5th June 2010

Recent years have seen a rediscovery of American novelist and short story writer Richard Yates (1926-1992), both within academia and among the reading public. His books are back in print, Blake Bailey has written an acclaimed biography of the author, and a Hollywood adaptation of Yates' first novel, Revolutionary Road, starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, have raised his profile.

The critical consensus during Yates' lifetime largely cast him as an anachronism, an old-fashioned realist operating during a time of radical experimentation in American literature. This one-day conference seeks to expand the field of critical engagement with Yates, to look beyond a limiting realist framework while acknowledging the strong representational impulse governing his work.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

Yates and (post-)modernism
Yates in/and Hollywood
Yates and gender
The creative writing industry and the workshop system
Adapting Yates for the screen
Fiction as/and autobiography
Yates and work
Intertextuality and representation
Yates and the social
Yates and his contemporaries

Abstracts of no more than 300 words for papers not exceeding 20 minutes should be submitted by 15th March 2010 to the organisers at l.bull@gold.ac.uk . Please include the title of your paper, your name, e-mail address, institutional affiliation, and any AV requirements. Attendance and participation are free.