The Celebrity Lecture Series

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...

Dean John Eadie and Professor Katherine Fishburn introduce popular writer Pat Conroy; Fishburn describes the correlations between the writer's life and his works. Conroy begins his lecture, using humor and captivating storytelling, by detail the hardships of his childhood and family life in the south. He also describes his family members' reactions...

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...

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...

Introductions for writer Norman Mailer are made by Dean John Eadie and Professor Kathleen Rout who describes many of Mailer's controversial works for the audience. Mailer begins his lecture by stating that he has no idea about what he is going to lecture. The first topic he stumbles onto is the perks of being an artist, in which he discusses the dr...

At the beginning of this clip, John Eadie, dean of the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University, and Tess Tavormina, professor of English and associate dean, introduce author Amy Tan. Tavormina praises the attention to detail that Tan gives to the names in her stories. Tan discusses "the ghosts of my imagination" in her lecture and ...

Introductions for author and satirist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. are made by John Eadie and Nancy Pogel who summarizes Vonnegut's varied career. Vonnegut opens the lecture on his beginnings as an author, and transitions to address the structure of society, stating that in order to lead a "good life" one must accrue a good support system, what he terms an "...