Bob Dylan Night

Please join us for a roundtable discussion—featuring Ben Hedin, Bob Levinson, Mary Lee Kortes of Mary Lee's Corvette, Robert Polito, David Remnick and Alex Ross—of the music of Bob Dylan, one day after the release of his first collection of new songs in five years, Modern Times. Participants will discuss Dylan's recent work as well as his place in American culture and myth. In addition, Mitch Blank, the world's premier Dylan archivist, will bring film and recordings from various stages in Dylan's career. 

Mitch Blank has been a music archivist for many years. Recently he participated in the American Masters documentary No Direction Home and contributed both to The Bob Dylan Scrapbook and the current traveling museum exhibit "Bob Dylan's American Journey 1956-1966."

Benjamin Hedin is the editor of an anthology, Studio A: The Bob Dylan Reader. He teaches at The New School and writes for The Nation and The Georgia Review, among other publications, and is finishing work on a novel.

Mary Lee Kortes leads Mary Lee's Corvette, which has recorded several critically acclaimed albums, including Love, Loss & Lunacy (2006),700 Miles (2003), and in 2002 released a live recording covering Blood on the Tracks in its entirety which received 4 stars in Rolling Stone and is featured on bobdylan.com.

Bob Levinson has been teaching his guest-driven "Discussing Dylan" course at The New School since 2001 and is the co-host, with his wife Arlene, of WHPC’s "Positively Dylan" radio show. His Dylan writings can be found in The ISIS Anthology.

Robert Polito directs the Graduate Writing Program at The New School. His books include a collection of poems, Doubles, A Reader's Guide to James Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover and Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award.

David Remnick is the editor of The New Yorker. His books include Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire, which won the Pulitzer Prize,The Devil Problem, The King of the World and the recently published Reporting: Writings from The New Yorker.

Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. His writings have been widely anthologized and his first book, The Rest is Noise, a cultural history of 20th century music, will be published in the spring of 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.