Roger Rosenblatt: The Writing Life

The Fulbright Program is pleased to welcome Roger Rosenblatt, writer, author, professor, Emmy Award winner, Peabody Award winner, and 1965 Fulbright U.S. Student to Ireland for a discussion of his career and award-winning new book, Cold Moon: On Life, Love, and Responsibility. The event is moderated by Daniel Peña, a 2014 Fulbright U.S. Student to Mexico, Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Houston, Downtown, and author of Bang: A Novel.

The event will feature a moderated discussion of Rosenblatt’s life, career, awards, and Fulbright experience. Rosenblatt will discuss his reasons for writing, share advice on telling moving stories, and reveal the three most important lessons of his life. The event will conclude with a reading from Cold Moon, in which Rosenblatt reflects on his life and asserts “I believe in life. I believe in love. I believe we are responsible for each other.”

Of Cold Moon, The Washington Post wrote: "In this deceptively short book, the celebrated author and essayist takes us on a tour of his 'weathered mind.' His memories of his life summon ours, without warning or apology. Line by line, he helps us find softer landings... He never mentions [the pandemic], and yet he does... 'Everybody grieves.' So many lost, with many more to die... Let us abide by Rosenblatt's No. 3. We are responsible for each other."

 Moderator

Daniel Peña
2014 Fulbright U.S. Student to Mexico
Assistant Professor, Department of English
University of Houston, Downtown

Daniel Peña is a Pushcart Prize-winning writer and Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Houston,Downtown.  Formerly, he was based out of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City where he served as a Fulbright-Garcia Robles Scholar. A graduate of Cornell University and a former Picador Guest Professor in Leipzig, Germany, his writing has appeared in Ploughshares, The Rumpus, the Kenyon Review, NBC News, and Arcturus, among  other venues. He is currently a regular contributor to the Guardian and the Ploughshares blog. His novel, Bang, is out now from Arte Publico Press.

Speaker 

Roger Rosenblatt, Ph.D.
1965 Fulbright U.S. Student to Ireland
Essayist and Memoirist
Distinguished Professor of English and Writing
Stony Brook University

Roger Rosenblatt, whose prolific work has been published in 14 languages, is the author of five New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and three Times bestsellers, including the memoirs Kayak Morning, The Boy Detective, and Making Toast, originally an essay in the New Yorker. The Story I  Am, a collection on writing and the writing life was published in April of 2020 and Cold Moon: On Life, Love, and Responsibility was published in October 2020. He has written seven off-Broadway plays, notably the one-person Free Speech in America, that he performed at the American Place Theater, named one of The New York Times’s “Ten Best Plays of 1991.” In 2019, The Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor produced Lives in the Basement, Does Nothing, his one-person musical about the writing life, for which he played jazz piano.

The Distinguished Professor of English and Writing at Stony Brook, Rosenblatt formerly held the Briggs-Copeland appointment in creative writing at Harvard, where he earned his Ph.D. Among his honors are two George Polk Awards; the Peabody, and the Emmy, for his essays in Time magazine and on PBS; a Fulbright to Ireland, where he played on the Irish International Basketball Team; seven honorary doctorates; the Kenyon Review Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement; and the President’s Medal from the Chautauqua Institution for his body of work.