Fellow Travelers: A Conversation with Thomas Mallon and Gregory Spears

Saturday, Feb. 26

Main Library Auditorium

9 a.m. | Library opens

9:30 a.m. | Auditorium doors open

10 a.m. | Talk with author Thomas Mallon and Gregory Spears

10: 45 a.m. | Audience Q&A

Columbus Metropolitan Library and Opera Columbus present a casual conversation with Fellow Travelers author Thomas Mallon and Fellow Travelers opera composer Gregory Spears. Mallon and Spears will offer insight about the book and translating a book into an opera.

EVENT DETAILS

Free parking available in Main Library's attached garage. Library opens at 9 a.m. and the program will begin at 10 a.m. in the Auditorium.

The event is free to the public but seating will be limited to ensure social distancing.

**Masks are required to be worn at all times by order of the City of Columbus and Library Board of Trustees.**

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thomas Mallon's 10 books of fiction include Henry and Clara, Fellow Travelers, Watergate (a Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award), Finale and the just-published Landfall. He has also written volumes of nonfiction about plagiarism (Stolen Words), diaries (A Book of One's Own), letters (Yours Ever) and the Kennedy assassination (Mrs. Paine's Garage), as well as two books of essays (Rockets and Rodeos and In Fact).

His work appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Book Review and other publications. He received his Ph. D. in English and American Literature from Harvard University and taught for a number of years at Vassar College. His honors include Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, the National Book Critics Circle citation for reviewing, and the Vursell prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, for distinguished prose style. He has been literary editor of Gentlemen's Quarterly and deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and in 2012 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is Professor Emeritus of English at The George Washington University in Washington, D. C.

ABOUT THE COMPOSER

Gregory Spears is a New York-based composer whose music has been called "astonishingly beautiful" (The New York Times), "coolly entrancing" (The New Yorker), and "some of the most beautifully unsettling music to appear in recent memory" (The Boston Globe). He has been commissioned by The New York Philharmonic, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Cincinnati Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Seraphic Fire, The Crossing, Volti, BMI/Concert Artists Guild, Vocal Arts DC, New York Polyphony, The New York International Piano Competition, the JACK Quartet, and The New York Youth Symphony among others. His latest opera "Castor and Patience" was written in collaboration with former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith and commissioned by Cincinnati Opera for their 100th Anniversary in 2020. (The premiere has been rescheduled for summer 2022 due to COVID-19.) In the 2021-2022 season the New York Philharmonic will premiere a new work by Spears also written in collaboration with Smith for countertenor and orchestra. Spears' 21-movement solo piano cycle "Seven Days" was released in the form of a custom designed app produced by the 92Y in fall 2021.

Spears' opera, "Fellow Travelers", written in collaboration with Greg Pierce, premiered at Cincinnati Opera in 2016 and was subsequently produced at the Prototype Festival (NYC), The Lyric Opera of Chicago, The Minnesota Opera, Madison Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Arizona Opera, and the Des Moines Metro Opera. It will be produced this season at Florida Grand Opera and Opera Columbus. It was hailed as "one of the most accomplished new operas I have seen in recent years" (Chicago Tribune) and an opera that "seems assured of lasting appeal" (The New York Times). The premiere was featured in The New York Times' Best in Classical Music for 2016, and Cincinnati Opera released a commercial CD recording in 2017.

Host or Publisher Columbus Metropolitan Library