Illuminations - Why Fiction Matters

Bringing together two of the most prominent proponents of the creative arts, The Atlantic announces a multi-year partnership with Luminato, Toronto Festival of Arts and Creativity. The Atlantic will work with Luminato on an additional panel discussion for the 2009 Festival, which already boasts an impressive literary line-up including Ann-Marie MacDonald, Neil Gaiman, and 2008 Booker Prize-winner Aravind Adiga.

The Atlantic’s 2009 fiction issue features essays by Margaret Atwood, Alice Sebold, Tim O’Brien, Joseph O’Neill, and Anne Michaels. Authors Paul Theroux, Rick Bass, Jill McCorkle, Kent Nelson, Wayne Harrison, Tea Obrecht, and Alexi Zentner have contributed short fiction pieces to the issue.

On June 13, at Luminato, Michaels, O’Brien, and Zentner will join The Atlantic’s Deputy Editor Scott Stossel and longtime fiction editor C. Michael Curtis for a panel discussion on “Why Fiction Matters.” The group will address the role of the short story in modern life, what makes good fiction effective, and how fiction – and in particular national literature – has been changed by a borderless global culture.

Participants:
C. Michael Curtis, senior editor, The Atlantic
Curtis has edited fiction at the Atlantic for more than 45 years, and has discovered some of the greatest talents in American fiction. He has also taught the writing of fiction at Harvard, MIT, Bennington and at writing conferences around the world for thirty years.

Tim O'Brien
O'Brien, who holds an endowed chair in creative writing at Southwest Texas University, has won a National Magazine Award and a National Book Award for his fiction, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His essay on the role of imagination in fiction appears in the 2009 Summer Reading issue of the Atlantic.

Alexi Zentner
Zentner, a lecturer in the English Department at Cornell University, has won "special mention" for two of his short stories in the 2008 Pushcart Prize anthology and his story "Touch" was chosen as a jury favorite by the O'Henry Prize committee. His story "Furlough" appears in the 2009 Summer Reading issue of the Atlantic.

Anne Michaels
Michaels has won numerous awards for her fiction and poetry, including Britain's prestigious Orange Prize for her novel Fugitive Pieces. Her essay on the meaning of national literature appears in the 2009 Summer Reading issue of the Atlantic.

Moderator: Scott Stossel, deputy editor of The Atlantic, is the author of **Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver** and his articles and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and elsewhere.