Writers’ Workshop Presents John Katzenbach

The master of psychological suspense will delve into dark issues
John Katzenbach. Photo by Nancy Doherty
John Katzenbach. Photo by Nancy Doherty

Justice. Obsession. Revenge.

Author John Katzenbach will delve into these and other deliciously dark themes when he returns to the Williston Northampton campus on November 9 for the final installment of the 2015 Writers’ Workshop Series.

During the free and public lecture, Mr. Katzenbach will speak about his forthcoming book, The Dead Student, which includes a character he describes as “one of the most interesting bad guys I’ve ever created.”

“He’s a killer with a plan, and a belief that everything he’s done is totally, utterly justified,” Mr. Katzenbach notes on his website. “And not a bad guy, except that he seems to kill people.”

Originally a criminal court reporter for the Miami Herald and Miami News, Mr. Katzenbach published his first novel, In The Heat of Summer, in 1982. Since then, he’s published 12 other novels, including The Traveler, Day of Reckoning, What Comes Next, and Red 1-2-3.

Mr. Katzenbach’s novels consistently appear on bestseller lists and have been regularly adapted for film, including Just Cause, Hart’s War, and The Wrong Man (which became the French film Faux Coupable). The Analyst and The Madman’s Tale are currently in development.

“I suppose in an odd way, I was always drawn into the parallel world of a novel,” Mr. Katzenbach explained to the online publication Do Savannah during an interview earlier this year. “It is both real and not real. True and yet made-up […] In a non-schizophrenic way, it’s about answering the voices within.”

“Plus,” he said, “in my genre of psychological suspense especially, it’s flat-out fun.”

The Writers’ Workshop Series was created by celebrated authors and Williston parents Madeleine Blais P’00, ’04 and Elinor Lipman P’00 in 1998. During the series, which takes place each fall, four well-established writers visit campus to give public lectures and offer hands-on instruction with students.

This year, the Writers’ Workshop Series as featured documentarian Ian Cheney, memoirist Debra Monroe, and author David Maraniss. Writers’ Workshop lectures are free, open to the public, and take place in the Dodge Room at 7:00 p.m.

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