April 15, 2026
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When you walk into the grocery store and buy a banana, you might not think about Tulane University, Lil Wayne, Honduran immigrants, or New Orleans’ cruise terminal. But you should.
Spotlight on George Saunders
Update: Tulane University has postponed Saunders' talk until the 2026-2027 school year.
Every year since 2021, the Tulane University School of Liberal Arts’ Carole Barnette Boudreaux ’65 Great Writers Series has brought an internationally prominent writer to New Orleans for readings, lectures, events and panels. This year, that author is George Saunders.
George Saunders is the recipient of a 2006 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (“Genius” Award). He has authored two novels, four collections of short stories, a novella, a book of essays, and an award-winning children’s book.
His most recent collection, Liberation Day, explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice, and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. A prior collection, Tenth of December, was the winner of the 2014 Story Prize and the 2014 Folio Prize.
His two novels are the recently published Vigil and the Man Booker Prize-winning Lincoln in the Bardo.
His work appears regularly in The New Yorker, GQ, and Harper’s Magazine, and has appeared in the O’Henry, Best American Short Story, Best Non-Required Reading, and Best American Travel Writing anthologies.
Saunders is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by TIME Magazine in 2013, and received the 2025 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (DCAL) from the National Book Foundation. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University.
Saunders will give a public talk focused on his new novel Virgil on Thursday, April 9, at 6pm at Tulane University in the Lavin-Bernick Center’s Kendall Cram Ballroom.
Leading up to the talk, the Library is delighted to partner with Tulane University School of Liberal Arts to explore Saunders’ writing with our community.
One Page at a Time: A Reading and Writing Workshop with Kate Baldwin
The One Page at a Time workshop, led by Tulane professor Kate Baldwin, focuses on Saunders’ best-selling A Swim in a Pond in The Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life. Participants will analyze Saunders’ work, closely followed by targeted writing prompts.
All readers and writers are welcome. Bring a piece of writing that you’re working on, and re-work it at the Library.
Kate Baldwin is a professor of English, Communication, and Gender & Sexuality Studies at Tulane University who specializes in comparative literary and cultural histories. She is the author of the books Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters between Black and Red and The Racial Imaginary of the Cold War Kitchen: From Sokol’niki Park to Chicago’s South Side.
One Page at a Time takes place Wednesday, March 11, 11am – 12pm, at Milton H. Latter Memorial Library.
Book Clubs Reading George Saunders
In March, two of the Library’s book clubs are reading George Saunders.
Central City Book Salon meets the first Tuesday of the month, 5:30pm – 6:30pm, at Central City Library. At their March 3rd meeting, they’ll discuss Saunders’ novel Lincoln in the Bardo, a historical fantasy in which President Abraham Lincoln’s son finds himself in purgatory, trapped in a monumental struggle over his soul. Lincoln in the Bardo asks the question, How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?
Teatime Reading Nook: A Short Story Book Club for Busy Folk meets the third Saturday of the month, 3pm – 4pm, at Cita Dennis Hubbell Library. At their March 21st meeting, they’ll discuss Saunders’ short story, “Semplica Girl Diaries,” which follows a middle-class family attempting to keep up with the Joneses by installing trendy but grotesque human lawn ornaments. The story grapples with questions of capitalism, morality, the American Dream, and the way we use and abuse each other in pursuit of perceived success.
More by George Saunders
From novels to short stories to meditations on kindness, there’s plenty of George Saunders to read in the New Orleans Public Library’s collection. Borrow your next read today!
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