What does your laughter say about you?

Alison Lurie, author of nine novels including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Foreign Affairs will discuss humor in literature and how her own satiric fiction has frequently taken aim at campus life, with Bill Savage, senior lecturer in English at Northwestern University.

They will share examples and discuss why—and for whom—they are funny.

About the Participants

• Alison Lurie is the author of nine novels, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Foreign Affairs, The Truth About Lorin Jone, and Truth and Consequences. Lurie has also published Women and Ghosts, a collection of supernatural stories; Familiar Spirits, a memoir of the poet James Merrill; and The Language of Clothes, a study of the psychology of fashion. She is married to the writer Edward Hower, and recently retired from the Cornell University English Department.
• Bill Savage is a teacher, writer, and researcher. His interests include hermeneutics, especially in relation to material aspects of literary culture; twentieth-century American fiction; popular culture; Chicago writers; and narratology. The winner of the James Friend Memorial Award in Literary Criticism, Savage is also series editor for Chicago Visions + Revisions, a series of nonfiction books about Chicago from the University of Chicago Press. He teaches at Northwestern University.

This event is generously sponsored by Paula R. Kahn.

Nearby street parking is available. Campus parking lots are free for visitors on weekends.

This event is part of the Chicago Humanities Festival’s (CHF) annual fall festival. For more information, please visit the CHF’s website.