Literary Arts

Frank Bruni

Town Hall Seattle—The Great Hall

May 1, 2015

View Subscription Options

Event Description

Frank Bruni was named an Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times in June 2011. Before that, he was the paper’s chief restaurant critic for five and a half years. Since joining the Times in 1995, he has also been the Rome bureau chief, a White House correspondent, the lead reporter covering George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign, a staff writer for The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and a cocktails columnist.

His restaurant-related articles for the Times and elsewhere have appeared in five consecutive editions of Best Food Writing in America. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing for his work before the Times at the Detroit Free Press. His new book, Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be will be published in March 2015. Read a sneak preview here.

Bruni lives in New York City.

Bruni’s Patron Reception will have nibbles generously donated by Maria Hines Restaurants.

 

Selected Works

Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, (March 2015)
Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater, (2009)
Ambling Into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush, (2002)
A Gospel of Shame: Children, Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church, (1993 with Elinor Burkett)

Links

Key West Literary Seminar: Subtle Big Things: talking with Frank Bruni
The Atlantic: Lessons Learned as New York Times Food Critic
The New York Times: Bergdahl and Our Distance from the Battlefield
The New York Times: Our Crazy College Crossroads
The New York Times: Class, Cost and College
The New York Times: A Savory Sea of Mussels

My talk, bridging culture, politics and even higher education, will be about one of defining dynamics of our day: the way in which digital technology and the Internet, which have the capability of opening up our worlds as never before, speeding us to distant horizons and enabling unprecedented connections, are too often used to create narrow niches—some call them silos, I think of them and have written of them as customized cocoons—that separate us from one another.Frank Bruni
As we pepper students with contradictory information and competing philosophies about college’s role as an on ramp to professional glory, we should talk as much about the way college can establish patterns of reading, thinking and interacting that buck the current tendency among Americans to tuck themselves into enclaves of confederates with the same politics, the same cultural tastes, the same incomes. That tendency fuels the little and big misunderstandings that are driving us apart. It’s at the very root of our sclerotic, dysfunctional political process.Frank Bruni
Show me someone whose identity is rooted in where he or she went to college. I’ll show you someone you really, really don’t want at your Super Bowl party.Frank Bruni
I suppose there are people who can pass up free guacamole, but they’re either allergic to avocado or too joyless to live.Frank Bruni
Born Round is as addictive as Chinese sesame noodles and as satisfying as Grandma Bruni’s lasagna.Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food