Readings to Go: Leslie Epstein
BU’s Creative Writing director reads from “King of the Jews”
In the video above, Leslie Epstein, director of BU’s Creative Writing Program, reads from his acclaimed 1979 novel King of the Jews.
Epstein, a College of Arts and Sciences professor, has published 10 books of fiction — P. D. Kimerakov, The Steinway Quintet Plus Four, King of the Jews, Regina, Goldkorn Tales, Pinto and Sons, Pandaemonium, Ice Fire Water: A Leib Goldkorn Cocktail, San Remo Drive — and most recently, The Eighth Wonder of the World. He has received many fellowships and awards, including a Rhodes Scholarship and an award for Distinction in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He recently adapted King of the Jews for the stage, and it was performed at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre.
Epstein was one of seven faculty members to read from their works at the annual Faculty Reading on January 30, 2007. Sponsored by the Creative Writing Program, the event included readings by Robert Pinsky, a CAS professor and three-time U.S. poet laureate, Jennifer Haigh, a CAS lecturer in creative writing and a PEN/Hemingway and PEN/Winship award winner, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Louise Glück, a CAS lecturer in creative writing and another former U.S. poet laureate, David Ferry, a CAS lecturer in creative writing and winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the Bingham Poetry Prize, and the Teasdale Prize, Ha Jin (GRS’94), a CAS professor of creative writing and winner of a National Book Award, two PEN/Faulkner Awards, and a PEN/Hemingway Award, and poet, scholar, and translator Rosanna Warren, a University Professor and BU’s Emma Ann MacLachlan Metcalf Professor of the Humanities.
See tomorrow’s BU Today for a video of Ha Jin reading from his recent work.