Merve Emre
Director's Corner
Welcome to the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism! We believe that, in order for creative writing and criticism to thrive, its practitioners must look both within the university and beyond it, to the many different publics they can serve. The Center's classes and extra-curricular initiatives model how creative writing and criticism can reach readers of many different backgrounds—readers who can take pleasure in every possible form, genre, and medium, from literary criticism to children's literature, from translated fiction to audiobooks.
As Director, I am fortunate that I get to work with some of the absolute best novelists, poets, translators, and critics in the world. I am equally fortunate that the Wesleyan leadership, alumni like John Shapiro and Shoni Silverberg, and our collaborators in the media and publishing industries have invested in a capacious vision of how literature and criticism should move through the world.
If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to email me directly at memre@wesleyan.edu.
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Are You My Mother? Transference and the Contemporary Classroom, The New Yorker, July 10, 2023. -
Back from the Dead, The New Yorker, June 5, 2023. -
What Susan Sontag Wanted for Women, The New Yorker, May 23, 2023. -
Marvelous Things, The New Yorker, February 27, 2023.
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The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway, ed. (New York: Norton, 2021). A Lit Hub Best Book of 2021.
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The Norton Library Mrs. Dalloway, ed. (New York: Norton, 2021).
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The Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism, co-author (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020). Winner of the 2021 PROSE Award for Humanities. Shortlisted for Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP) Book Prize.
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The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing (New York: Doubleday, 2018). A New York Times Book Critics’ Best Book of 2018. NPR Best Book of 2018. CBC Best Book of 2018. Economist Best Book of 2018. Spectator Best Book of 2018. Mental Floss Best Book of 2018. Shortlisted for the British Society for the History of Science Hughes Prize. Translated into Swedish, Hungarian, Korean, Chinese, and published in the U.K. by William Collins under the title What’s Your Type. Adapted for film as the documentary “Persona,” which premiered on HBO in March 2021.
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Once and Future Feminist, ed. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2018).
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Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017). Public Books Editor Pick of 2017.
Upcoming Events
Global Jon Fosse, Keynote Speaker, National Library, Oslo (September 2023)
The Function of Criticism at the Present Time, Keynote Speaker, Vinduet, Oslo (September 2023)
In Conversation with Martin Puchner, Interviewer, Boulder Literary Festival, Boulder, (September 2023)
In Conversation with Anjan Sundaram, Interviewer, Boulder Literary Festival, Boulder, (September 2023)
In Conversation with Zadie Smith, Interviewer, Cliveden Literary Festival, Cliveden (September 2023)
In Conversation with Marlon James, Tom Crewe, Hannah Rothschild, and Fatima Mirza, Panel Chair, Cliveden Literary Festival, Cliveden (September 2023)
Chanel Young Creatives, Chair, Cliveden Literary Festival, Cliveden (September 2023)
In Conversation with Helen Garner, Interviewer, 92 Street Y, New York (October 2023)
Words Without Borders Annual Gala, Emcee, Tribeca 350, New York, (October 2023)