Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel Read from their Co-authored Novel

The two writers, who are married to one another, are long-time friends of Sewanee’s literary programs: they’ve taught or given readings at both the School of Letters and the Writers’ Conference and they’ve published in The Sewanee Review.  Bachelder is the author of five previous novels, including National Book Award Finalist The Throwback Special.  Habel has published three poetry collections, most recently The Book of Jane.  Both writers work in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Cincinnati.

Dayswork concerns a married couple, both writers, who cope with the pandemic lockdown period by investigating—at first casually, then almost obsessively—the life of author Herman Melville.  The resulting novel is simultaneously a book about marriage, a memoir of the pandemic, and a “love letter to literature” (according to writer Alexander Chee): an alternately comic and tragic meditation on the costs, and the possibly compensatory blessings, of a life given over to writing. 

Their reading, open to the public, is sponsored by the English Department and the University Lectures Committee.