Garth Greenwell to give Skidmore’s 56th Steloff Lecture

Novelist Garth Greenwell will deliver the 56th annual Frances Steloff Lecture at Skidmore College at 8 p.m. on Thursday, October 22, 2026, the college announced this month, The Daily Gazette reported. The lecture is one of the longest-running literary events in the Capital Region, and it has brought Nobel laureates and Pulitzer winners to Saratoga Springs since 1967.

Greenwell’s most recent book, “Small Rain,” won the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, according to the college’s announcement as reported by The Daily Gazette. The lecture is presented by Skidmore’s English department and has traditionally been free and open to the public.

About Garth Greenwell

Greenwell is the author of three books of fiction. The honors cited in the announcement include:

• “Small Rain” won the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the 2025 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, and it was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
• His first novel, “What Belongs to You,” won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year and was long-listed for the National Book Award.
• “What Belongs to You” was also a finalist for six other awards, according to The Daily Gazette.

His books are “What Belongs to You” (2016), the linked story collection “Cleanness” (2020) and “Small Rain” (2024). His first two books follow an American teacher living in Sofia, Bulgaria, a setting drawn from Greenwell’s own years teaching there. “Small Rain” centers on a narrator hospitalized after a sudden medical emergency during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Greenwell also writes a newsletter and teaches literature seminars. This fall he began a year-long series of online classes on Henry James, starting September 17 with “The Portrait of a Lady,” according to his newsletter.

The event details

Here is what we know about the lecture:

• Speaker: Garth Greenwell, novelist.
• Date and time: Thursday, October 22, 2026, at 8 p.m.
• Place: the Skidmore College campus at 815 North Broadway. The college had not named the specific hall when we checked.
• Admission: past Steloff lectures have been free and open to the public. Confirm details with the college closer to the date.

Recent Steloff lecturers have also taken audience questions, received honorary doctorates from Skidmore and signed books after the talk. Novelist Sigrid Nunez, the 2025 speaker, did all three, according to the college’s Steloff page. Skidmore had not said whether this year’s program follows the same format.

Who was Frances Steloff?

Frances Steloff grew up in Saratoga Springs and left for New York City in 1900, according to Skidmore. There she founded the Gotham Book Mart in midtown Manhattan, which became a hub for writers. Her friendship and support helped the careers of E.E. Cummings, Tennessee Williams, Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin, among others, the college says.

Steloff donated much of her collection to Skidmore, including inscribed first editions by Gertrude Stein, Henry Miller and Nin, along with photographs, letters and rare publications. In 1967 she endowed the lecture series that bears her name to bring outstanding literary and artistic talent to the college. She celebrated her 100th birthday at Skidmore in 1987.

Past speakers

The list of Steloff lecturers reads like a literature syllabus. The college counts Nobel Prize winners and nearly a dozen Pulitzer and Booker Prize winners among past honorees. Names on the list include:

• Nobel laureates Louise Glück, Mario Vargas Llosa, J.M. Coetzee, Saul Bellow, Nadine Gordimer and Seamus Heaney.
• Novelists Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith, Don DeLillo, Marilynne Robinson, Joyce Carol Oates and Jonathan Franzen.
• Playwright Arthur Miller, poet Gwendolyn Brooks, dancer Martha Graham and cartoonist Art Spiegelman.
• Albany novelist William Kennedy, a regional favorite.
• Chinua Achebe, Michael Ondaatje, Colm Tóibín and John Banville.
• More recent speakers Darryl Pinckney in 2024 and Sigrid Nunez, who spoke on September 25, 2025.

Vargas Llosa gave the lecture in 2002 and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010. Other recent names on the list include Mary Gaitskill, who gave the 49th lecture in October 2019 and read from her story “This Is Pleasure,” according to the Tang Teaching Museum’s event listing. The lecture date moves from year to year; the last three have fallen in late September or October.

A correction in the announcement

An earlier version of The Daily Gazette’s announcement listed Sigrid Nunez as this year’s lecturer. The paper corrected it: Nunez was the 2025 speaker, and Greenwell is the 2026 speaker. If you saw an earlier listing naming Nunez, it was wrong.

Why it matters locally

The Steloff Lecture is one of the reasons Saratoga Springs punches above its weight in literary life. Along with Yaddo, the artists’ retreat on Union Avenue, and the Saratoga Book Festival held downtown in the fall, it makes the city a regular stop for major writers. For residents, the lecture has been a free evening with a writer of national stature, a short walk or drive up North Broadway. Visitors who come early can also stop by the Tang Teaching Museum on the same campus, which opened in 2000 in a building designed by architect Antoine Predock. Check its evening hours first.

Plan your evening

A few practical notes for attending:

• Park on campus in visitor areas and allow extra time, since evening events draw both students and the public.
• Pick up Greenwell’s books ahead of time at Northshire Saratoga, the independent bookstore at 424 Broadway, if you want them signed and a signing is offered.
• Arrive early for a good seat, especially if you want to ask a question during the Q&A.

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