The Open Road Blog

Today we bring you the final installment of our Critical Symposium on the importance of Andre Dubus. In a new essay, Edward J. Delaney, a writer and filmmaker, offers a moving portrait of the great writer in his later years. Delaney produced an award-winning film about Dubus called The Times Were Never So Bad. Click here to see a preview of the film, which is available for purchase through Amazon. Delaney's writing has appeared in The Atlantic and other magazines. He is the author of the forthcoming novel Broken Irish. Learn more about him and his work ...

Earlier this year Open Road debuted a new feature on its blog called the Critical Symposium. Our first symposium introduced three essays by critics discussing Stanley Elkin's status as a Jewish American writer. Today marks the 75th year since the birth of Andre Dubus and, as a special tribute, we are initiating a new Critical Symposium about the enduring significance of his work. Our first installment in this series is an essay by the writer Thomas E. Kennedy, who met Dubus in 1983 while earning his MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Kennedy is the author of numerous ...