Abstract
Jerzy Kosinski is the author of several novels, The Painted Bird (awarded France's Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger), Steps (winner of the us National Book Award in Fiction), Being There, The Devil Tree, and the recently published Cockpit (Houghton Mifflin Co.). He recently retired after serving the maximum number of terms as the President of the American Center of the
Born of Russian parents in Poland, Jerzy Kosinski arrived in the United States in 1957. After finishing his graduate and post-graduate studies, he was a Ford and Guggenheim Fellow, and has been a recipient of the Award in Literature of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, as well as of the Humanitarian Freedom Award of Brith Sholom. Prior to his PEN Presidency, he taught English prose at Wesleyan, Princeton and Yale Universities.
The following interview, directed mainly towards Kosinski's work for the American PEN Center, was recently recorded in New York by Lorrin P. Rosenbaum.