Reality Hunger: Reading and Talk
with acclaimed author David shields

Renowned author David Shields will read and talk about his latest book Reality Hunger at The New School on Friday, March 12 at 6:00 p.m. at the Theresa Lang Community Center, 55 West 13th Street. Shields will also be a visiting writer at this year’s New School Summer Writer’s Colony from June 7-24, where students work closely with New School faculty and leading authors in workshops and salons.

“I’ve just finished reading Reality Hunger and I’m lit up by it—astonished, intoxicated, ecstatic, overwhelmed,” writes Jonathan Lethem. Fresh from his acclaimed exploration of mortality in the genre-defying, best-selling The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead, Shields has produced an open call for new literary and other art forms to match the complexities of the 21st century. Converts will see Reality Hunger as a call to arms; detractors will view it as an occasion to defend the status quo. It is certain to be one of the most controversial and talked-about books of the season.

Audacious, sharp-eyed, hilarious, and self-deprecating all at once, David Shields is one of the strongest voices in contemporary American nonfiction and fiction. His non-fiction books include the New York Times bestseller The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (Knopf, 2008); Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity, winner of the PEN/Revson Award; and Enough About You: Notes Toward the New Autobiography. His three novels include Dead Languages, winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award; Heroes; and Handbook for Drowning: A Novel in Stories.

Shields’ many awards include a Guggenheim fellowship, two NEA fellowships, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He was the chair of the 2007 National Book Awards non-fiction panel.

Shields will be a visiting writer at the 2010 Summer Writer’s Colony, June 7-24, 2010. To learn more about this colony, which features workshops and literary salons with New School faculty members and visiting writers, please visit:  http://www.newschool.edu/summerwriters/.

Friday, March 12, at 6:00 p.m. 

Arnhold Hall, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, The New School, 55 West 13th Street, Second Floor (Near Sixth Avenue), New York, NY

Admission is free to all students and New School faculty, staff, and alumni with ID.