Reading Project Keynote Lecture

The Reading Project Keynote Lecture is an opportunity to further engage with the themes of Vengenace by Zachary Lazar.

One 2019 keynote speaker is Sarah Koenig, the host and co-creator of the award-winning podcast Serial. Launched in 2014, Serial is credited with bringing mainstream attention to the podcast format and has been downloaded more than 420 million times, making it the most listened-to podcast in the history of the form. Among other honors, Serial won the 2014 Peabody Award, the first time the award has been given to a podcast. Koenig was named in Time Magazine’s 2015 “The 100 Most Influential People."

The other 2019 keynote speaker is Tulane English Professor Zachary Lazar. Lazar is the author of five books, including the novels Vengeance, Sway, and I Pity the Poor Immigrant, a New York Times Notable Book of 2014. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, and the 2015 John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for “a writer in mid-career whose work has demonstrated consistent excellence.” His most recent novel Vengeance is the 2019 selection for One Book One New Orleans. Lazar’s journalism has appeared in the New York Times, NPR’s All Things Considered, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. He serves on the advisory board of the PEN Writing for Justice Fellowship and is on the Literature for Justice committee of the National Book Foundation. A member of the creative writing faculty at Tulane since 2011, he teaches an introductory creative writing course that pairs Tulane students with an equal number of students incarcerated at Lafayette Correctional Center and East Baton Rouge Parish Prison.