The Raymond Carver Reading Series in the College of Arts and Sciences continues with a reading by acclaimed novelist Daniel Torday G’07.
Daniel Torday
On Wednesday, Oct. 14, Torday will participate in an audience Q&A session at 3:45 p.m., followed by an author reading at 5:30 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public, and take place in Gifford Auditorium. For more information, contact Sarah Harwell G’05, associate director of the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing, at scharwel@syr.edu.
“We are thrilled to have Daniel Torday return to campus,” Harwell says. “A gifted storyteller, he is a thought-provoking, complex and hilarious writer in the tradition of Philip Roth and Michael Chabon.”
Torday is the author of the novel “The Last Flight of Poxl West” (St. Martin’s Press, 2015) and the novella “The Sensualist” (Nouvella Books, 2012), the latter of which has won the National Jewish Book Award for “Outstanding Debut Fiction.” His stories and essays have appeared in such major outlets as The New York Times, Esquire and Paris Review Daily.
A former Esquire editor, Torday is an editor at the Kenyon Review, and is director of the Creative Writing Program at Bryn Mawr College.
“Torday’s ability to shift gears between sweeping historical vistas and more intimate family dramas, and between old-school theatrics and more contemporary meditations on the nature of storytelling, announces his emergence as a writer deserving of attention,” writes Michiko Kakutani in her New York Times review of “The Last Flight of Poxl West.”
Syracuse Professor George Saunders G’88 considers the novel a “wonderful accomplishment of storytelling verve.” He says, “[It is] tender, lyrical, surprising, full of beautifully rendered details. Torday is a prodigiously talented writer, with a huge heart.”
Named for the legendary fiction writer who taught at Syracuse during the Eighties, the Carver Series brings 12-14 prominent writers to campus each year. The series is organized and presented by the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing in conjunction with an undergraduate course called “Living Writers” (ETS 107). Both the program and course are housed in the Department of English.
