After Kapuscinski: The Art of Reportage, Part III

by David Varno | Nov-08-2009

Klara Glowczewska, Ted Conover, Breyten Breytenbach, Robert S. Boynton. Courtesy of Zygmunt Malinowski

The third panel of last month’s two-day symposium, After Kapuściński: The Art of Reportage, cosponsored by the National Book Critics Circle, the Polish Cultural Institute in New York,  the New York Institute for Humanities at NYU, and the Literary Reportage concentration of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU, in association with the Overseas Press Club and Worlds Without Borders, focused on Kapuscinski’s legacy in the 21st century. Read the report on the first two panels here, and listen to the podcasts.

Robert S. Boynton, director of NYU’s new Literary
Reportage concentration and author
of The New New Journalism, opened by saying that Kapuściński’s work was central in shaping the academic concentration, and that the students are excited and informed by his books.  See video below.

The panelists:

Breyten Breytenbach teaches at the University of Cape Town, the Gorée 
Institute in Dakar, Senegal, and NYU’s Creative Writing Program. A 
South African writer and painter of French citizenship, he was a 
committed opponent of the apartheid and served 7 years in prison for
 high treason. He has published over 40 books of verse and prose,
 including, recently, Intimate Stranger (Archipelago, August 2009).



Ted Conover is the author of Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (2001 NBCC
Award winner, Pulitzer Prize finalist), Whiteout: Lost in Aspen, 
Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America’s Hoboes, and Coyotes:
 A Journey Across Borders with America’s Illegal Migrants. He is a 2003
 Guggenheim Fellow and Distinguished Writer in Residence at NYU’s
 Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.



Klara Glowczewska is Editor in Chief of Condé Nast Traveler, the only 
travel publication to be nominated for a National Magazine Award for
 Best Essays and Criticism, and is a member of the Board of the
 Overseas Press Club. Born in Warsaw and raised in the U.S. and Egypt,
 she is the translator of three of Ryszard Kapuscinski’s books,
 including Travels with Herodotus (2007).



Wiktor Osiatynski is Professor at Central European University in 
Budapest and a member of the Board of the Open Society Institute. A
 close friend of Ryszard Kapuscinski, Osiatynski was a writer for the
 Warsaw newsweekly Kultura until its banning in 1981, and is the author 
of 25 books, including, in English, Contrasts and Rehab and Human 
Rights and Their Limits (Cambridge UP, September 2009).



David Samuels is the author of two books of reportage: Only Love Can
 Break Your Heart (2008; paperback, 2009) and The Runner (2008). A
 contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine and longtime contributor to
 The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, Samuels has been likened to
 New Journalism predecessors like Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion, as well as 
to Kapuscinski himself.