The Celebrity Lecture Series

Playwright Edward Albee is introduced by Dean John Eadie and Professor Joyce Ramsay of Michigan State University. Ramsay praises Albee as “the most important American playwright who is writing today” while enumerating the playwright's many works and awards. Edward Albee begins his lecture by talking about his chaotic education that eventually led h...

Dean John Eadie and Professor Robert Fiore of Michigan State University introduce Chilean writer, Isabel Allende. Fiore shares Allende's turbulent past with the audience, both in terms of her personal life and literary career. In her lecture, Allende explains that she has been a storyteller since her childhood. She recounts stories of how she first...

Author Margaret Atwood is introduced by Dean John Eadie and Professor Anita Skeen. Skeen describes the intertwining of human love and cruelty in Atwood's works. Atwood commences the lecture by discussing the nature of being a writer and details that her lecture is to be about the bad behavior of female characters in novels. In her writing, she repr...

Publisher, professor, novelist, and playwright Edgar Lawrence Doctorow is introduced by John Eadie, dean of the College of Arts and Letters and Alan Suits, architect and founding president of the Dean’s Community Council. Doctorow commences his lecture by addressing “how writers write,” including the importance of sentence structure within a story,...

Jim McClintock of the Department of English at Michigan State University introduces writer Richard Ford. Ford begins by talking about the nature of writing. He uses language as a way of forcing himself to fit into an environment in which he doesn't belong and as a way of explaining himself to a tough audience, a skill he developed early in his life...

Introductions for Mexican author Carlos Fuentes are made by Dean John Eadie of the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University and Professor George Mansour, chair person of the Department of Romance and Classical Languages. Mansour describes how Fuentes' diverse background led him to become a writer of great perspective and vision. A...

This clip begins immediately with author Joseph Heller discussing his writing of ...

Dean John Eadie and Director of Michigan State University's American Studies Program, James McClintock, introduce author Tony Hillerman. McClintock discusses Hillerman’s past occupations and some of his literary works, including mystery novel, ...

Writer John Irving is introduced by Dean John Eadie and poet Diane Wakoski. Wakoski praises Irving's determination to introduce nineteenth century morals to the twentieth century world via his novels, despite numerous setbacks and harsh criticism. John Irving imparts an anecdote from which he wrote a story concerning a red and blue air mattress tha...

Novelist William Kennedy is introduced by Dean John Eadie and Professor William Penn. Kennedy begins with an amusing anecdote about writing a short story for ...

Introductions for author Philip Roth are made by John Eadie, Peter Levine, and Barry Gross. Roth reads from his book ...

Writer Jane Smiley is introduced by Dean John Eadie and Professor William Penn who discusses the underlying themes in Smiley's novels. Smiley believes that the novels she began reading at age six inspired her to become an author and showed her that she has an inner voice. Smiley discusses the role of writing plays in our society today. Writing is n...

Dean John Eadie and Professor Barry Gross introduce writer John Updike. Gross enumerates the large number and variety of works written by Updike. Updike, in an attempt to fit his readings to the occasion, reads some of his poetry about his various experiences in the Midwest and continues on to read from a collection of short stories called ...

Journalist and novelist Tom Wolfe is introduced by John Eadie, dean of the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University, and Roy Saper, Community Council member. Saper describes Wolfe's priceless contribution to the writing world with the creation of ...