Hortense Calisher and Mary Gordon Give Readings on Campus

Two of Barnard’s most illustrious writers, Hortense Calisher and Mary Gordon, gave readings from their latest novels in separate campus events on Wednesday, October 9. Calisher read from the critically acclaimed 15th novel, Sunday Jews. Compared to the novels of Edith Wharton and William James, the book is a family saga whose source is the loving marriage of a Jewish anthropologist, her lapsed Catholic philosopher husband, and their six grown children. Set in the couple’s large and elegant old New York apartment, the novel chronicles the scenes of ever-swelling Sunday family gatherings. The Office of Development and Alumnae Affairs hosted the reading by Calisher at a campus luncheon for alumnae.

That evening, the English Department and the Creative Writing Program hosted Gordon, ’71, for the reading from her upcoming novel, Pearl, to be published next year. The book is set in Dublin and concerns a young woman who chains herself to the American embassy to call attention to the human capacity for inflicting harm. Gordon, who is the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English at Barnard, is the author of five highly acclaimed novels, a book of short stories, a book of essays, a collection of novellas and a recent memoir about her father.

Other readings at Barnard this fall will feature poets Stephanie Strickland and Joan Retallack on Nov. 7 as part of the Women Poets at Barnard series and British novelist and writing instructor Bernardine Evaristo on Nov. 12.