National Writers Series Celebrates 15 Years, Announces Winter/Spring 2025 Series
The National Writers Series (NWS) has announced the lineup of authors to be featured as part of its 2025 winter/spring season. The slate, which kicks off next Saturday with Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks, is the start of 15th anniversary festivities for NWS, which got its official start in 2010. A full rundown of events is below.
February 8: Geraldine Brooks
Brooks, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her 2005 novel March, will sit down with Interlochen Public Radio’s Jacki Lyden for a conversation about her new memoir, Memorial Days. Brooks wrote the book about the sudden death of her husband, journalist Tony Horwitz, in 2019. The event is slated to take place at Lars Hockstad Auditorium.
February 27: Scott Turow
Turow, known for the 1987 legal thriller Presumed Innocent – which was recently the basis for a popular Apple TV+ series starring Jake Gyllenhaal – will join NWS for this virtual livestream event to discuss the long-awaited sequel, Presumed Guilty. New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci will host the all-virtual conversation.
March 13: Jonathan Eig
Eig will take the stage at the City Opera House to discuss his 2023 book King: A Life, a biography of Martin Luther King Jr. that recently won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for biography. The book, which includes details about King’s life sourced from recently declassified FBI files, has already been optioned for a feature-film by Amblin, Steven Spielberg’s production company. Author Rochelle Riley will host.
April 9: Jennifer Weiner
A common fixture on the New York Times bestseller list, Weiner will join IPR’s Dr. Amanda Sewell at the Opera House to discuss her latest novel, The Griffin Sisters’ Greatest Hits, a book set in the world of pop music that is set to release just one day before the NWS event.
April 10: Patrice Gopo
Award-winning essayist and author Patrice Gopo is the first-ever winner of the Pattis Family Foundation Creative Arts Book Award, a $25,000 prize bestowed by Interlochen Center for the Arts to recognize “the best literature in the creative arts field.” Gopo will be honored during this free event at Kirkbride Hall, and will also sit down for a conversation with NWS co-founder Doug Stanton.
April 22: Leif Enger
Enger, a New York Times bestselling author most known for his 2001 novel Peace Like a River, will join Stanton onstage at the Opera House to discuss his new book, I Cheerfully Refuse. Released last year, that novel follows “a bereaved and pursued musician” sailing a “sentient” Lake Superior in a climate-change-ravaged America, searching for his lost wife.
May 1: Alua Arthur
Arthur, a so-called “death doula” who helps clients plan for the end of life, will visit the City Opera House to discuss her debut book, Briefly Perfectly Human. The book explores Arthur’s work and philosophy, about how “thinking about your death—whether imminent or not—will breathe wild, new potential into your life.” Podcaster Dana Black, of I Swear on My Mother’s Grave, will host.
May 14: Rick Atkinson
NWS will wrap its winter/spring 2025 season with a third Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Atkinson, who won that prestigious honor twice – for national reporting in 1982, and for history in 2003 – will be on hand to discuss his new book, The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780. The book, which comes out on April 29, is the second volume in a planned trilogy from Atkinson concerning the American Revolution. Atkinson will join Stanton on the Opera House stage to discuss the project and his views “on the demands that a democracy makes on its citizens.”
All events have a 7pm start time. Tickets can be purchased on the NWS website.