Gorton’s Masterclass Series: Rebecca Makkai – A Local Writing Life
This event is virtual
“A Local Writing Life”: Local author Rebecca Makkai has achieved national prominence, most recently with her novel The Great Believers — a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal. Makkai was born and raised in Lake Bluff, and has lived her adult life in Lake Forest. She will talk with Barry Benson, Interim Executive Director of the Ragdale Foundation, about living as a professional writer in Lake Forest, coming of age in the community, sustaining a life in the arts, and the connections of her four books to both the North Shore and Chicago.
Rebecca Makkai’s latest novel, The Great Believers, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; it was the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal, the Stonewall Book Award, the LA Times Book Prize, the Clark Fiction Prize, the Midwest Independent Booksellers Award, and the Chicago Review of Books Award; and it was one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of 2018. Her other books are the novels The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House, and the collection Music for Wartime — four stories from which appeared in The Best American Short Stories. Rebecca is on the MFA faculties of Sierra Nevada College and Northwestern University. She is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.
Barry Benson is the Interim Executive Director of the Ragdale Foundation, a nonprofit artists’ community located on the former country estate of architect Howard Van Doren Shaw. Nearly 200 residencies and fellowships are now offered annually to creative professionals of all types, making Ragdale one of the largest interdisciplinary artists’ communities in the country. Ragdale residents represent a cross-section of ages, cultures, experience, and mediums, for a diverse and vibrant community.
($25 tickets/$10 for students)
