14th Annual Tom Wolfe Weekend Seminar Kicks Off with Lecture by Author Lauren Groff

By Julie Cline
April 18, 2017

“Lauren Groff is a writer of rare gifts, and ‘Fates and Furies’ is an unabashedly ambitious novel that delivers—with comedy, tragedy, well-deployed erudition and unmistakable glimmers of brilliance throughout.”

Lauren Groff, author of the National Book Award finalist “Fates and Furies” (2015), will present the keynote address at Washington and Lee University’s 14th Annual Tom Wolfe Weekend Seminar Fates and Furies: “Secrets within a Marriage,” on April 21, at 4:15 p.m. in Lee Chapel.

The title of Groff’s talk is “The Anxiety of Influence: The Literary Roots of ‘Fates and Furies.’” It is free and open to the public.

Among its many recognitions, “Fates and Furies” was selected as the 2015 Book of the Year by Amazon.com and President Barack Obama.

Groff also is the author of “Delicate Edible Birds: And Other Stories” (2016); “Arcadia” (2011), which was a New York Times Notable Book, winner of the Medici Book Club Prize and finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award; and “The Monsters of Templeton” (2008) which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers.

The New York Times Sunday Book Review said, “Lauren Groff is a writer of rare gifts, and ‘Fates and Furies’ is an unabashedly ambitious novel that delivers—with comedy, tragedy, well-deployed erudition and unmistakable glimmers of brilliance throughout.”

Her work has appeared in journals including the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Tin House, One Story, McSweeney’s and Ploughshares, and in the anthologies 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and three editions of the Best American Short Stories.