Adam Gopnik

Acclaimed writer Adam Gopnik will speak both as a critic and confidante about Richard Avedon's vision of age and artistry, discussing work as varied as Avedon's portraits of Stephen Sondheim, Oscar Levant, and Harold Arlen, with particular and loving attention to the artist's intentions and his own frequent transcendence of them.

Adam Gopnik has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1986, publishing over his forty years more than a million words in the magazine, including essays, memoirs, fiction, reviews and profiles. He has also published eleven books, including Paris to the Moon, The King in the Window, Through the Children’s Gate, At the Strangers’ Gate and Winter (The Fiftieth Anniversary Massey Lecture.) His work in the musical theater includes the libretto and lyrics for the musical comedies Our Table with David Shire and Fairy Tale and Looking Glass with Andrew Lippa, as well as the opera The Swerve with Stewart Wallace. His one man show, Adam Gopnik’s New York, was called “hilarious and wise” by the New York Times and ran for three weeks at New York’s Lincoln Center, and is now on tour from London to California. He has won the National Magazine Award for Essays and for Criticism three times, as well as the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting. In January of 2021, he was made a chevalier of the Legion d’ honneur, France’s highest civilian or military honor. He has also received an honoris causa from McGill University, as well as from the Rhode Island School of Design, and in 2025 was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Raised in Montreal, he lives in New York with his wife, Martha Parker, and their two children, varyingly present, Luke Auden and Olivia Esme Claire.