Viking Penguin Executive Editor Carole DeSanti will lead readers in a 3-day exploration of the Neapolitan novels* of Elena Ferrante, their enormous resonance for readers, and examine why and how this quartet of books (and their pseudonymous author) has turned reading and our current notions of “authorship” on its head.  We will look at the issues involved in the profound, complex lifelong friendship between two women that forms the spine of the novels; along with class and social identity/struggle; the forging and blurring of boundaries that is one of Ferrante’s themes; the construction of a writer’s voice and identity, and the job of finding and rendering truth that is the signature of her work.

*My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, andThe Story of the Lost Child

Carole Desanti is Vice President, Executive Editor at Viking Penguin, where she is known as a champion of outstanding, original voices. DeSanti has been profiled in Poets & Writers’ Magazine, published in the Women’s Review of Books, the Guardian and The New York Times and received a fellowship at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center and Hedgebrook.

Price: $375 – includes reading materials, 3 mornings of moderated discussion, 3 lunches, a pass to all Summer Words public events, as well as an opening reception on June 18