George Saunders Reading at JSC: April 11th @ 5:30!

WHAT:  George Saunders Reads from His Fiction
WHEN:  Wednesday, April 11, 2012 -- 5:30pm
WHERE:  Johnson State College / Stearns Performance Space

Though perhaps our most celebrated satiric and comic American writer, George Saunders is also one of our most serious.  The acuity of his perceptions of American culture and discourse are more than matched by his relentless craftsmanship; yet what drives his fiction is the always-surprising depth of human complexity and sympathy at the heart of his storytelling.

He is the author of the novellas The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil and The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, as well as the short story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, and In Persuasion Nation.  His works of nonfiction include The Braindead Megaphone and A Bee Stung Me, So I Killed All the Fish.  His writing continues to appear regularly in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's, and GQ.

Saunders has been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship and the MacArthur Fellowship ("Genius Grant") and many other awards.  Ben Stiller purchased the film rights to Saunders's first story collection, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award), and the project remains in development under Stiller's production company.

Here is George Saunders appearing on The Colbert Report:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
George Saunders
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

And here he is appearing on Late Night with David Letterman:



Here he is on KCRW's Bookworm discussing his book of essays, The Braindead Megaphone.

Here is Saunders's appreciation of author Kurt Vonnegut, to whom he is often compared.

Here is one of Saunders's outrageous satires, "Nostalgia," from The New Yorker's Shouts & Murmurs column.

Also, check out his most recent short story in The New Yorker, "Tenth of December," along with an interview about the writing of that very funny yet moving story.

And below are some more interviews with Saunders:

"The Wag Chats with George Saunders"
"George Saunders:  Dig the Hole" in Guernica Magazine
"Knowable in the Smallest Fragment:  An Interview with George Saunders" at Gut Cult
"The George Saunders Interview" at BOMB Magazine Blog.