Join us in New Haven from April 8 to 11 for the Yale Review Festival 2025! We are thrilled to bring you four days of writing workshops, talks, readings, and conversations with some of the most exciting novelists, poets, editors, critics, and artists working today. Talks and readings are free and open to everyone. RSVP is required for workshops, with preference given to Yale students. More information as well as a full schedule are provided below.
How do artists make things?
Enjoy lunch with award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem and photographer and longtime collaborator Gregory Crewdson.
Hosted by Meghan O’Rourke, editor of The Yale Review.
Writing with the body
Where does voice begin? Come prepared to write—and move—with novelist Catherine Lacey.
Open to members of the Yale community, with preference given to Yale students.
RSVP here.
Fiction's mysteries
Novelists Jonathan Lethem and Catherine Lacey read from their work and discuss the role of fiction in an age of information—and misinformation—with Meghan O’Rourke, followed by a reception.
How to become a critic
TYR editors answer your questions about working as a critic today. With Joanna Biggs, Sam Huber, Jack Hanson, and Adam Dalva. Breakfast will be served. Bring your questions!
What is art criticism?
Lucy Sante, critic and memoirist, and TYR senior editor Dan Fox will discuss the pleasures and challenges of writing about art. Lunch will follow.
Introduced by Joanna Fiduccia, assistant professor of history of art at Yale.
Diving into the Situationist International archive at Yale
Lucy Sante speaks about the avant-garde collective and its papers, which are held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Introduced by TYR senior editor Dan Fox.
What is a magazine editor for?
A conversation on the art of editing with Emily Greenhouse (The New York Review of Books), Radhika Jones (Vanity Fair), Deborah Treisman (The New Yorker), and Meghan O’Rourke (The Yale Review).
Introduced by TYR senior editor Sam Huber, and moderated by TYR senior editor James Surowiecki.
Cosponsored by the Whitney Humanities Center and the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism.
How do artists collaborate?
Husband-and-wife duo Matt Berninger (lead singer of the National) and poet and editor Carin Besser (formerly of The New Yorker) discuss their long-standing musical collaboration and the challenges and delights of co-creation.
Hosted by award-winning playwright and Yale professor Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.
Lunch will be served.
Mapping memory
Write with Ocean Vuong. A workshop focusing on the often protracted space of a poem, emphasizing process over product.
Open to members of the Yale community, with preference given to Yale students.
RSVP here.
Poet as novelist, novelist as poet
Writers Raven Leilani and Ocean Vuong read from their work and discuss writing across genre with Meghan O’Rourke.
Introduced by Maggie Millner, TYR senior editor, with a reception to follow.
Writing and rewriting characters
Come prepared to write with novelist Raven Leilani, author of Luster. A series of exercises will focus on finding unfamiliar ways to write about characters.
Open to members of the Yale community, with preference given to Yale students.
RSVP here.
Revisiting Robert Frost in The Yale Review
Enjoy lunch with Jacqueline Goldsby and Maureen N. McLane as they discuss the legacy of Robert Frost and his poems, including those published in The Yale Review.
God and William F. Buckley at Yale
Journalist and former New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus, author of Buckley, talks with Pulitzer Prize–winning Yale historian Beverly Gage about how Buckley remade American conservatism.
Hosted by James Surowiecki.
Featuring students from The Yale Review’s reading program!
The Yale Review Festival is cosponsored by the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism, the 320 York Fund, Yale English Department and Creative Writing, and the Whitney Humanities Center.
*Please note room change.
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