AG Events
Friday, September 27-Sunday, September 29, 2024
Shakespeare & Company, 70 Kemble Street, Lenox, Massachusetts
We’re looking forward to returning to the Berkshires this fall for the third installment of the WIT: Words, Ideas, and Thinkers Literary Festival! We hope you can join us September 27-29 at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA as we explore the theme The Power of Words: Why Writers Matter.
Click here to be added to the waitlist for any sold-out sessions.
This year, we are using the Shakespeare & Company ticket system. If you need any assistance, please email or call their box office at boxoffice@shakespeare.org or 413-637-3353. If you have any questions about the Festival, please email nmaniscalco@authorsguildfoundation.org.
If you are interested in a partnership or sponsorship opportunity, please contact Deborah Wilson, executive director of the Authors Guild Foundation, at dwilson@authorsguildfoundation.org or Bernard Schwartz, executive producer of literary programming, at bschwartz@authorsguildfoundation.org.
Jennifer Egan & Joseph O’NeillFriday, September 27, at 1 p.m.
The 2024 WIT Literary Festival opens with a wide-ranging conversation between Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad, Manhattan Beach) and Joseph O’Neill (Netherland, Godwin)—two award-winning novelists rightly celebrated as restlessly inventive and deeply compassionate storytellers.
Emily Wilson & Stephen Greenblatt Friday, September 27, at 3:30 p.m.
Join literary historian Stephen Greenblatt (The Swerve, Second Chances) and scholar-translator Emily Wilson (Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey) for a conversation about renewal in literature and life—the vitality of Shakespeare and Greek classics, and the role that the two of them play in animating and elucidating these works for contemporary readers.
Tony Kushner & Rachel Maddow Saturday, September 28, at 10 a.m.
Join playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America) and historian/journalist/TV political analyst Rachel Maddow (Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism) for a conversation on the American democratic experiment and their collaboration adapting Maddow’s podcast Ultra for Steven Spielberg.
Ruth Simmons & Sherrilyn Ifill Saturday, September 28, at 1 p.m.Join Sherrilyn Ifill and Ruth Simmons—national leaders in the fields of civil rights and higher education—for a conversation on the importance of the law and the classroom in preserving the future of our democracy. They will also discuss Simmons’s new coming-of-age memoir, Up Home, and Ifill’s new role as the inaugural chair of Howard University’s 14th Amendment Center for Law & Democracy.
Cathy Park Hong & Sayed Kashua Saturday, September 28, at 3:30 p.m.
Join Cathy Park Hong and Sayed Kashua for a conversation on the tensions and beauties inherent in overlapping identities and how they grapple with the inadequacies of language—confronting the distance between what has happened and how it is described. Hong’s trenchant, deeply felt book of essays, Minor Feelings, about the experience of being Asian American, earned her a place on the cover of Time Magazine. Kashua, an Arab Israeli novelist and newspaper columnist based in Boston, is best-known internationally as the creator of hit TV series, most recently Madrasa, about a bilingual school in Jerusalem where Palestinians and Israelis try to find a common ground.
Jamaica Kincaid & Sandra GuzmánSunday, September 29, at 10 a.m.
“You only start to make a garden—growing things because they’re beautiful and inspire thoughtfulness and reflection—after you have enough eat,” Jamaica Kincaid has said. Best known for deeply personal works of lyric fiction, Kincaid reflects on the stories of the plants that have made up the colonized world in her new book, An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children. Joining Kincaid for a conversation exploring their shared passion for gardening of all sorts is the journalist and editor Sandra Guzmán, whose talents for tending and cultivating are on glorious display in her groundbreaking anthology, The Daughters of Latin America.
Ruth Reichl & Monique TruongSunday, September 29, at 1 p.m.
“There is almost no story you can’t tell through food,” Ruth Reichl has written. Joining Reichl, who recently published The Paris Novel and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the James Beard Foundation, for a fresh conversation on the language and literature of food is Monique Truong, whose own appetite for the discussion is perhaps reflected in the delectable titles of her three indelible novels—Bitter in the Mouth, The Book of Salt, and The Sweetest Fruits.
Marie Arana & Luis Alberto UrreaSunday, September 29, at 3:30 p.m.
“My whole career has been devoted to trying to explain the Latin American personality,” Marie Arana has said. In LATINOLAND, she offers readers a sweeping, personal portrait of the largest racial and ethnic minority in the United States. Joining Arana for a discussion of the many “Latinolands” they have lived in, imagined, and reported on is the acclaimed writer Luis Alberto Urrea, who uses his dual-culture life experiences to explore themes of love, loss, and triumph.
Click here to watch recordings of sessions from past WIT Festivals.
Cromwell Harbor Foundation
Mary Mott & Gordon Simmering – Jeryl & Steve Oristaglio – Hunter K. Runnette & Mark P. VandenBosch – Randy Grimmett & Allison Smith’s Stonover Farm
Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo – Roaring Brook Family Foundation
Marie Arana & Jonathan Yardley – Patrick Atkinson – Pier Boutin, MD – Marcia Z. Feuer – Walter & Gerry Fiederowicz – Ann & Peter Herbst – Valerie Ann Hyman & Allen I. Hyman, MD – Taryn & Mark Leavitt – Ann & Peter Lombard – October Mountain Financial Advisors – Laura Pedersen – Amy Davidson Sorkin & David Sorkin – Wendy Strothman & John Bishop – Louise Hartwell White
The Berkshire EagleBerkshire MagazineThe BookstoreCanyon RanchHarper’s MagazineMahaiwe Performing Arts CenterThe Red Lion Inn
Hunter K. Runnette, Committee Chair
Marie Arana André Bernard Richard Thompson Ford Taryn Leavitt Ann Lombard Laura PedersenRoxana RobinsonAllison Smith Wendy Strothman
