of the Executive Board of the Overseas Press Club.
PHILIP GOUREVITCH is Editor in Chief of The Paris Review, a longtime staff writer at the New Yorker, and author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families (1998 National Book Critics Circle Award and Overseas Press Club Award) and, with Errol Morris, of The Ballad of Abu Ghraib (2008).
This event is being held in association with the Overseas Press Club of America and Words Without Borders (www.wordswithoutborders.org), which is publishing several writers from the above in its special October issue on reportage.
* Free and open to the public on a first-come, first-in basis (no reservations). *
NEAREST SUBWAYS:
A, C, E, F, or V train to West 4th Street
R or W train to 8th Street-New York University (Broadway)
For further information, as well as for press inquiries, please contact the New York Institute for the Humanities at 212.998.2101 or nyih.info@nyu.edu.
ABOUT SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS
The New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU
(www.nyih.as.nyu.edu) was established in 1976 by founding director
Richard Sennett as a forum for promoting the exchange of ideas between
academics, professionals, politicians, diplomats, writers, journalists,
musicians, painters, and other artists in New York City—and between all
of them and the city. It currently comprises approximately 220 Fellows.
The NYIH typically holds luncheon-lectures for Institute Fellows every
Friday of the academic year. In addition to these events the NYIH
organizes a variety of seminars, conferences, discussions, readings and
performances that are free and open to the public.
The Literary Reportage Concentration of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU (www.journalism.nyu.edu)
welcomes its first graduate students this autumn. The Literary
Reportage track brings together traditional journalism's emphasis on
rigorous reporting and research with the emphasis of the MFA writing
workshop model on close professional faculty mentorship. We believe
that the finest long-form nonfiction is always in conversation with the
best thinking of traditional academic disciplines. Students therefore
take courses designed to deepen their reporting and research skills as
well as their understanding of literary technique and of specific
subjects, availing themselves of the resources of the Journalism
Institute and other NYU departments.
The Polish Cultural Institute in New York (www.polishculture-nyc.org) established in 2000, is a diplomatic mission dedicated to nurturing and promoting cultural ties between the United States and Poland, both through American exposure to Poland’s cultural achievements and through exposure of Polish artists and scholars to American trends, institutions, and professional counterparts. The Institute initiates, organizes, promotes, and produces a broad range of cultural events in theater, music, film, literature, and the fine arts. It has collaborated with the Lincoln Center Festival, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, The Museum of Modern Art, The Jewish Museum, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, Art at St. Ann’s, PEN World Voices Festival, Poetry Society of America, Yale University, and many other cultural institutions.
The National Book Critics Circle (www.bookcritics.org), founded in 1974 at the Algonquin, is a nonprofit organization consisting of some 600 active book reviewers who are interested in honoring quality writing and communicating with one another about common concerns. It is managed by a 24-member all-volunteer board of directors. In addition to its annual Best Book awards, the NBCC sponsors the Sandrof award for lifetime achievement and the Balakian award for excellence in reviewing. The NBCC offers forums for the intelligent discussion of books across the nation and an ongoing conversation about book culture through its award-winning blog, Critical Mass.
The Overseas Press Club of America (www.opcofamerica.org) was founded in 1939 in New York by a group of foreign correspondents. The OPC seeks to maintain an international association of journalists working in the United States and abroad; to encourage the highest standards of professional integrity and skill in the reporting of news; to help educate a new generation of journalists; to contribute to the freedom and independence of journalists and the press throughout the world, and to work toward better communication and understanding among people.
Words without Borders (www.wordswithoutborders.org) opens doors to international exchange through translation, publication, and promotion of the best international literature. Founded in 2000, Words without Borders publishes selected prose and poetry in its monthly online magazine and in print anthologies, develops materials to facilitate the use of foreign literature in high school and college classrooms, and stages events that connect foreign writers to the general public and media.
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