Media Contact: Susan Cipollaro, scipollaro@fairfield.edu, 203-254-4000 x2726

FAIRFIELD, Conn. (February 21, 2020) – On Thursday, March 5 at 7:30 p.m., best-selling author and novelist Nathan Englander, will deliver the Diane Feigenson Lecture in Jewish Literature. His lecture, entitled “Guilt, Memory, and the Beta-God: Nathan Englander on kaddish.com,” will be held at Fairfield University’s Barone Campus Center Oak Room.

In his lecture, Englander will read passages from his bestselling novel, kaddish.com, which will be followed by a talk about the genesis of stories, mourning and memory, ideas of the afterlife, and technology's intersection with faith in the modern world. There will be a Q&A and book signing.

In addition to kaddish.com, Englander is also the author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, Dinner at the Center of the Earth, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, and The Ministry of Special Cases. He was the 2012 recipient of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank. His short fiction and essays have been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Washington Post.

Englander was named as one of “20 Writers for the 21st Century” by The New Yorker, received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a PEN/Malamud Award, the Bard Fiction Prize, and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. He was a fellow at the Dorothy & Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and at The American Academy of Berlin.

The Feigenson Lectureship is in memory of professor Diane Feigenson who taught in the English Department and the Judaic Studies Program at Fairfield University for many years. Among the courses she taught were “Literature of the Holocaust” and Modern Jewish Literature.” This biennial lectureship is made possible through the generosity of the Feigenson family.

Free and open to the public, the event is sponsored by Fairfield University’s Bennett Center for Judaic Studies. Reservations are requested. Please contact the Bennett Center for Judaic Studies at bennettcenter@fairfield.edu or call 203-254-4000, ext. 2066.  For more information about other Bennett Center events, visit fairfield.edu/bennett.

Posted On: February 21, 2020

Volume: 51 Number: 72

Fairfield University is a modern Jesuit Catholic university rooted in one of the world’s oldest intellectual and spiritual traditions. More than 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students from the U.S. and across the globe are pursuing degrees in the University’s five schools. Fairfield embraces a liberal humanistic approach to education, encouraging critical thinking, cultivating free and open inquiry, and fostering ethical and religious values. The University is located on a stunning 200-acre campus on the scenic Connecticut coast just an hour from New York City.