Welcome. Here you can listen in on William Faulkner’s sessions with audiences at the University of Virginia in 1957 and 1958, during his two terms as UVA’s first Writer-in-Residence. Under CONTEXTS you’ll find an introduction to this archive as well as essays, news articles, photographs and other materials to provide backgrounds to the writer, the times and the place. BROWSE allows you to read and play transcripts of those sessions, one tape recording or one question&answer at a time. Use SEARCH if you want to hear something in particular, such as Faulkner’s comments on one of his works or on writing or on the Civil Rights movement of that time.

The audio files in the archive should play on any recent version of the most common browsers (Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari), and should also play on smaller devices like tablets and smartphones. If you want to check your device's compatibility – and hear from Faulkner himself how "Yoknapatawpha" is pronounced – click on this 24-second clip: