The New Salon: Writers in Conversation: Kiese Laymon, hosted by Hari Kunzru
The New Salon: Writers in Conversation: Kiese Laymon
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Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the author of the genre-bending novel, Long Division and the essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Laymon’s bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the 2018 Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. The audiobook, read by the author, was named the Audible 2018 Audiobook of the Year. Laymon is the recipient of 2020-2021 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard. Laymon is at work on several new projects, including the long poem, Good God, the horror comedy, And So On, the children’s book, City Summer, Country Summer and the film Heavy: An American Memoir. He is the founder of “The Catherine Coleman Literary Arts and Justice Initiative,” a program aimed at getting Mississippi kids and their parents more comfortable reading, writing, revising and sharing.
Hari Kunzru is a Clinical Professor in the Creative Writing Program. He holds a BA in English Language and Literature from Oxford University and an MA in Philosophy and Literature from Warwick University. He is the author of five novels, including White Tears, a finalist for the PEN Jean Stein Award, the Kirkus Prize, the Folio Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, One Book New York, the Prix du Livre Inter étranger, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His latest novel Red Pill was published in 2020 by Knopf. He is also the author of The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions, Gods Without Men and a short story collection, Noise. His novella Memory Palace was presented as an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2013. His work has been translated into over twenty languages. His short stories and essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Guardian, New York Review of Books, Granta, Bookforum, October and Frieze. He has written screenplays, radio drama, and experimental work using field recordings and voice-to-text software. He has taught at Hunter College and Columbia University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. He has been a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library, a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin. He is a past deputy president of English PEN, a judge for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize and has been a frequent presenter, interviewer and guest on television and radio.