The William N. Skirball Writers Center Stage Series returns for its 12th season

Co-creators of the Serial podcast, Neil Gaiman and Gillian Flynn kick off first half of 2015-2016 speaker series

The William N. Skirball Writers Center Stage Series, presented by the Cuyahoga County Public Library Foundation and its academic partner Case Western Reserve University, returns for its 12^th season in September. The series is the signature event for the Cuyahoga County Public Library Foundation and helps support Cuyahoga County Public Library, the top-rated large library system in Library Journal’s annual Index of Public Library Services for six consecutive years. All events in the 2015-2016 William N. Skirball Writers Center Stage Series will be held at 7:30 p.m. in the Kelvin & Eleanor Smith Foundation Grand Ballroom at Case Western Reserve University’s Tinkham Veale University Center.

The 2015-2016 William N. Skirball Writers Center Stage Series

Sarah Koenig & Julie Snyder

Wednesday, Sept. 9 The 2015 – 2016 William N. Skirball Writers Center Stage Series opens with Sarah Koenig and Julie Snyder, producers of the public radio program This American Life (TAL) and co-creators of the true crime podcast, Serial. Since its debut in October 2014, Serial has been downloaded more than 60 million times, making it the most listened-to podcast in history. Before redefining long-form journalism for the digital age as the host of Serial, Sarah Koenig reported on criminal justice and politics for New Hampshire’s Concord Monitor and The Baltimore Sun. She has produced and reported some of TAL’s most popular shows, including “Habeas Schmabeas,” a Peabody Award-winning show about Guantanamo Bay. Since 1997, Julie Snyder has produced many of TAL’s most memorable and ambitious programs, including coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, health care reform and urban violence in Chicago. Her work with TAL host Ira Glass has garnered four Peabody Awards. Currently Koenig and Snyder are hard at work on the second season of Serial.

Neil Gaiman

Wednesday, Oct. 14 British author Neil Gaiman is one of the most celebrated writers of our time and a passionate advocate for libraries. He is best known for his fantasy novels, including American Gods and Coraline, both of which won the Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker and Locus awards; The Graveyard Book, for which he won the Newbery (US) and Carnegie (UK) medals; and The Ocean at the End of the Lane, for which we won a 2013 National Book Award for Best British Book of the Year. Gaiman’s latest is a collection of short stories entitled, Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances. Learn more about free student tickets for this sold out event. 

Gillian Flynn

Tuesday, Nov. 3 Gillian Flynn is best known for the novel Gone Girl, an international sensation that spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and is now a major motion picture from Twentieth Century Fox. Her other works include the bestsellers Sharp Objects, which was an Edgar Award finalist and winner of two Dagger Awards (UK), and Dark Places, a Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of 2009. Flynn is a former writer and critic for Entertainment Weekly.

Edwidge Danticat

Monday, March 21, 2016 Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat’s writing focuses on themes of national identity, mother-daughter relationships and politics. Her works include the novel The Farming of Bones, for which she received the American Book Award; The Dew Breaker, for which she received a 2005 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award; and the memoir, Brother, I’m Dying; a 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award winner. Her most recent novel, Claire of the Sea Light, was shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

Roz Chast

Tuesday, April 5 Roz Chast’s brilliant cartoons have graced the pages of The New Yorker, Harvard Business Review and Mother Jones for more than 30 years. To date she has published nine compilations of her work, including the retrospective Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected and Health-Inspected Cartoons; bestselling children’s books, including The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z (with comedian Steve Martin); and the acclaimed memoir Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant?, which was a National Book Award finalist and the first graphic novel to win the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Rick Bragg

Tuesday, May 3 Pulitzer Prize winning writer Rick Bragg has published eight acclaimed works of nonfiction, including a trio of bestselling memoirs about his family in Alabama – All Over But the Shoutin’, Ava’s Man and The Prince of Frogtown. As a journalist, he has covered everything from the Oklahoma City bombing to the national controversy surrounding the immigration of Elian Gonzalez. Bragg teaches writing in the University of Alabama’s Department of Journalism.  The Chicago Tribune called his latest biography, Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story, “epic southern storytelling at its most gripping.”

Ticket Information

Subscription packages to see all six shows in the 2015-2016 William N. Skirball Writers Center Stage Series are available now. For information, please visit writerscenterstage.org. Benefactor level subscription packages are $250 and include premium seating at all six shows; free parking in the CWRU Campus Center Garage Lot S-29 adjacent to Severance Hall with direct, weather-protected access to the Tinkham Veale University Center; and admission to an exclusive pre-lecture author event. Subscriber level subscription packages are $150 and include preferred seating at all six shows.