Michael Dirda
Pulitzer prize-winning literary journalist and author

THE GREAT GOD PAN

In this year’s Friends of Classics lecture Pulitzer Prize-winning literary journalist Michael Dirda will discuss how late 19th-century and early modern fantasy writers turned to the ancient Greek god Pan—goat-footed, pipe-playing, brazenly pagan--to explore the place of nature, sex, personal freedom and ecstasy in human lives. Writers to be considered include Arthur Machen, J.M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, Lord Dunsany, E.M. Forster, James Stephens, Margery Lawrence, Dion Fortune and others. 

Michael Dirda is a weekly book columnist for The Washington Post and the author of five collections of essays, including “Browsings” and “Classics for Pleasure,” as well as the memoir “An Open Book” and the Edgar Award-winning “On Conan Doyle.”