The Carole Barnette Boudreaux ’65 Great Writers Series is a literary series supported by the Carole Barnette Boudreaux ’65 Creative Writer Endowed Fund, which was established in 2018 by a generous donation to the School of Liberal Arts by Tulane alumni Carole B. and Kenneth J. Boudreaux. Carole Barnette Boudreaux received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Newcomb College in 1965 and earned a Master of Education degree from the University of New Orleans in 1973.
The Great Writers Series brings internationally prominent writers to campus for readings, lectures, events and panels. The inaugural event, delayed two years due to the pandemic, welcomed 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen to Tulane as its first speaker in November 2021.
Dean Brian Edwards
Our Distinguished Writers
Marilynne Robinson
Public Talk: “American Beauty”
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Public Q&A: After her reading, Robinson was joined by Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé, associate professor of English, for a conversation and audience response period before the book signing reception.
Student Working Group: Robinson joined an intimate group of creative writing and literature students – undergraduate and master’s – for a Q&A. Read about it in the Hullaballoo.
Faculty Discussion: “Faith and Belief in Literature”
- Michael Kuczynski, Pierce Butler Chair in the Department of English
- Ronna Burger, Catherine & Henry J. Gaisman Chair in the Department of Philosophy
About The Writer: Marilynne Robinson is the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for “her grace and intelligence in writing.” She is the author of Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home, winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her first novel, Housekeeping, won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. In 2021, all four Gilead novels were selected for Oprah’s Book Club. Robinson’s nonfiction books include Reading Genesis, What Are We Doing Here?, The Givenness of Things, When I Was a Child I Read Books, Absence of Mind, The Death of Adam, and Mother Country.
Jennifer Egan
Public Talk: “The Sausage Factory: Making Fiction Out of Daydreams, Hunches, and Domestic Duties”
Wednesday, November 15, 2023 | Recap
Public Q&A: After Egan’s presentation, Professor of English and novelist Zachary Lazar joined her for a conversation and audience response period before the book signing reception.
Faculty Discussion: Creativity and Artificial Intelligence
- Vicki Mayer, Professor of Communication and Associate Dean for Academic Initiatives and Curriculum, School of Liberal Arts
- Nicholas Mattei, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Co-Director of the Tulane Center for Community Engaged AI, School of Science & Engineering
In her most recent novel The Candy House, Jennifer Egan has opened the conversation about artificial intelligence in provocative ways. Tulane computer scientist Nicholas Mattei and Tulane professor of communication Vicki Mayer study and write about technology and society. Join us as for an interdisciplinary conversation probing Egan’s work and what it tells us about the rapidly changing present.
About The Writer: Jennifer Egan is the author of several novels and a short story collection. Her 2017 novel, Manhattan Beach, a New York Times bestseller, was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and was chosen as New York City’s One Book One New York read. Her previous novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was recently named one of the best books of the decade by Time Magazine and Entertainment Weekly. Her new novel, The Candy House, a companion to A Visit From the Goon Squad, was named one of the New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2022 and one of President Obama’s favorite reads of the year. She recently completed a term as President of PEN America and is currently Artist-in-Residence in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania. Also a journalist, her year-long reporting on street homelessness and supportive housing in New York City was published in The New Yorker in September, 2023.
Amitav Ghosh
Public Talk: Focused on The Nutmeg’s Curse
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
Faculty Discussion: “The Great Uprooting: Migration and Movement in the Age of Climate Change”
- Amalia Leguizamón, Associate Professor of Sociology, School of Liberal Arts
- Jesse Keenan, Favrot II Associate Professor of Sustainable Real Estate and Urban Planning, School of Architecture
Abstract: It has long been predicted that climate change will lead to large-scale displacements of population and mass migration. Is it possible to look at the European ‘migrant crisis’ of recent years through this prism? This, and many other related questions, prompted me to travel to migrant camps in Italy in 2017, to interview migrants whose languages I am familiar with: that is to say speakers of Bengali, Hindi, Urdu and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. This talk is an attempt to identify some of the underlying patterns in the stories I was told by the migrants, in their own languages.
About The Writer: Amitav Ghosh is an internationally recognized Indian writer who uses complex narrative strategies to probe the nature of national and personal identity, particularly of the people of India and South Asia. He has authored several award-winning books, including The Circle of Reason and The Hungry Tide. In 2021 he published The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, which discusses colonialism and environmental issues with particular focus on the Banda Islands. It was his second non-fiction book to discuss climate change, after The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. In 2019, Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade.
Ghosh’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages, and he has served on the juries of the Venice and Locarno film festivals. His essays have appeared in the new yorker, the new republic and the new York times. The great derangement was given the inaugural Utah award for the environmental humanities in 2018. He holds two lifetime achievement awards and four honorary doctorates. In 2018, he became the first English-language writer to receive the Jnanpith award—India’s highest literary honor.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
Public Talk: Wednesday, November 10, 2021
Q&A with Dean Edwards + Book Signing Reception
About The Writer: Author Viet Thanh Nguyen, inaugural speaker of the Carole Barnette Boudreaux ’65 Great Writers Series, is the winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel The Sympathizer. He is a University Professor, Aerol Arnold Chair of English, and Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. He is a MacArthur Fellow (2018-2022), a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Guggenheim Fellow for 2017-2018. He has also been a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (2011-2012), the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard (2008-2009) and the Fine Arts Work Center (2004-2005).
Nguyen has received residencies, fellowships, scholarships and grants from the Luce Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, the James Irvine Foundation, the Huntington Library, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Creative Capital and the Warhol Foundation. His second novel, The Committed, was published in 2021 as a sequel to The Sympathizer. HBO is turning The Sympathizer into a TV series for 2023, directed by Park Chan-wook.
Press
- Washington Times | December 2018
- NOLA.com | January 2019
- Tulanian Magazine | March 2019