Four authors and an actor to gather in a 1920s Brooklyn ballroom to honor late writer Stephen Dixon

The late novelist and short story writer Stephen Dixon will be honored by authors and an actor at “Celebrating Stephen Dixon,” a literary event hosted by Murmrr in the Union Temple of Brooklyn, near Grand Army Plaza, on Thursday, February 27,, 2020 at 7:30 PM. Dixon, a Manhattan native, died this past November at the age of 83.

Describing himself in a 2007 interview in Johns Hopkins Magazine as a “compulsive writer,” Dixon wrote almost daily on a manual typewriter. He was prolific, publishing 18 novels and 17 short story collections, among other writings. While never a household name, Dixon was a two-time National Book Award nominee (for the novels Frog and Interstate) and recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (awarded to those “who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts,” according to their website) and two National Endowment of the Arts grants (awarded, according to their website, to publicly fund projects of “artistic excellence”), along with other esteemed literary honors, including many O. Henry Awards and Pushcart Prizes. 

According to Dixon’s obituary in The New York Times, his “hyper-realistic novels and short stories reflected his fascination with personal loss, sex, heartbreak, disaster, marriage and old age.” Known, not always favorably, for his experimental style, The Washington Post called his work “sprawling and sometimes manic, with run-on sentences, endless paragraphs and an immersive style that detailed the messy, meandering thoughts of [its] protagonists.” 

Dixon influenced countless writers through his 27 years of teaching at Maryland’s Johns Hopkins University. Writing on the website Lithub, former student Kristopher Jansma remembers how particular Dixon was about his craft, sharing his early struggles with an editor over suggested changes. Jansma writes, “Dixon told us how he’d fought each and every edit, one at a time, until at last the man surrendered and published the story without a single change. ‘You have to say what you mean,’ he told us, and something about his tone made it like both a threat and a blessing. ‘And say it how you mean it.’”

Another of Dixon’s students, the novelist and memoirist Porochista Khakpour (Sick), will be sharing her reminisces of Dixon at the event (on Twitter she called him “my great mentor”). She will be joined by Academy Award-winning and Emmy-nominated actor F. Murray Abraham, short story writer Diane Williams (The Collected Stories of Diane Williams), writer Blake Butler (300,000,000), and editor Dennis Johnson (co-founder of independent publisher Melville House).

The event, co-sponsored by Park Slope’s Community Bookstore, is part of Murmrr’s ongoing “Lit” series of readings and other author-related events hosted in their atmospheric 1920s ballroom. Close to Prospect Park, Brooklyn Botanical Garden, the Brooklyn Museum, and the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, Murmrr is located at 17 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238, and accessible via the 2/3 subway line to the Grand Army Plaza stop. 

Doors for the event open at 6:30 PM. Tickets for the “all ages” show cost $12 and are on sale at MURMRR.com.