photo by Nan
Groundbreaking Stories
with Robert Coover and Yyun Li
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Recorded at the 2011 Small Wonder Festival at Charleston House, East Sussex.
Robert Coover is an acclaimed figure in post-war American literature. Since the publication of his first novel in 1966, he has gained a reputation for his highly experimental approach to fiction. The stories in his collections Pricksongs & Descants (1969) and A Child Again (2005) put a new spin on familiar myths and fairy tales, while those in A Night at the Movies (2007) subvert a variety of film genres. He has won numerous awards including the William Faulkner Award and the Rea Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as Rockefeller, Guggenheim and Lannan Foundation fellowships. He leads experimental workshops in ‘Cave Writing’ at Brown University.
Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing, China and emigrated to the United States in 1996 to study for a PhD in immunology. In 2005, she received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. That same year, her debut collection of short stories, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Guardian First Book Award. Her second collection, Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, reports from the frontline of modern China. She lives in California where she is Associate Professor of English at University of California, Davis.
Listen:
Groundbreaking Stories
(1 hour 20 minutes)
With thanks to the organisers of the Small Wonder Festival for their permission to publish this recording.
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