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Mar. 8 | How to Listen

  • Knox Hall Room 509, Columbia University 606 West 122nd Street New York, NY, 10027 United States (map)
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WHEN: Thursday, March 8, 2018, 6:00 - 7:30 pm

WHERE: 606 W 122nd Street, Knox Hall 509, Columbia University

In 2010, with his second novel in shambles, Daniel Alarcón went to Lurigancho, Peru’s largest and most notorious prison, to cover the elections in Block 7. Quite unexpectedly, this freelance journalism assignment rescued his novel. In this workshop, Alarcón discusses the relationship between journalism, literature and oral history, and showing how interviews and lived experience can serve as the building blocks for different types of storytelling. Drawing on his work as a novelist, radio producer, and a print journalist, Alarcón will show how each medium informs and complements the other, and how the core skill of each—listening—always points the way.


Daniel Alarcón is a novelist and journalist whose work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s and elsewhere. He is the author of several books, including most recently, The King is Always Above the People, which was longlisted for the 2017 National Book award. He teaches at the Columbia University Journalism School.


This event is part of a yearlong series on Oral History and the Arts.  

INFORMATION: For more information, please email Amy Starecheski at aas39@columbia.edu.

This event is FREE and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

No registration is required, but RSVPs on the event Facebook page are appreciated to gauge attendance.