Reading Groups

The Journalist and the Subject: Reading Janet Malcolm with Alissa Wilkinson

$270

6 Sessions

In stock

6 sessions Sundays, 1:00 pm EDT - 2:30 pm EDT October 12, 2025 to January 25, 2026

The Center for Fiction

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Meeting Dates:
10/12, 11/2, 11/23, 12/14, 1/4, 1/25
In Person at The Center for Fiction

When she passed away in 2021, the boundary-breaking journalist Janet Malcolm left behind a complicated legacy, both in her fascinating writing and in the criticisms of it. Her books often confronted the tricky relationship between the writer and her subject, whether that subject was dead or alive, a writer or a suspected criminal, an artist or, sometimes, herself. The ideas she played with challenge the ways we think about celebrity portraiture, true crime, the limits of research, objectivity, and much more. In this class, we’ll read six of her classic works—five books, one essay collection—and discuss the many questions she raised in her work, which are more timely than ever.

What to read in advance of the first meeting: The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcom

What to expect from this reading group: Our sessions will include overviews and a set of guiding questions from the instructor, and then be largely participant-driven. We’ll focus on how Malcolm does what she’s doing, but also how her books raise bigger ideas that repeat across her work.

Reading List:

Led by

Alissa Wilkinson

Alissa Wilkinson

Alissa Wilkinson is a movie critic at the New York Times. Her book We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine, a cultural history of American myth-making in Hollywood through the life and work of Joan Didion, is forthcoming from Liveright in early 2025. She’s been writing criticism since 2005, and her work has appeared in Vox, the New York Times Book Review, Vulture, Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, the Dallas Morning News, the Los Angeles Review of Books, RogerEbert.com, Books & Culture, and many more. Her previous book, Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking and Living from Revolutionary Women, was published by Broadleaf in 2022. She earned an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction writing from Seattle Pacific University and an M.A. in humanities and social thought from New York University.

About this series

Reading Groups

Whether you’re looking to catch up on great novels or you’re interested in exploring a new writer or literary period, our reading groups offer high-level literary discussion led by experts in the field.

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