Afterword - by Nicholas Delbanco (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a quiet corner of southwestern Vermont became a summer gathering place for the literary world. Here is a personal record of that place and time--a vivid account that brings to life a vanished era of letters.

Under the direction of novelists Nicholas Delbanco and John Gardner, the Bennington Writing Workshops set out to create a gathering of master practitioners in the work of words with students as apprentices. In the workshops, the next generation of writers could learn from masters of their craft. This is an homage to that system--and of the electric, often eccentric, energy found in a community of authors.

With wit, candor, and elegance, Delbanco's memories bring his colleagues back for one final session.

From Annie Dillard teaching the Heimlich maneuver before a reading, to John Gardner and Donald Barthelme nearly coming to blows in a kitchen at dawn, to Frederick Busch waging an epic battle to have his garbage collected, to the chaos of fielding endless phone calls for John Irving just as The World According to Garp was exploding--Delbanco brings to life the fierce rivalries, quiet moments, loud fun, and deep camaraderie of the era.

Afterword is an essential act of retrieval for anyone who believes that writing is not just a solitary act, but a shared enterprise. Its author is himself a model of the system he describes.

About the Author

Nicholas Delbanco is the author of more than thirty books of fiction and non-fiction. His most recent works of fiction are The Years, a novel, and Reprise: The Collected Stories of Nicholas Delbanco; his most recent works of non-fiction are Why Writing Matters and Still Life at Eighty: A Memoir. As editor he has compiled the work of, among others, John Gardner and Bernard Malamud.
Delbanco is the Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Michigan, where he also for many years directed the MFA Program in Writing and the Hopwood Awards Program. He has served as the Chair of the Fiction Panel of the National Book Awards, as a judge for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, and has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and, twice, a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. He and his wife divide their time between New York City and Cape Cod.