The Yale Review Festival 2024

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.