VISITING WRITERS PROGRAM

Visiting Writers, 2006-07

JONATHAN GOLD
Thursday, November 16, 2006

Jonathan Gold is an award-winning food writer whose column appears regularly in the L.A. Weekly. He was New York restaurant reviewer for Gourmet magazine and is author of Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles. 

Schedule of Events with Jonathan Gold

5-7 PM: Dinner with students and faculty
Participants will sample various dishes selected by Mr. Gold and discuss how to evaluate and write about them.
By invitation only.

8-9:30 PM: Presentation in Beckman Auditorium
Mr. Gold will discuss food and food writing with chef and food scientist, Shirley Corriher, followed by a book sale/signing.
Free and open to the public. For more information: http://www.events.caltech.edu/events/event-3769.html

PREVIOUS VISITORS

Harryette Mullen
May 11, 2006

Harryette Mullen is the author of six poetry books, most recently Blues Baby (2002) and Sleeping with the Dictionary (2002), a finalist for a National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry.  Her poems are included in the Norton Anthology of African American Literature and translated into Spanish, French, Polish, Bulgarian, and Swedish. Her honors include a Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry, a Rockefeller Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Ms. Mullen received her Ph.D. from the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She taught in the poets-in-the-schools program in Texas and at Cornell University before moving to Los Angeles, where she teaches African-American literature, American poetry, and creative writing at UCLA.

Kenneth Turan
February 15-16, 2006

Kenneth Turan is a film critic for the Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio. He has served as editor of the Times’ book review and director of the paper’s annual Book Prizes. Before joining the Times, he was a staff writer at the Washington Post and TV Guide. Mr. Turan teaches film reviewing and non-fiction writing at USC and is on the board of directors of the National Yiddish Book Center. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, he is author of several books, including the recent Never Coming to a Theater Near You, published by Public Affairs Press. In the words of Variety, “Turan's writing is tight and insightful and his recommendations demonstrate impeccable taste.

Art Spiegelman
February 9, 2005

Art Spiegelman worked for many years as a commercial illustrator and "underground" comic book artist. In 1992, he won a Pulitzer Prize for Maus, a groundbreaking autobiographical novel about his family and the Holocaust that depicts Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. In the decade following Maus, Spiegelman was staff writer and illustrator at The New Yorker. He currently edits and contributes to Little Lit, an anthology series of fairy tales and original stories for children and is creating the libretto and sets for a new opera. His recent book, In the Shadows of No Towers, was selected by the New York Times as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2004. Other honors include a Guggenheim fellowship and a nomination for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Ian McEwan
April 7-8, 2004

Ian McEwan is one of England's most distinguished contemporary writers. His books include Amsterdam (1998), winner of the Booker Prize; The Child in Time (1987), winner of the Whitbread Award; as well as the short story collection, First Love, Last Rites (1975), winner of the Somerset Maugham Award. His most recent novel, Atonement (2001), received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the WH Smith Literary Prize, and the LA Times Prize for fiction.

Alan Lightman
April 7-10, 2003

Alan Lightman has published essays on science, as well as short fiction and reviews, in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Discover, Harper's, Technology Review, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Sciences, Smithsonian, and other magazines and newspapers. His many books include Dance for Two, essays on the human side of science; Ancient Light, an introduction to modern cosmology; four novels, including Einstein's Dreams (1993); and two physics textbooks. A Caltech Ph..D. in physics (1974), Lightman teaches at MIT, where he is professor of science writing, and senior lecturer in physics

Seamus Deane
November 4-8, 2002

Poet Seamus Deane is among the most wide-ranging and distinguished voices in contemporary Irish literature and culture. Born in the city of Derry in Northern Ireland in 1940, he is the author of four books of poetry and several volumes of essays and criticism, and is widely regarded as the leading historian of modern Irish literature. His internationally acclaimed first novel, Reading in the Dark (1996) won the Guardian Prize for Fiction and the Irish Times Fiction Award.