WiR im WS 2018/19

Writer in Residence

Within the frame of this event series, the Writing Center invites widely renowned international writers and journalists to Würzburg every semester. The first writer in residence was Thomas Chatterton Williams, whose two-week stay at the University of Würzburg kicked off the series in 2018.

You can find some pictures (© Petra Winkelhardt) of the closing event with Thomas Chatterton Williams on November 5^th 2018 below.

Moderation: Prof. Dr. MaryAnn Snyder-Körber.

Discussion partners:

Thomas Chatterton Williams (Journalist & JMU Writer in Residence)
Professor Catrin Gersdorf (Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg)
Joshua Yaffa (Moscow Correspondent, The New Yorker)
Professor Peter Hoeres (Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg)
Andreas Jungbauer (Editorial Director, Main-Post)

Programm

The Writing Matters Workshop at the Schreibzentrum I Writing Center offers JMU students the opportunity to interact with and learn from professional writers. This winter term the journalist and author Thomas Chatterton Williams will be co-directing a workshop on journalistic writing together with Writing Center staff. Topics will include key genres of journalistic writing (Feature, Editorial, Online Journalism, etc. ), as well as research, writing, and publication processes. The medial frameworks for contemporary journalism from print and online publication to social media formats such as Twitter will also be discussed. Students hone their writing skills by way of practical exercises, and will complete a writing portfolio (ca. 10 pages) by the conclusion of the course. For the full module credit of 3 ECTS points, students are also required to attend the public reading and discussion with Thomas Chatterton Williams on Thursday, October 25, at 18:15 in ZHGS Rm 1.002.

Thursday, October 25, 10:00-18:00 & Friday, October 26, 09:00 - 17:00
Schreibzentrum I Writing Center 2. OG rechts Josef-Martin-Weg 54/1

Thomas Chatterton Williams is a Contributing Writer at the New York Times Magazine as well as a weekly columnist and Contributing Editor at the American Scholar. His work also appears in publications such as the New Yorker, the New York Times, Harper's, the London Review of Books, Vanity Fair, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Le Monde, Lui, the New Republic, the Atlantic, and n+1. The author of Losing My Cool (Penguin Press, 2010), is the Fall 2018 Writer in Residence at the Schreibzentrum I Writing Center der JMU and Siebold Collegium Institute for Advanced Studies (SCIAS) of the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg.

Thursday, October 25, 18:15
Zentrales Hörsaal- und Seminargebäude Raum 1.002 Am Hubland, 97074 Würzburg

The press has been called many things and assigned varying roles in the public debates of modernity. Early popular printing aligned itself with the voice of the people. Later political thinkers enthroned the press as a fourth estate or power able to balance established political institutions. In the current moment, however, journalists more regularly find themselves accused of partisanship, dissimulation, and overall destructiveness summed up in the Stalinesque phrase "enemy of the people." This panel brings together journalists and scholars to assess contemporary press cultures and the possibilities they offer for productive debate in an age of "Twitter Rage II and supposedly II Fake News. 11

The participants of the panel discussion:

Thomas Chatterton Williams (Journalist & JMU Writer in Residence)
Professor Catrin Gersdorf (Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg)
Joshua Yaffa (Moscow Correspondent, the New Yorker Magazine)
Professor Peter Hoeres (Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg)
Andreas Jungbauer (Redaktionsleiter der Main-Post)

Monday, November 5, 18:15
Welz-Haus/SCIAS Klinikstraße 6 97070 Würzburg

About the Author

Holtzbrinck Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. Author of Losing My Cool (Penguin Press, 2010). Contributing Writer at the New York Times Magazine. Writing appears in the New Yorker, New York Times, Harper’s, the London Review of Books, Vanity Fair, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Le Monde, Lui, the New Republic, the Atlantic, n+1, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Smithsonian Journeys, the Nation and many other places. Weekly columnist and Contributing Editor at the American Scholar. Represented by Elyse Cheney Literary Associates and The Penguin Speaker’s Bureau

Education

05/08: New York University, New York, NY M.A., Cultural Reporting and Criticism, Graduate Dept. of Journalism (Full Academic Fellowship)
05/03: Georgetown University, Washington, D.C B.A., Philosophy, Georgetown College

Experience

7/01/17—10/24/17: Idea, Washington, D.C., Senior Editor
02/2017—present: New York Times Magazine, NY, NY, Contributing writer
06/2014—present: Holiday Magazine, Paris, Contributing editor
05/2012—05/2016: Purple Fashion Magazine, Paris, Associate Editor
08/2013—11/2014: Lui, Paris, English editor, contributing writer
1/1/10—12/31/10: Sciences Po, Paris, Independent Consultant

Additional Experience

Losing My Cool: Love, Literature and a Black Man’s Escape from the Crowd, The Penguin Press (Penguin Group USA; Forthcoming in France from Éditions Grasset), New York, NY, May 3, 2010 (Editor’s choice, New York Times Sunday Book Review; Editor’s choice, San Francisco Chronicle)  
Untitled non-fiction work forthcoming from W.W. Norton

Lectures and Appearances

Universities around the United States including Yale, Brown, Georgetown, NYU, Pomona, Boston College and many more
CNN, NPR, PBS, NBC, Fox News, WNYC and more

References

Katie Marton, Author/Trustee of the American Academy in Berlin, katimarton1@gmail.com (917) 691-6455
George Packer, Staff Writer at the New Yorker, ghpacker3@gmail.com (718) 915-9869
Reihan Salam, Executive Editor of National Review, reihan@gmail.com
Bob Wilson, Editor-in-Chief of the American Scholar, rwilson@theamericanscholar.org
Glenn C. Loury, Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences, Brown University, glenn_loury@brown.edu