Agent of Change: Kurt Vonnegut, the Civic-Minded, Darkly-Comic Writer

from Saturday, April 12, 2025 at 5pm

Soon after Slaughterhouse-Five became a best seller, an interviewer asked Vonnegut why he wrote. He answered, “My motives are political. I agree with Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini that the writer should serve his society. I differ with dictators as to how writers should serve.” Suzanne McConnell will trace the passions that fueled Vonnegut’s writing, the ingredients that shaped his views, and the honing of his craft – especially his humor – that allowed him to realize his work. She’ll share anecdotes of him and his motives as a teacher at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Together, we might consider what he would be writing today. Presented in partnership with Canio’s.

Presenter bio:

Suzanne McConnell was a student of Kurt Vonnegut’s at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and they remained friends. She’s published memoirs of him in The Brooklyn Rail and The Writer’s Digest, led a panel at the AWP conference on Vonnegut’s legacy regarding war, lectured on his work at the American Academy in Berlin, and her book on his writing advice, Pity the Reader: on Writing with Style by Kurt Vonnegut and Suzanne McConnell, was published in 2019 by Seven Stories Press. McConnell has published essays, poems, and award-winning short stories. She taught writing at Hunter College, and was Fiction Editor of Bellevue Literary Review and is now a contributing editor. Her novel, Fence of Earth is being represented for publication by The Phillip G. Spitzer Literary Agency. She lives in Manhattan and Wellfleet, MA, with her husband, the visual artist Gary Kuehn.