WD Editors

The Lost Saranac Interviews: Forgotten Conversations With Famous Writers
by Joe David Bellamy
ISBN: 1-58297-481-0
$19.99, 256-272p, 100-200 b&w photos

Take a voyeuristic journey into an island retreat where famous writers once gathered to have deep conversations about literature and writing.

From 1976-1980, the Saranac Writers Conference was held at Saranac Lake, hosted by Fiction International and St. Lawrence University. A number of major writers were among the participants at the Saranac Writers Conference, including:

• Joyce Carol Oates
• Gail Godwin
• Anne Beattie
• Jayne Anne Phillips
• Annie Dillard
• E.L. Doctorow
• and Carolyn Forche

All of the papers, files, photographs, and letters from the Saranac conferences went into storage and have not seen the light of day since.

This book consists of the Saranac ephemera, photographs, and interviews that are left from that time. With a Griffin & Sabine sensibility, writers will travel back through time and see photos and read interviews that really do feel like they’re from a “lost” time and place.

This book features interviews with authors who rarely give such in-depth and revealing interviews about themselves and their work, and some of the interview questions come not only from the interviewer but also from the audience of writers. The issues discussed at Saranac are still very much the same issues writers discuss today.

About the Author
Joe David Bellamy is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and served as Director of the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts. His articles, fiction, poetry, and reviews have been published in The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, Harper’s, Paris Review, Saturday Review, The New York Times Book Review, Ploughshares, The Washington Post Book World, and more than 70 other publications.