Jenks Chair, Leah Hager Cohen to Moderate Panel at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – Nonfiction writer, novelist, and the College of the Holy Cross Jenks Chair of Contemporary American Letters, Leah Hager Cohen will moderate a panel with Nicole Lamy, books editor of The Boston Globe, and Barney Karpfinger, a literary agent and director of Manhattan’s Karpfinger Agency, on “A Life in Letters” on Thursday, Dec. 9 at 7:30 p.m. in the Rehm Library.  The event, sponsored by the College’s Creative Writing Program, is free and open to the public.

The panel discussion will focus on the different forms of literary life, including editing, publishing, teaching, reviewing, acting as an agent, and otherwise contributing to the field of literature. Students will have the opportunity to ask questions and engage in discussion with Cohen, Karpfinger, and Lamy.

“This panel is conceived less as a ‘career talk’ designed to offer practical advice about how one might approach finding work in the field of publishing and literature, and more as an exploration of the passions that move certain people to seek out ways to be part of this world in the first place, part of the larger conversation,” explains Cohen. “Many creative writing students and English majors have a strong feeling that they want – or need – to be involved in the world of letters, but aren’t sure how to make this happen. Hearing from people who have made such lives for themselves may be of practical value, but I hope it will also be useful in the sense of discerning what is so vital about this conviction, this determination, in the first place.”

Cohen is the author of four books of narrative non-fiction including Train Go Sorry (Houghton Mifflin, 1994) and Glass, Paper, Beans (Doubleday, 1997); and four novels including the forthcoming The Grief of Others (Riverhead, 2011).  Four of her works have been awarded Notable Book citations from The New York Times and she has received recognition from the American Library Association, The Toronto Globe and Mail, and Booksense. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review.

Nicole Lamy is the Book Editor of the Boston Globe. Born and raised near Boston, she is a graduate of Emerson College. She began her editing career as an intern at the Atlantic Monthly. Since then she has worked as an editor at the Harvard Review, Transition Magazine and The Boston Book Review.  She also spent two years working as a researcher and writer for the History Channel. Her essays and criticism have appeared in the Boston Globe, the Boston Phoenix, the New York Sun, and the American Scholar.

Barney Karpfiger directs the Karpfinger Agency in New York City.  Born and raised in Wisconsin, he studied English at Columbia University while supporting himself by working as a paralegal. He ran the contracts department of a major New York publishing house, and established The Karpfinger Agency in 1985. The Agency maintains a deliberately small list of clients and represents a wide range of writing, from literary fiction to mysteries, narrative non-fiction, memoirs, biographies and cultural and political analysis.

Established in 1988, the Jenks Chair is named in honor of William H.P. Jenks '54 who had to leave the College in 1951, during his sophomore year, when a bout with polio left him a quadriplegic. Jenks remained devoted both to Holy Cross and his class, serving as class secretary for more than 25 years. In 1979, the College granted him an honorary degree. In 1988, an anonymous donor made a gift in his name, contributing $1 million to endow a professorship in the English department. Jenks died the following year on Christmas Day.