The Kelly Writers House Fellows Program Ian Frazier April 17 - 18, 2006

Ian Frazier reads several essays including "Big Fish, Little Fish" and the final chapter of Great Plains - a recording of the April 17, 2006 event. Click here for the text of Kerry Cooperman's introduction. See the Writers House calendar entry for more about this event. Ian Frazier interview/conversation - A recording of the April 18, 2006 live webcast interview and conversation with Ian Frazier, moderated by Al Filreis, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House. See the Writers House calendar entry for more about this event.

"Clear and thoughtful - with a fillip of the outlandish, Ian Frazier's work is the stimulating, ardent writing that one always hopes for and rarely finds." -- The Houston Chronicle Nonfiction writer and humorist Ian Frazier combines first-person narrative with in-depth research on topics including American history, Native Americans, and fishing. As a staff writer for the New Yorker for twenty-one years, Frazier wrote feature articles, humorous sketches, and was a frequent contributor to the magazine's "Talk of the Town" section. In 1982, he left Manhattan for Montana, where he began the research for Great Plains (1989), a journey of more than 25,000 miles through the American West. Frazier returned to the West for On the Rez (2000), an account of the friendships Frazier made in his travels. Family (1994) is the story of Frazier's own lineage, as well as a chronicle of 19th- and 20th-century American history. Frazier's humor essays have been published in Dating Your Mom (1986) and Coyote v. Acme (1996). His most recent book, Gone to New York: Adventures in the City (2005) is a collection of essays about his relationship with the city itself. At the heart of Frazier's writing is a willingness to engage with other people, to experience and accept them as they are. While his work inevitably outlines familial and cultural differences in society, it is always bound by Frazier's strong sense of commonality. "I wanted to point out what we have that's different, but how below that, we know many of the same things," Frazier has said of On the Rez. "We have a huge amount in common."