Tom Wolfe Weekend Seminar: Night Watch

Jayne Anne Phillips

"Night Watch"

Featuring Author Jayne Anne Phillips

April 11–12, 2025

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The 2025 Tom Wolfe Weekend Seminar features author Jayne Anne Phillips and her latest novel, “Night Watch,” which received the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and follows a mother and daughter seeking refuge in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War. This is the 20th year of the seminar, which is sponsored by the W&L Class of 1951 in honor of Tom Wolfe, their late classmate. The program honors a distinguished writer and observer of the American scene. Jayne Anne Phillips is the newest participant in this series, which has included literary luminaries such as Amor Towles, Geraldine Brooks, Jennifer Egan, Jesmyn Ward and Delia Owens. 

In “Night Watch,” Phillips paints a portrait of endurance and survival in the aftermath of war. The novel follows 12-year-old ConaLee and her mother, Eliza, who has not spoken in over a year, as they find themselves delivered to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, uprooted from their family, neighbors and beloved mountain home. As the two try to reclaim their lives and become swept up in the life of the asylum — with ConaLee posing as her mother’s maid while Eliza is being treated — readers learn more about the family’s experience during the war and how they plan to move forward. “Night Watch” is an intimate and enthralling chronicle of family endurance against all odds, inviting readers to consider the trauma war inflicts on families.

“Night Watch,” Phillips’ sixth novel, was longlisted for the National Book Award in fiction and named to the New Yorker’s “Best Books of 2023.”  Phillips is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and is the recipient of Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, Howard, Bunting Institute and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships. 

Critics and reviewers have extensively praised the virtues of “Night Watch:"

  • Kirkus Reviews praised “Night Watch” for its “haunting storytelling and refreshing look at history,” saying, “The asylum becomes the catalyst for characters to uncover identities lost, hidden or unknown. ... Expect coincidences and convolutions, but Phillips pulls them off with gorgeous prose, attention to detail and masterful characters.”
  • The Wall Street Journal said, “Ms. Phillips, who is drawn to depicting the poor, the mentally disabled, the wounded and other vulnerable souls, is a principled practitioner of narrative magic.”
  • The Washington Post noted that Phillips “leaves readers with a rueful yet doggedly hopeful maxim that could easily serve as an epigraph for ‘Night Watch’ as a whole: ‘Endurance was strength.’”

Phillips will be joined in the seminar by W&L faculty members Sascha Goluboff and Barton Myers. Goluboff is Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Director of Community-Based Learning whose research interest focuses on the anthropology of emotion in geographic and historic contexts. Myers is Professor of History and a recognized author whose research interest includes the American Civil War and war and society.

Program Cost: $275 per person

Faculty

Sascha Goluboff, Director of Community-Based Learning and Professor of Cultural Anthropology

Sascha Goluboff, Director of Community-Based Learning and Professor of Cultural Anthropology

Sascha Goluboff, Director of Community-Based Learning and Professor of Cultural Anthropology

Barton Myers, Professor of History

Barton Myers, Professor of History

Barton Myers, Professor of History