The PEN American series “The Writer, The Work,” was a series of programming started by Susan Sontag, in which she would have a one-on-one conversation with a featured writer. Due to her being out of town for the planned conversation with writer W.G. Sebald, she asked literary critic James Wood to step in for her. The following conversation is about Sebald’s book “The Emigrants” and the process of writing memory/fabricating memory. Recording includes the conversation, readings, and Q & A from the evening.

PEN America: The Writer, The Work: W.G. Sebald

AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017

Praised as a ‘sublime’ writer by The Guardian, the Nigerian-American writer, art historian, photographer and champion of the artistic merits of Twitter, Teju Cole, has wide-ranging pre-occupations. His novel Open City explores spatial relations, immigrant experience and Manhattan bird life, and has attracted comparisons to the work of W.G. Sebald. His essay collection Known and Strange Things, takes in subjects from Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf and V.S. Naipaul to Barack Obama, Boko Harum and Instagram. Cole talks with Kevin Rabalais.

Known and Strange Things: Teju Cole (2017)

In "Song for Sebald", I explore the themes of separation and belonging through a radical encounter with the writer W.G. Sebald's novel, The Rings of Saturn. I carefully excised every part of the text except for the syllables of the musical scale – do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti – to uncover the potential music of the novel. Each panel collects the pages from a single chapter in the novel, and an operatic performance of this excavated music ensues as I collaboratively compose a score based upon the spaces between the “found” notes and the emotive tone of Sebald’s prose. Taken as a whole, this work stitches together remnants, absences and imaginings into a process of collaboration that links together nationalities, disciplines, genders and fields of creative work. By locating a connecting thread in a tangle of dislocation, the work also aims to channel Sebald’s ability to reflect the creative potential of estrangement and disorientation in his stories.


I would like to thank the composer Matt Schickele, mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn, and the vocal performers Tomas Cruz and Joe Chappel without whom this project would not have been possible.

excerpt from "Song for Sebald": Chapter 9

Amiri Baraka reads “Rhythm Travel” at the 2008 Beyond Margins Celebration.


Amiri Baraka Reads “Rhythm Travel”

The celebrated poet reads the seminal letter of political protest, in which she became the first and only person to date to refuse the highest honor bestowed upon an artist on behalf of the people. Background and discussion: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/16/adrienne-rich-national-medal-of-arts-letter/

Adrienne Rich declines the National Medal of Arts, 1997

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world.  Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.


PEN America: The Writer, The Work: W.G. Sebald

PEN America

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