SPECIAL EVENTS
The Wallis and Writers Bloc Present
AN EVENING WITH AUTHOR JANE SMILEY
Moderated by David Ulin
Jun 15, 2023
7:30 PM
Join The Wallis and Writers Bloc for an evening of conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley moderated by renowned author David Ulin. Take a deep dive into Smiley's newest work, The Questions That Matter Most, a book that reflects on the literature that has meant the most to her—from Icelandic sagas to Mark Twain, from Little Women to Jessica Mitford and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Smiley explores what connects us to the stories we love, and why.
JANE SMILEY is the author of numerous
novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was
awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Last Hundred
Years Trilogy: Some Luck, Early Warning, and
Golden Age. Her novel Horse Heaven was
shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and Some Luck
was longlisted for the National Book Award. Most
recently, she authored The Questions That Matter Most: Reading,
Writing, and the Exercise of Freedom. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has
also received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for
Literature. She lives in Northern California.
DAVID L. ULIN is the author or editor of ten
books, including Sidewalking: Coming to Terms
with Los Angeles (University of California Press,
2015), shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-
Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay; The Lost
Art of Reading: Books and Resistance in a
Troubled Time (Sasquatch Books, 2018), and
Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology (Library of America, 2002),
which won a California Book Award. He is currently editing the
Collected Works of Joan Didion for the Library of America. The former
book editor and book critic of the Los Angeles Times, he has also
written for The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, The New Yorker, The Nation,
The New York Times, National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" and more. He teaches at the University
of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.
David Ulin
Jane Smiley