Sempre Sigrid

The 2026 Alex Krieger Memorial Lecture at Vassar will be by Sigrid Nunez

Next week, Sigrid Nunez will be at Vassar delivering the Krieger Lecture. The lecture, which will a mix of a reading and discussion, is scheduled for Thursday, February 12, 8 PM at the Martel Theater on campus. (Free tickets here.) Nunez is among the most engaging writers in America today; she is sharp in her observations and endlessly witty. She is, of course, also the author of The Friend, winner of the 2018 National Book Award. The book was turned into an acclaimed film starring Naomi Watts and Bill Murray. Nunez’s latest book is The Vulnerables, a characteristically illuminating and funny novel about life during the pandemic. I’m hoping that many of the students come and listen to Nunez. I’ll be in conversation with her on stage and will probably invite her to read a couple of my favorite passages from The Vulnerables and also ask about her life when she was about the age our students are now—she was working at the New York Review of Books and living in Susan Sontag’s apartment in New York City because she was dating Sontag’s son, David Rieff. Nunez tells this story in the memoir she wrote after Sontag’s death, Sempre Susan.

I know that I can’t be slow or stupid when I ask our visiting writer any questions. Here is a passage from The Vulnerables where her acerbic narrator, a writer in New York Ctiy, mocks the banalities that are routinely dished out to authors:

I want to say a word about the Krieger Lecture. Each year, thanks to the generosity of the Krieger family, a marvelous writer or performer visits Vassar campus. Alex Krieger ’95 was a Vassar student killed in a car accident during his freshman year. He was interested in comedy and his parents, who travel to campus on this occasion each year, celebrate Alex’s memory by offering our students this chance to hear distinguished writers. Alex’s sister, Liz Krieger, is also a writer and a journalist. I’d like everyone to read her moving piece about what it has meant for her to live with the loss of a sibling. Over the years I have attended many Krieger lectures. However, it was shattering for me to recently read Liz’s essay because it showed me afresh how grief is an active practice involving thought and imagination—oh, the ways in which Liz deals with the mathematics of years emptied of Alex’s living presence, all that calculus of love and loss!

And in the face of such tragedy, isn’t it amazing that the family is committed to the idea of laughter that was dear to Alex? In that spirit, I offer these pictures that were taken by the most literary of photographers, Beowulf Sheehan, at the Brattleboro Literary Festival a couple years ago. My thanks to Sandy Rouse who invited me there. In these pictures you will see that I’m trying to make Sigrid Nunez laugh during our meeting in Vermont, my attempt to repay her for all the pleasure her books have given me and many other readers. And just look at my children laughing. Sempre Sigrid.