Class of 2021 Dinner (1)
Mary Gaitskill, visiting professor of literature at Claremont McKenna College is "among the most eloquent and perceptive of contemporary fiction writers," says The New York Times. She is the author of several novels including Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1998) and Veronica (2006), which was nominated for the National Book Award in 2005, as well as the story collections Don’t Cry (2010), Bad Behavior: Stories (1988), and Because They Wanted To (1998), which was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner in 1998.
Her story Secretary was the basis for the feature film of the same name. The film received the Special Jury Prize and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. In 2002, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction; in 2010 she received a New York Public Library Cullman Center research grant.
A University of Michigan graduate, she has taught at U.C. Berkeley, the University of Houston, Claremont McKenna College, New York University, The New School, Brown University, and Syracuse University and she was the Writer-In-Residence at Hobart College William Smith College.
Her most recent novel,The Mare, was on the “Best Books of the Year" lists for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The San Francisco Chronicle.
NOTE: Both on September 5 and 6, the reception will begin at 5:30 pm in Flamson Plaza, dinner will be served at 6:00 pm, and the talk will begin at 6:45 pm. If you cannot attend and need to cancel, please contact the Athenaeum by email or phone (909-621-8244) by 9:00 am the day of the event.
Photo credit: Derek Shapton