W&L Hosts 17th Annual Tom Wolfe Weekend The weekend’s seminar will feature Rebecca Makkai '99, author of the critically acclaimed novel "The Great Believers."
Rebecca Makkai ’99, author of the critically acclaimed novel “The Great Believers,” will give the keynote address.Washington and Lee University will host its 17th annual Tom Wolfe Weekend on April 8-9. The weekend’s seminar will feature Rebecca Makkai ’99, author of the critically acclaimed novel “The Great Believers.”
Makkai will present the keynote address on April 8 at 4:15 p.m. in University Chapel. Her talk is free and open to the public, and it will be livestreamed online for free at livestream.com/wlu/wolfe-rebecca-makkai.
Rebecca Makkai. Photo by Philippe MATSAS/Opale“The Great Believers” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Spanning three decades, the novel is a dual-plot story about a group of friends and their stirring emotional journey through the 1980s AIDS crisis in Chicago and its effects on the contemporary lives of survivors in Paris.
Makkai is also the author of the story collection “Music for Wartime” and the novels “The Hundred-Year House” and “The Borrower.” Her work was chosen for The Best American Short Stories in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 and appears regularly in publications such as Harper’s, Tin House, Ploughshares, New England Review and Ecotone, and on public radio’s “This American Life” and “Selected Shorts.”
The recipient of a 2014 NEA Fellowship, Makkai has taught at Northwestern University, the Tin House Writers’ Conference and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Joining Makkai in delivering talks during the weekend are W&L’s Lesley Wheeler, Henry S. Fox Professor of English, and Edward Adams, professor of English. Each will discuss “The Great Believers” from a variety of perspectives. All three will gather for a panel discussion about the book on Saturday afternoon.
The Tom Wolfe Weekend is sponsored by the W&L Class of 1951.
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