The NYU Washington, DC Salon Series: Conversations with Writers & Artists presents an opportunity for the NYU and Washington, DC community to meet and engage in dialogue with acclaimed writers and artists as they reflect on their craft. This program provides facilitated conversations that aim to illuminate the guests’ creative processes, discuss their current works, and explain the impact of their work on the world around us. Join this conversation with internationally award-winning authors Zadie Smith and Jeffrey Eugenides made possible by NYU Washington, DC through collaboration with the NYU Creative Writing Program.
Main Speakers:
Zadie Smith:
Zadie Smith is a British author known for her treatment of race, religion, and cultural identity and for her novels’ eccentric characters, savvy humour, and snappy dialogue. She became a sensation in the literary world with the publication of her first novel, White Teeth, in 2000.
Smith, the daughter of a Jamaican mother and an English father, changed the spelling of her first name to Zadie at age 14. She began writing poems and stories as a child and later studied English literature at the University of Cambridge (B.A., 1998). While there, she began writing White Teeth, and at age 21 she submitted some 80 pages to an agent. A frenzied bidding war ensued, and the book eventually was sold to Hamish Hamilton. Smith took several more years to complete the novel, and in 2000 it was published to rave reviews. Set in the working-class suburb of Willesden in northwest London, White Teeth chronicled the lives of best friends Archie Jones, a down-on-his-luck Englishman whose failed suicide attempt opens the novel, and Samad Iqbal, a Bengali Muslim who struggles to fit into British society. Spanning some 50 years, the novel also detailed the trials and tribulations of their families, which prompted some critics to hail Smith as a modern-day Charles Dickens. The ambitious work won numerous awards, including the Whitbread First Novel Award (2000), and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction.
Jeffrey Eugenides:
Much like his character Calliope Stephanides, Jeffrey Eugenides was born to a Greek-American family in Grosse Pointe, a wealthy suburb of Detroit, Michigan. He graduated from Brown University magna cum laude and got his Masters degree from Stanford in English and Creative writing. He is currently a professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University and he has received many awards for his work, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, a Whiting Writers’ Award, the Henry D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Pulitzer Prize.
Much of Eugenides' work is set in Detroit, including both Middlesex and his earlier novel, The Virgin Suicides. Eugenides grew up during the slow demise of Detroit, and remembers it as almost an elegiac feeling, which comes across in both novels. Although conscious of the fact that the suburbs were not considered dignified literary subjects, Eugenides eventually embraced his past and realized that the suburbs are often just as interesting locations as some other "exotic" locales. He draws many elements from his past, including the struggle of classism he experienced in Grosse Pointe. Eugenides' narrative risks paid off, and many adult demographics have responded to his novels very enthusiastically - Oprah even placed Middlesex on her book club list.
Keli Goff (Moderator):
Keli Goff (GAL '01) is an internationally recognized multi-platform journalist and fiction writer best known for documenting the intersections of politics, pop culture, race and gender in America. As a journalist her work has appeared in some of the world’s leading publications, including the magazines Time, Cosmopolitan and Essence, and the web editions of The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Elle Magazine and New York Magazine, to name a few. Currently a Columnist for The Daily Beast, Keli previously served as a Contributor to The Washington Post blog “She the People,” The Huffington Post and the online magazine The Root.
The panel was introduced by Paul Smith -- Director, British Council in the US.
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