Edna O’Brien | The Little Red Chairs

Recorded Apr 4, 2016

With “an outsize life to match her outsize talent” (New York Times), Edna O’Brien is the author of a score of novels, short story collections, biographies, and poetry collections. Due to frank female voices and daring sexual scenes, her first book, The Country Girls, and six of her subsequent works were banned in her native Ireland. The recipient of the James Joyce Ulysses Medal, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and the National Medal for Fiction, O’Brien is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In The Little Red Chairs, a woman’s world is crushed when she discovers that the Eastern European man she loves is a wanted war criminal.

In conversation with Laura Kovacs

Natalie Cohn Memorial Lecture