The English department’s Blackburn Literary Festival brings literary figures of renown to Duke for multi-day celebrations, usually centered around a theme. A collaboration of Duke Arts and the English department, this year’s festival (Oct. 18-20) brings three celebrated novelists together for a weekend of readings and conversation. This year’s theme, “History and Its Alternatives,” explores the storyteller’s place in a world in which the truth seems ever more contentious and ever more elusive.  Following her address on Saturday, keynote speaker Rachel Kushner (Creation Lake) will be joined onstage by fellow novelists Claire Messud (This Strange, Eventful History) and Paul Yoon (The Hive and the Honey). Akhil Sharma, Duke English professor and PEN/Hemingway award-winning author of An Obedient Father, will lead this year’s guests in a discussion of their craft. (Seating is limited for this free and public event, please reserve your ticket(s). A Sunday triple-header reading and book-signing will cap the weekend’s events.

The Arthur G. Raynes (Trinity, 1956) Endowment funds The Blackburn Festival. The Raynes endowment supports readings “by authors of the highest national achievement.”

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