In a conversation hosted by author and MFA in Creative Writing instructor Phil Klay, writer Saïd Sayrafiezadeh will discuss his new short story collection, American Estrangement.
On Tuesday, Sept. 13, Fairfield University will welcome author Saïd Sayrafiezadeh for the fall semester’s first program of the Inspired Writers Series. Presented in partnership with the Quick Center's Open VISIONS Forum and hosted by Phil Klay, the event will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Dolan School of Business Event Hall.
Sayrafiezadeh will be speaking about his most recent work, American Estrangement, a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. Set in present-day America, the author’s website describes the characters in this collection of short stories as “people contending with internal struggles—a son’s fractured relationship with his father, the death of a mother, the loss of a job, drug addiction—even as they are battered by larger, often invisible, economic and political forces of American society.”
These are “stories that render America just strange enough to recognize,” according to a New York Times review. Selections from the book have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories.
Sayrafiezadeh’s first story collection, Brief Encounters With the Enemy, was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Fiction Prize. His memoir, When Skateboards Will Be Free, was selected as one of the 10 best books of the year by Dwight Garner of The New York Times.
Recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award for nonfiction and a Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers’ fiction fellowship, Sayrafiezadeh is a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities. He leads the creative nonfiction track in Hunter College’s MFA program and also teaches at Columbia University and at New York University, where he won an outstanding teaching award.
This Sept. 13 lecture at Fairfield University is co-presented by the Open VISIONS Forum: Espresso series and the Inspired Writers Series, a companion speaker series to Fairfield’s MFA in Creative Writing program. Inspired Writers Series events are lively discussions with top authors, designed not only to provide encouragement and inspiration for writers, but also to inform, entertain, and enlighten anybody who loves to read. Tickets can be purchased at quickcenter.com and are $20 for the general public, $10 for Quick Members, and $5 for Fairfield University students.
For more information about upcoming lecture events in the Open VISIONS Forum and the Inspired Writers Series, please visit www.quickcenter.com.
