News
May 1, 2026
Our just-released Spring 2026 issue (12.1) is a product of the Roth–Updike conference, held October 19-22, 2025, in New York City. A collaboration between the Philip Roth and John Updike societies to celebrate a literary friendship-rivalry, the conference was, for its sixty-five attendees, a great success. Not only did the events and panels generate considerable conversation, questions, and laughter, but from the delivered talks and presentations emerged a range of engaging short essays.
For Updikeans, the Manhattan gathering fulfilled two long-held desires: to collaborate on a conference with another single-author society; and to meet in New York City, where Updike had not only lived and worked for eighteen months in the mid-1950s, but where nearly everything he wrote was published, either in The New Yorker or through the firm of Alfred A. Knopf. Manhattan was also an ideal setting for the Rothians, given that Roth had grown up in nearby Newark and spent a good portion of his adult life in the city, mostly in an apartment on the Upper West Side, which served as an urban retreat from his Connecticut home. Unfortunately, New York City is expensive; finding a hotel and nearby conference space would be challenging. However, the Roth Society had experience, having already staged events in Manhattan and Newark, and they had access to The Center for Jewish History, a marvelous venue on Sixteenth Street with conference rooms and an auditorium. The Center, which simultaneously was hosting a deeply moving exhibition on Anne Frank, proved to be an ideal setting and only four blocks from the Walker Hotel, where most attendees were staying.
The three-day conference included more than forty presentations, delivered from panels and roundtables by Roth and Updike scholars, and featured a variety of invited speakers and special events: keynote addresses by novelist Taffy Brodesser-Akner and New Yorker essayist and critic Adam Gopnik; compelling as well as entertaining talks, with slides, on cartooning and gravestones/cemeteries by Michael Updike, with assistance from Olga Karasik-Updike; and book launch events for Steven Zipperstein’s Philip Roth: Stung by Life (Yale) at the Newark Public Library, and my own Selected Letters of John Updike (Knopf), at the Salmagundi Club on Fifth Avenue. Serendipitously, both books had publication dates in mid- to late-October. For their skill and effort in organizing the conference, special thanks are due to the planning committee: Aimee Pozorski, Adam Sexton, Andy Connolly, Matthew Shipe, Jim Plath, and myself. Fittingly, Aimee and Adam, our conference co-directors, were singled out with awards for their contributions.
Though I often catch myself saying something similar after each conference, Roth–Updike was one of the best conferences the John Updike Society has ever had. This year’s gathering was unique in widening our circle, and injecting new energy into our understanding of not only Updike, but Roth, Updike and Roth, and late-twentieth-century American literature. As Jim Plath said of the conference planning committee “how fond we became of one another,” and I think that feeling carried over to almost everyone who attended Roth–Updike 2025. It was an enjoyable and engaging four days in New York City, and we are pleased to share with you a taste of what we experienced through these new essays on Roth and Updike.
James Schiff, Editor
