Bard College at Simon's Rock: the Early College

Book One Lecture: Author Gregory Pardlo

Thursday, August 30, 2018

Daniel Arts Center - McConnell Theater


Air Traffic: A Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America, from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gregory Pardlo, chronicles the author's growing up in a family torn asunder when his father lost his job as an air traffic controller during the infamous 1981 air traffic controllers' strike that redefined labor relations in America. Pardlo will be on campus to read from and discuss his new memoir Air Traffic.
 
As part of the Book One Curriculum at Bard College at Simon's Rock, all incoming students will read Air Traffic: A Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America over the summer. Then, at this lecture, they will have the opportunity to gather with Pardlo and the Simon's Rock community to share in a lively discussion of the memoir.
 
"Pardlo’s memoir powerfully illustrates one man’s attempt to reconcile the ways that family dynamics influence and infiltrate people’s lives." --Publisher's Weekly

Author Gregory Pardlo

"Pardlo’s memoir is a masterwork, blending personal and family history with a historicized critique on blackness and masculinity. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author uses his father’s role in the infamous air traffic controllers strike of 1981 as a point of departure, and manages to do what only great memoirs of this scale can: to tell a story about himself that is also about America, one that feels true." --One of the 10 Most Anticipated Books of Spring, 2018; Vogue
 
Gregory Pardlo received the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his volume Digest and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His first collection Totem was selected by Brenda Hillman for the APR/Honickman Prize in 2007.