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On October 25, 2025, authors George Saunders and Zadie Smith shared the platform with Deborah Treisman, the fiction editor from The New Yorker, for a conversation at the 26th yearly New Yorker Festival, a weekend featuring discussions, showings, presentations, and other events. The Festival, the publication’s celebrated gathering, took place in New York City and assembled prominent individuals from the domains of literature, motion pictures, humor, broadcasting, politics, and healthcare.
George Saunders penned “Lincoln in the Bardo,” the recipient of the Man Booker Prize in 2017, along with five short story anthologies, such as “Tenth of December,” a nominee for the National Book Award, and the recent compilation “Liberation Day.” He curates the widely read Substack blog Story Club, derived from his book regarding the Russian short story, “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.” In 2013, Time magazine identified him as one of the 100 Most Influential People globally. He has instructed in the creative writing program at Syracuse University since 1997.
Zadie Smith authored the novels “White Teeth,” “The Autograph Man,” “On Beauty,” “NW,” “Swing Time,” and “The Fraud”; a short novel, “The Embassy of Cambodia”; the essay assortments “Changing My Mind,” “Feel Free,” “Intimations,” and the upcoming “Dead and Alive”; a short story grouping, “Grand Union”; and a drama, “The Wife of Willesden,” adapted from one of Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales.” She also serves as the editor for “The Book of Other People.” Smith was born in north-west London, where she continues to reside.
Deborah Treisman has served as the fiction editor for The New Yorker starting in 2003. She initially joined the publication as the associate fiction editor in 1997. She is the host of the award-winning New Yorker Fiction Podcast and the editor of the anthologies “A Century of Fiction in The New Yorker: 1925-2025” and “20 Under 40: Stories from The New Yorker.” In 2012, she was honored with the Maxwell E. Perkins Award recognizing editorial brilliance within the field of fiction.
Sourse: newyorker.com