Jennifer Egan Credit: photo by Pieter M. Van Hattem/Vistalux

Last year it seemed the two fiction books that best nailed the American zeitgeist and most got tongues wagging were Jennifer Egan‘s A Visit From the Goon Squad and Jonathan Franzen‘s Freedom. And they just so happen to be doing back-to-back speaking stints in Austin, starting tonight.

As part of the Michener Center for Writers’ free reading series, Egan will appear at the Avaya Auditorium (ACES 2.302) on the UT campus tonight (10/13) at 7:30pm. (Go here for more info, including a link to a campus map.) BookPeople will be selling paperback copies of Egan’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, which we just so happened to chat about here, on the occasion of Egan’s appearance at last year’s Texas Book Festival.

Franzen, the author of the super-polarizing Freedom and The Corrections, will also take the stage (at a notably larger venue) on the UT campus. Tomorrow night he’ll speak in conversation with Lev Grossman (The Magician King) at Bass Concert Hall; the event starts at 8pm and requires a ticket, which you can read more about right here.

And if that sounds like too much bookishness in two short days, just think of it as good practice for next weekend’s orgy of lit (aka the Texas Book Festival).

This article appears in October 7 • 2011.

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A graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Kimberley has written about film, books, and pop culture for The Austin Chronicle since 2000. She was named Editor of the Chronicle in 2016; she previously served as the paper’s Managing Editor, Screens Editor, Books Editor, and proofreader. Her work has been awarded by the Association of Alternative Newsmedia for excellence in arts criticism, team reporting, and special section (Best of Austin). The Austin Alliance for Women...