New York Institute for the Humanities

On episode 21 of our 2nd season, listen to an NYIH Vault recording of William Finnegan, New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer prize winner, talking about his work-in-progress, Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country, which was published in 1998.

Novelist and Institute Fellow Ben Taylor talks about Here We Are, a memoir of his friendship with Phiip Roth. Taylor is the author of two previous memoirs--Naples Declared: A Walk Around the Bay, and The Hue and Cry in Our House, which received the 2018 Los Angeles Times/Christopher Isherwood Prize.

NYIH Conversations brings you Honor Moore and Eric Banks on Episode 19. In addition to three collections of poetry, Moore is the author of several celebrated works of nonfiction, including The White Blackbird: A Life of the Painter Margaret Singer by Her Granddaughter and The Bishop's Daughter, a memoir of her father. Her newest book is Our Revolution: A Mother and Daughter Mid-Century. Here, she talks about the book, women's lives and second-wave feminism, writing a hybrid of biography memoir, and the experience of publishing a book in the middle of a pandemic.

Congratulations to biographer Benjamin Moser for his Pulitzer Prize for SONTAG. On our latest episode of The Vault, he talks about the book, Sontag, and her world. Moser’s previous book, a biography of the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award

Just in time for his Pulitzer win! Listen to Biographer Benjamin Moser on Season 2, Episode 18 of , as he talks with Robert Boynton about the making of his 2019 biography of Susan Sontag. Moser’s previous book, a biography of the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Season 2, Episode 16 comes from our archives. Art Spiegelman, whose graphic novel Maus won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, took part in the 2011 New York Institute for the Humanities symposium, “Second Thoughts on the Memory Industry.”

Season 2, Episode 16 pays tribute to longtime fellow Deirdre Bair, who passed away on April 18, 2020. The author of six biographies and two memoirs, Bair received the National Book Award for her 1978 biography of Samuel Beckett. At a January 2020 NYIH luncheon, she discussed her final book, Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me, a Memoir, and looked back at her celebrated career.

Now up -- Season 2, Episode 14, the opening session of the NYIH 1980 conference on Censorship and Writing, moderated by NYRB editor Robert Silvers, with a presentation by Aryeh Neier, and comments by Joseph Brodsky and Susan Sontag.

On Epsiode 13 of Season 2, enter The Vault to hear Francine Prose talk about Anne Frank, the subject of her 2009 book, at the 2011 New York Institute for the Humanities symposium, “Second Thoughts on the Memory Industry.”

Poet and NYIH Fellow Peter Filkins talks with Eric Banks about his exceptional involvement with the work of H.G. Adler, the Holocaust survivor who authored definitive fictional and ethnographic portraits of life in the camps. In 2019 Filkins published his biography of this extraordinary figure, a book that was preceded by his translation of the novelistic trilogy.

Nothing can stop the the NYIH podcast team! In episode 12 of this season, listen to intellectual historian Eric Hobsbawm's 1995 talk "Inventing Your Own History" on how history is told in the post-Cold War world.

New episode of The Vault! Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's 2011 talk about her book, Childism: Confronting Prejudice Against Children. The author of landmark biographies of Hannah Arendt and Anna Freud, Young-Bruehl was a long time member of the Institute.

Season 2, Episode 9: NYIH Fellow Thompson joins Eric Banks to discuss his latest book, written in the aftermath of the 2016 election, What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues (Other Press).

On our podcast this week, celebrated memoirist and critic (and NYIH fellow) Vivian Gornick discusses her newest book, Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader, and tells us what she learned when she revisited the works that nourished her at different points in her life.

We're back! Season 2 continues with Episode 7, featuring André Aciman and NYIH Director Eric Banks talking about Find Me, literary followups, music and literature, and the books that make readers weep.

Have a little Kazin for the holidays! Season 2, Episode 6 of our podcast is up. Dive into The Vault with Alfred Kazin on Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Season 2, Episode 5! Robert Boynton talks with Eliza Griswold, poet and author of Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2019.

For Episode 4 of our current season, up today, we dove into the NYIH Archives for a talk by Philip Gourevitch on point of view in political coverage: “Black and White and Gray All Over: Some Thoughts on the Problems and Politics of Journalistic Evenhandedness.”

Episode 3 of our new season is up just in time for your Thanksgiving drive. Listen to Patrick Radden Keefe, New Yorker staff writer and author of the NYT Bestseller Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, talk about Belfast in all its incarnations.

In 1982, the composer Philip Glass presented the NYIH GallatinLecture at NYU. In this episode of The Vault, he discusses his relationship to theater and his turn to working with texts--particularly his work on the opera Satyagraha and his then-forthcoming composition for the film Koyaanisqatsi

NYIH Conversations : Lawrence Weschler