This weekend, Duke English will be hosting the 2024 Blackburn Literary Festival. “History and Its Alternatives” is the theme of this year’s festival, which will explore the storyteller’s place in a world where the truth seems ever more contentious and elusive. The festival will feature three celebrated novelists: Rachel Kushner, Claire Messud, and Paul Yoon.
Duke undergraduates have reserved seats to attend one of Claire Messud’s or Paul Yoon’s workshops on Friday, October 18, 2024, to kick off the festival. Both will lead Fiction workshops that will enlighten attendees on the art of fiction writing.
Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction and is a recipient of a Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Released May 14, 2024, Messud’s This Strange, Eventful History is on multiple novels to lookout for lists, including Oprah Daily’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024.
Paul Yoon is the author of five works of fiction: Once the Shore, which was a New York Times Notable Book; Snow Hunters, which won the Young Lions Fiction Award; The Mountain, which was an NPR Best Book of the Year; Run Me to Earth, which was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction; and most recently, The Hive and the Honey, which won The Story Prize.
The Blackburn Literary Festival Keynote will take place on Saturday, October 19, 2024, at 8:00 PM in Page Auditorium, featuring keynote speaker Rachel Kushner, the author of Creation Lake, which has been longlisted for the Booker Prize.
Rachel Kushner is the author of the internationally acclaimed novels The Mars Room, The Flamethrowers, and Telex From Cuba, as well as a book of short stories, The Strange Case of Rachel K and a book of essays, The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020. She won the Prix Médicis and was twice a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. She is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and the recipient of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her books have been translated into twenty-six languages.
After Kushner gives her keynote address, she will be joined onstage by fellow novelists Claire Messud, Paul Yoon, and Akhil Sharma, Duke English professor. Professor Sharma will lead the panel in a discussion on the craft of fiction writing.
Akhil Sharma, Duke English, Adele Schiff Professor of the Practice, is the author of An Obedient Father, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Best American Short Stories, and O. Henry Award Stories. He was named in the Atlantic’s 2024 list of great American novels.
Reserve your ticket(s) for this FREE event here.
To conclude the Blackburn Literary Festival, Duke English will host a “Triple-Header” Reading, Q&A, and Book Signing featuring novelists Rachel Kushner (Creation Lake), Claire Messud (This Strange Eventful History), and Paul Yoon (The Hive and the Honey), Sunday, October 20 at 2:00 PM in the Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room in the Rubinstein Library. Each author will give a reading followed by a Q&A session, a book signing, and a reception with light refreshments.
Professor William M. Blackburn, for whom the literary festival is named, was one of the architects for the Duke English creative writing program. He joined the Duke English faculty in 1926, and at the request of his students began teaching his first creative writing course in 1932.
“I must say I am content with students who, by trying to see the craft of writing from the inside, have come to recognize a little more clearly a good book they see one.” - Professor William M. Blackburn
The Arthur G. Raynes (Trinity, 1956) Endowment funds The Blackburn Festival. The Raynes endowment supports readings “by authors of the highest national achievement.”
English Department