Purchase College to Host Author Elif Batuman

Purchase College–SUNY will host A Reading and Conversation with Elif Batuman on Thursday, February 15, 2018 at 4:30 p.m. The program, which is free and open to the public, will take place in the Humanities Theatre at Purchase College (735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY). The event launches the spring semester’s Durst Distinguished Lecture Series, which brings the world’s most fascinating writers to Westchester County.

Elif Batuman is the author of two highly acclaimed books: The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, a work of non-fiction that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Idiot, a best-selling and critically praised novel. She holds a PhD in comparative literature from Stanford and has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2010.

“No matter what genre she's working in–fiction, literary criticism, travel writing–Elif Batuman is a pure pleasure to read,” said Anthony Domestico, assistant professor of literature at Purchase College. “Her first novel, The Idiot, is one of the funniest novels I've read in years. It's also one of the most stylish, and one of the most intelligent, and one of the weirdest. It is, in short, a wondrous and masterful debut.”

The Durst Distinguished Lecture Series and the Roy and Shirley Durst Distinguished Chair in Literature are funded by the Roy and Shirley Durst Distinguished Chair in Literature Endowment. The mission of the Durst programs is to infuse the experience and intellect of leading writers into the Purchase community, while providing diverse opportunities for these writers to interact with students and influence campus life.

Purchase College named celebrated Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon as its 2017-2018 Roy & Shirley Durst Distinguished Chair in Literature. In this capacity, Mr. Chabon has appeared in several programs at the college and will return during March in conversation with author Neil Gaiman. The novelist Porochista Khakpour will be featured in April.

For more information, please visit: https://www.purchase.edu/calendar/#!event_id/9000/view/event/date/20180215 or call 914.251.6550.