2020 Writer in Residence Schedule Announced

On Tuesday, Oct. 6 at 7:30 p.m. Jen will join Rector Rachel Connell in a virtual conversation attended by students, faculty, and staff and field questions from the audience. On Wednesday, Oct. 7 at 3:00 p.m. she will Zoom with the school’s creative writers and International Student Association.

 

“Gish Jen is a great writer and has a fabulous sense of humor,” noted English Department Chair Mary Edmonds. “She is learned and thoughtful. I thought the students would enjoy her work, and I find The Resisters to be particularly accessible.

 

“She is also the child of immigrants who balanced a Chinese cultural tradition with becoming American. I thought her ability to navigate both the Chinese and the American cultural worlds would appeal to our Chinese students, and other international students, for that matter, and would perhaps make those of us who are American citizens more empathetic to the challenges of studying and living in a foreign country.”

 

In addition to The Resisters, Jen has penned four other novels as well as shorter works in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and a number of other periodicals, anthologies, and textbooks; appeared in The Best American Short Stories multiple times; and been featured in a PBS American Masters’ special on the American novel. Jen was also previously nominated for a National Book Critics’ Circle Award.

 

The Resisters has received critical acclaim from, among other publications, The Boston Globe, New York Times Book Review, and Washington Post. The novel takes place in dystopian “AutoAmerica” in which artificial intelligence, job automation, rising sea levels, classism, and baseball all play a huge role in the imagined world.

 

Signed book plates will be made available to those who own Jen’s books, and the student store will soon stock a variety for those seeking to purchase her works.