Big thank to WTAMU's Dr. Ryan Brooks of the Humanities on the High Plains podcast for allowing High Plains Morning to air an excerpt from the George Saunders interview this morning. Here's the full interview, and check out the fabulous photo of the Amarillo Songwriters Association! (Thanks to Buddy Squyres for the flashback!) Also thanks to Chris Hudson of Amarillo College for his contribution to this piece. Both Ryan and Chris are teaching seminars on the work of George Saunders this semester at their respective higher-ed institutions. Amazing!
More about this event (from WTAMU's Chip Chandler):
He's one of Stephen Colbert’s favorite authors, the “best short-story writer in English” according to Time, and an award-winning author of books, short stories, essays, novellas, children's books, and novels. Amarillo-born author George Saunders is returning to town, and you can hear him for free this Thursday, April 4 at 7 p.m. in Legacy Hall in the Jack B. Kelley Student Center on WT’s Canyon campus.
Saunders, who was born in Amarillo and spent time as a master’s student in WT’s English program in the 1980s, will be the featured speaker for Amarillo College’s Creative Mind Lecture on April 4, to be co-presented by WT’s Distinguished Lecture Series and the Center for the Study of the American West’s Garry L. Nall Lecture in Western Studies.
Saunders' 2017 novel Lincoln in the Bardo won the Man Booker Prize. The recipient of a 2006 MacArthur Foundation Genius grant, his work appears regularly in The New Yorker, GQ & Harper's Magazine. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time Magazine in 2013.
“Saunders is one of the most influential and celebrated, not to mention funniest and strangest, fiction writers in the world,” said Dr. Ryan Brooks, associate professor of English and codirector of graduate studies in English, who's teaching a seminar on the work of Saunders this semester.
You can learn more about Saunders before the April 4 event via the links below:
• About George Saunders:
https://georgesaundersbooks.com/about-george-saunders
• About George Saunders' books: https://georgesaundersbooks.com/books
• A short video they made about him at Syracuse, where he teaches creative writing:
• George Saunders featured on CBS: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/george-saunders-long-journey-to-short-story-success/
• The time he sang a duet with Stephen Colbert:
