Join The Yale Review in New Haven from April 16–19 for our 2024 Festival. Over the course of four days, we are thrilled to bring you special writing workshops, talks, and panels with some of today’s most exciting poets, novelists, and critics, a lively group of talented artists we feel fortunate to call contributors. We invite you to participate in the social practice of thought as we engage with these writers on timely questions of history, literature, and the nature and purpose of criticism today. Talks and panels are free and open to the public. Workshops are open to members of the Yale community, with preference given to Yale students. More information as well as a full schedule are provided below.
The Yale Review Festival
Tuesday, April 16
Writers at Work
12:00–1:00 p.m., HQ 134
What is a novelist?
Enjoy lunch with Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Hernan Diaz as he engages in conversation with TYR deputy editor Elliott Holt.
Generative Workshop: Fiction
3:45–4:45 p.m., HQ 134
Writing characters into spaces
Come prepared to write with Katie Kitamura, award-winning author of Intimacies.
Open to members of the Yale community, with preference given to Yale students.
RSVP here
Keynote Reading and Reception
5:00–6:30 p.m., HQ L02/L90
Where fiction and history meet
Hernan Diaz and Katie Kitamura read from their work and discuss the role fiction plays in our understanding of history.
Introduced by Beverly Gage, author of G-Man: Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century; discussion moderated by Meghan O’Rourke, editor of The Yale Review.
Reception to follow
Co-sponsored by the Yale English Department and Creative Writing Program and the FAS Dean’s Office in Humanities.
Wednesday, April 17
Generative Workshop: Poetry
3:45–4:45 p.m., HQ 276
The writer’s notebook: invention and discovery
Learn strategies for transforming raw materials into first drafts in this workshop with Catherine Barnett, author of Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space and Human Hours.
Open to members of the Yale community, with preference given to Yale students.
RSVP here
Poetry Reading and Conversation
5:00–6:30 p.m., HQ L02
American poetry and our present history
Aria Aber, Catherine Barnett, and Brenda Shaughnessy read their work and discuss the lyric poem as a social force. Introduced by Maggie Millner, poet and TYR senior editor, and moderated by Meghan O’Rourke, editor of The Yale Review.
Co-sponsored by the Yale English Department and Creative Writing Program and the FAS Dean’s Office in Humanities.
Thursday, April 18
Generative Workshop: Criticism
12:00–1:00 p.m., HQ 276*
How to become a critic, with lessons from Joan Didion's sentences
Come prepared to write with Brian Dillon, critic and author, most recently, of Affinities.
Open to members of the Yale community, with preference given to Yale students.
RSVP here
Keynote Panel and Reception
5:00–6:30 p.m., HQ L02/L90
What is criticism, and why do we write it?
A discussion with TYR editor Meghan O’Rourke and contributors Merve Emre (The New Yorker), Brian Dillon (London Review of Books), Namwali Serpell (New York Review of Books), and Christine Smallwood (Harper's).
Reception to follow
Co-sponsored by the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism.
Friday, April 19
Archives Out Loud
12:00–1:00 p.m., HQ 134
Virginia Woolf in The Yale Review
Enjoy lunch with Merve Emre and Claire Messud, who will discuss the legacy of Virginia Woolf—novelist, essayist, and longtime contributor to The Yale Review.
Student Reading
3:00–4:00 p.m., HQ 131
Featuring students from The Yale Review’s reading program.
*Please note room change. This workshop was previously scheduled to take place in HQ 107 and will now take place in HQ 276.
All events will take place in Yale's Humanities Quadrangle, 320 York Street.
