John D’Agata and Jim Fingal

discuss

The Lifespan of a Fact

This event includes a book signing

Date

Apr
16
Monday
April 16, 2012
7:00 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store is pleased to welcome essayist JOHN D'AGATA and erstwhile fact-checker JIM FINGAL for a discussion of their brilliant new book, The Lifespan of a Fact.

How negotiable is a fact in nonfiction? In 2003, an essay by John D’Agata was rejected by the magazine that commissioned it due to factual inaccuracies. That essay—which eventually became the foundation of D’Agata’s critically acclaimed About a Mountain—was accepted by another magazine, The Believer, but not before they handed it to their own fact-checker, Jim Fingal. What resulted from that assignment was seven years of arguments, negotiations, and revisions as D’Agata and Fingal struggled to navigate the boundaries of literary nonfiction. 

This book reproduces D’Agata’s essay, along with D’Agata and Fingal’s extensive correspondence. What emerges is a brilliant and eye-opening meditation on the relationship between “truth” and “accuracy” and a penetrating conversation about whether it is appropriate for a writer to substitute one for the other.

Jim Fingal
Jim Fingal

Jim Fingal

Jim Fingal is a software engineer and writer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the co-author of The Lifespan of a Fact, with John D'Agata.

John D’Agata
John D’Agata

John D’Agata

John D'Agata is the author of The Lifespan of a Fact, About a Mountain, and Halls of Fame, and editor of The Next American Essay and The Lost Origins of the Essay. He teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes

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