Events & Calendars Politics and Poetry: Historian Fredrik Logevall and Biographer Jay Parini

In this conversation, Ilan Stavans, Fredrik Logevall and Jay Parini will discuss how politicians and poets approach truth. This event is part of the Politics and Poetry: A Point/Counterpoint Series, which examines our current crossroads, both nationally and globally, from the perspective of opinion writers, poets, activists, linguists and historians.

Fredrik Logevall is the Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs and Professor of History at Harvard. He is the author or editor of 10 books, most recently JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century (2020). His book Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (2012) won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Francis Parkman Prize, as well as the American Library in Paris Book Award and the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations.

Jay Parini, award-winning poet, novelist, biographer, screenwriter and critic, is the D.E. Axinn Professor of English and Creative Writing at Middlebury. His books include The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year (1990), Benjamin's Crossing (1996), Jesus: The Human face of God (2013) and Borges and Me: An Encounter (2020). He has written biographies of Robert Frost, John Steinbeck and Gore Vidal.

Ilan Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Studies at Amherst and the publisher of Restless Books. His most recent books are The Seventh Heaven: Travels Through Jewish Latin America (2019), How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish (2020) and Selected Translations: Poems 2000-2021 (2021). He is the recipient of numerous international awards and honors, and his work has been translated into 20 languages and adapted into film, radio, TV and theater.