Established in 1999 by a gift from Richard and Sheila Schlesinger in honor of their son, a talented young writer who was dedicated to the pursuit of his craft, The John Christophe Schlesinger Visiting Writer Series provides a crucial and generative forum for the rich intellectual life of Yale’s Department of English. Each year, acclaimed authors of distinctive energy and imagination—from poets to screenwriters, from novelists to journalists—are brought to campus through the auspices of this series in order to give a public reading and to meet with student writers in a variety of settings. Through these events, students can experience firsthand the fact that literature is not a tradition of the past, but is an active, living practice by which to explore and discover the possibilities of the world.
2024-2025
2023-2024
Phillip Lopate
April Bernard
Sigrid Nunez
2022-2023
2020-2021
2019-2020
2018-2019
2017-2018
2016-2017
John Ashbery
Susan Howe
Ben Lerner
2015-2016
2014-2015
John Sayles
Terry Tempest Williams
Claudia Rankine
Paul Auster
2013-2014
Chris Ware
Tracy K. Smith
David Mitchell
2012-2013
Jamaica Kincaid
2011-2012
Adam Gopnik
Chris Abani
Amitav Ghosh
2010-2011
Lydia Davis
Kevin Young
Alison Bechdel
2009-2010
Junot Díaz
Calvin Trillin
2008-2009
Gay Talese
Michael Pollan
Edward Jones
2006-2007
John McFee
Dave Eggers
Ian McEwan
2005-2006
Ian Frazier
Stephen Sondheim
W.S. Merwin
2004-2005
Jhumpa Lahiri
Norman Mailer
Lorrie Moore
Mark Strand
2003-2004
Joan Didion
Caryl Phillips
2002-2003
Peter Matthiessen
Edna O’Brien
2001-2002
Malcolm Gladwell
Colson Whitehead
1999-2000
Tracy Kidder
Tobias Wolf