Each year since 1985, the Zale-Kimmerling Writer-in-Residence Program has brought a renowned woman-identified writer to campus. The Zale-Kimmerling Writer-in-Residence program was established by Dana Zale Gerard (NC ‘85), and made possible by an annual gift from the M.B. and Edna Zale Foundation of Dallas, Texas. Since 2006, the Program has been generously supported by Barnes & Noble College Booksellers. In 2010, the program became fully endowed through a gift from Martha McCarty Wells (NC’63), and known as the Zale-Kimmerling Writer-in-Residence program.
Rebecca Makkai will be the 2023 Zale-Kimmerling writer-in-residence.
November 06, 2023 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Uptown Campus
Kendall Cram Lecture Hall
Rebecca Makkai is the author of the novels I Have Some Questions for You, The Great Believers, The Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower, and the story collection Music for Wartime. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, The Great Believers received an American Library Association Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors, and was named one of the Ten Best Books of 2018 by The New York Times. A 202 Guggenheim fellow, Makkai is on the MFA faculties of the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe and Northwestern University, and is the artistic director of StoryStudio Chicago. She lives on the campus of the midwestern boarding school where her husband teaches, and in Vermont.
Past Speakers:
- Min Jin Lee 2023
- Britt Bennett 2022
- Valeria Luiselli 2021
- Lauren Groff 2020
- N.K. Jemisin 2019
- Rebecca Solnit 2018
- Meg Wolitzer 2017
- Zadie Smith 2016
- Danielle Evans 2015
- Lorrie Moore 2015
- Susan Choi 2014
- Aimee Bender 2013
- Antonya Nelson 2012
- Valerie Martin 2011
- Amy Hempel 2010
- Clare Messud 2009
- Michelle Tea 2008
- Elizabeth McCracken 2007
- Curtis Sittenfeld 2006
- Julie Orringer 2006
- Ellen Gilchrist 2005
- Mab Segrest 2004
- Thisbe Nissen 2003
- Joanna Scott 2002
- Edwidge Danticat 2001
- Jessica Hagedorn 2000
- Ann Patchett 1999
- Octavia Butler 1998
- Deb Margolin 1997
- Ellen Bryant Voigt 1996
- Dorothy Allison 1995
- Lee Smith 1994
- Rosellen Brown 1994
- Linda Hogan 1993
- Sonia Sanchez 1992
- Ellen Douglas 1991
- E.M. Bronner 1989
- Gloria Naylor 1988
- Nancy Willard 1988
- Carolyn Forche 1987
- Alison Lurie 1986
