Oblong Books in partnership with The White Hart Inn, the Scoville Memorial Library, and WAMC On The Road present bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Russo in conversation with WAMC's Joe Donahue about Russo's marvelous new essay collection, Life and Art.

This event will meet at the White Hart Inn, 15 Under Mountain Road, Salisbury, CT.

Tickets are required for this White Hart Series event. To learn more and purchase an advance ticket, please use this link.

Life and Art—these are the twin subjects considered in Richard Russo’s twelve masterful new essays—how they inform each other and how the stories we tell ourselves about both shape our understanding of the world around us. In “The Lives of Others,” he reflects on the implacable fact that writers use people, insisting that what matters, in the end, is how and for what purpose. How do you bridge the gap between what you know and what you don’t, and sometimes can’t, know? Why tell a story in the first place? What we don’t understand, Russo opines, is in fact the very thing that beckons to us.

Rick Russo is the author of six previous novels and The Whore's Child, a collection of stories. In 2002, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls. He lives with his wife in Camden, Maine, and Boston. Photo credit Elena Seibert.

Joe Donahue talks to people on the radio for a living. In addition to countless impressive human "gets" - he has talked to a lot of Muppets. Joe grew up in Philadelphia, has been on the area airwaves for more than 25 years and currently lives in Washington County, NY with his wife, Kelly, and their dog, Brady. And yes, he reads every single book.