Press Releases

August 28, 1997
Southampton College Distinguished Authors and Lecturers

Contact: Jane Finalborgo Director of Public Relations (516) 287 8313 Fax: (516) 283 4081

Contact: Christopher Cory University Director of Public Relations (516) 299 2642

istinguished Authors

Over the course of a career in publishing and journalism, Shana Alexander has covered everything from rogue elephants to Hillary Clinton. The first woman staff writer, and then the first woman columnist, for Life magazine, she went on to be editor of McCall's and a columnist and commentator at Newsweek and CBS's "60 Minutes." She is the author of eight books, including Very Much a Lady, an appraisal of Jean Harris and the death of Scarsdale diet doctor Herman Tarnower, Anyone's Daughter, about the Patty Hearst trial, and Nutcracker, which was made into a television mini-series starring Lee Remick. Her memoir, Happy Days, was published in 1996 by Doubleday. Her next work, Haunted by Elephants, will be published by Random House in 1998. Before joining the MFA program at Southampton College, she had taught since 1991 in the Master's of Professional Writing program at the University of Southern California.

Jules Feiffer's Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoons for The Village Voice established his reputation as one of America's leading satirists. He is the author of several screen plays, most notably Carnal Knowledge. His plays include Little Murders, for which he won the Obie Award, the London Theatre Critics Award and the Outer Circle Critics Award. He recently has written three children's books for Harper-Collins, beginning with The Man in the Ceiling (the third, Meanwhile ... will be published in September) and has just become a regular contributor to the Op-Ed page of The New York Times.

In addition to numerous stories and essays, Kaylie Jones is the author of three novels, As Soon As It Rains, Quite the Other Way (Doubleday) and A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (Bantam Books), which currently is being made into a movie by the Merchant/Ivory team. The daughter of novelist James Jones, she is fluent in French and Russian and has taught extensively in the New York City area.

John Leo writes a weekly column for U.S. News & World Report, which also is syndicated to over 150 newspapers nationwide. His wit and scrupulous reporting place him among America's most-respected columnists. He has also written two books, including Two Steps Ahead of the Thought Police, published in 1994 by Simon and Schuster, and he lectures regularly on America's social and intellectual life.

A graduate of New York University with a doctorate in English from Harvard, Alan Weinblatt has devoted his professional life to bringing clarity and elegance to business and technical communications. He has worked as a writer and consultant with some of the nation's top corporations, including Diebold Group, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Philip Morris and Merrill Lynch, and has taught these skills at the college level for a number of years. He has a special interest in computer and related technologies and their influence on American life.

istinguished Lecturers

Michael Arlen wrote the radio and television column for The New Yorker for many years in the 1960s and 1970s, and many of these columns were collected in his book, The Living Room War, which became one of the most influential works on the American war in Vietnam. He is also the author of an autobiographical work, Exiles, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and of a novel, Say Goodbye to Sam. He continues to write on television and society for The New Yorker. His works are published by Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.

Bruce Jay Friedman's novels and stories include About Harry Towns and Stern (Atlantic Monthly Press) and A Mother's Kisses, Let's Hear it for a Beautiful Guy and Other Works of Short Fiction and A Father's Kisses (Donald I. Fine). His novel, The Lonely Guy's Book of Life (Simon and Schuster) was made into a movie starring Steve Martin. He also is the author of numerous plays and screenplays, including Scuba Duba, Steambath, Stir Crazy, Doctor Detroit and most recently, Have You Spoken to Any Jews Lately? He co-wrote the screenplay for Splash. A Father's Kisses is a finalist for this fall's Thurber Prize for American Humor.

Architectural critic and former New York Times commentator Paul Goldberger's works include The Skyscraper (Knopf) and A Monograph on the Works of McKim, Mead & White. He is one of the most influential voices in contemporary debates about building, design and urban studies and is now a contributing editor of The New Yorker.

Critic and essayist Molly Haskell has helped change the way contemporaries view movies in her books, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies (University of Chicago Press), now in its second edition, and Holding My Own in No Man's Land (Oxford University Press). Her memoir, Love and Other Infectious Diseases (Morrow), demonstrates the range of her talent as a writer. She has taught extensively, most recently at Columbia University, has just become the film critic for On the Issues, a feminist quarterly, and is a monthly columnist for The New York Observer.

Critic Robert Hughes, whose recent study of American art, American Visions (Knopf), became the basis for this year's acclaimed PBS special on the subject, also is the author of The Shock of the New (Knopf), The Culture of Complaint (Oxford University Press) and The Fatal Shore (Random House). His work has shaped public understanding of the arts and culture both in America and throughout the English- speaking world.

Norman Lear is the writer/producer of such successful television shows as All in the Family, The Jeffersons, and Maude. He has won a Peabody Award and numerous Emmies. He also has produced several movies, such as Divorce American Style, and is the founder of the civil liberties advocacy organization, People for the American Way.

Author Peter Matthiessen has brought wit, style and compassion to the many subjects that have engaged him, whether in his novels, Far Tortuga, At Play in the Fields of the Lord (adapted into a motion picture) and Killing Mr. Watson; in his study of the baymen of Eastern Long Island, Men's Lives (all published by Random House), or in his celebrated studies of the natural world and its politics such as The Snow Leopard (winner of the National Book Award), The Cloud Forest, and In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, all published by Viking Penguin. Random House will publish his latest novel, Lost Man's River, in November.

Richard Price's screenwriting credits include The Wanderers, Sea of Love, The Color of Money, Night and the City, Clockers and most recently, Ransom. The Wanderers and Clockers were adapted from his novels, which also include Bloodbrothers (all Houghton Mifflin) and The Breaks (Simon and Schuster). His next novel will be published in 1998 by Broadway Books.

Dava Sobel has written extensively about science. Her best seller, Longitude (Walker/ Penguin), describes in elegant prose the solution to one of the most difficult technological problems of modern history. She has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, and numerous other publications. Her new book, tentatively titled Galileo's Daughter, will be published by Walker in the fall of 1998.

Advertising pioneer Carl Spielvogel was instrumental in the formation of The Interpublic Group of advertising agencies and later in Backer and Spielvogel, later merged with Ted Bates, Inc. He is a former advertising columnist for The New York Times.

Kurt Vonnegut is the author of Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, Harrison Bergeron, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and numerous other works of fiction that have made him one of America's most celebrated writers. His Mother Night was made into a film in 1996 starring Nick Nolte. His latest work, Timequake, is being published this fall by G.P. Putnam Sons.