Hobart and William Smith Colleges

16 November 2018 DAgata 95 and HWS on Broadway

As Lifespan of a Fact continues its Broadway run, writer John DAgata 95 joins the HWS community for a pre-show reception on Friday, Nov. 16.

A New York Times Critics Pick, the stage adaptation of the DAgatas 2012 book stars Daniel Radcliffe, Cherry Jones and Bobby Cannavale. The play, which opened in October, dramatizes the debate that grew out of a correspondence between DAgata (played by Cannavale) and fact-checker Jim Fingal (played by Radcliffe).

The reception with DAgata begins at 6 p.m. in Manhattan with drinks and hors doeuvres, followed by the evenings performance at 8 p.m. at Studio 54 on West 54th Street. Following the performance, there will be a post-show talkback with the playwrights and DAgata.

Aprofessorof English and director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University ofIowa,DAgatais the author ofAbout a Mountain, which was named by theNew York Timesas one of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books Ever Written.The Lifespan of a Fact, whichtheNew York Timesdescribesas a debate over the nature of truth and the meaning of accuracy, developed out ofayears-long editorial back-and-forth between DAgata and Fingal over an essaypublished byThe Believerin 2010 and included inAbout a Mountain.

Read more about the book and stage adaptation.

DAgatas first collection of lyric essays,Halls of Fame,was published by Graywolf Press and was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lannan Foundation, the Howard Foundation and the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. He is the editor ofA New History of the Essay, a groundbreaking three-volume series from Graywolf that includesThe Next American Essay(2003),The Lost Origins of the Essay (2009) andThe Making of the American Essay(2016).

Asumma cum laudeHobart graduate, DAgata was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.He later completed an M.F.A. in both poetry and nonfiction at the Iowa Writers Workshop, but says, The Colleges are where I first learned how to write, and where I was first encouraged as a creative thinker to imagine a place for myself in the literary world. It was a tremendous gift to have such an experience.

In 2006, he joined the faculty at the University of Iowas Nonfiction Writing Program, the top-ranked program in the country, which DAgata now directs. At Iowa, he teaches courses on the history of the essay, experiments in essaying, and a variety of workshops.

Duringthe 2017-18 academic year, DAgata served asTrias Writer-in Residence at HWS.